Economic Recovery and Job Creation Get Boost Through Trusted Social Networks

March 22, 2010 - PRLog -- Knowledge Institute is driving economic recovery one small business at a time. Through a combination of social media, trusted resource and referral networks and its newest addition in marketing talent, Knowledge Institute is connecting millions of entrepreneurs and entrepreneur hopefuls to a plethora of free and low-cost public programs and private sector goods and services aimed at venture start up, growth and sustainability.

“America’s economic strength relies heavily on the innovative and creative spirit of our entrepreneurs,” said Deborah Osgood, Knowledge Institute cofounder and president. “It is critical that they know about the myriad public agency programs and productivity-enhancing private sector solutions that are available to them in their neighborhoods and across the country if we are to push ahead beyond the current economic challenges.”

There are approximately 25 million small businesses across the country that spend over $9 trillion on goods and services each year, generate over 64% of net new jobs and employ more than half of America’s workforce. At the same time, this critical economic engine has been recently crushed because of the lack of access to capital, skyrocketing health care costs and increasing tax burdens imposed to fund local, state and national deficits.

By leveraging social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious, Digg and Ning; leading entrepreneurial resource and referral communities like BUZGate.org, and SMEToolkit.org; and adding experienced marketing talent, Knowledge Institute is expanding economic recovery and job creation efforts. To date, this strategy has brought together over 33,000 public agency business counselors, 12,500 public agency business support programs, hundreds of productivity enhancing B2B service providers, trusted B2B influence leader networks and millions of entrepreneurs.

“This is a promising, yet challenging time for enterprise-based B2B marketing strategists,” said Alan Shafer, who recently joined Knowledge Institute as vice president and chief marketing officer. “Innovative marketing campaigns that successfully leverage educational platforms such as Knowledge Institute and its social media relationships will yield a much better ROI than traditional click-through and banner ad strategies.”  Shafer, former director of marketing for IBM’s retail division, will help foster new partnerships between Knowledge Institute’s network of small businesses and the country’s established B2B companies.

Knowledge Institute works with multiple leading B2B service providers on an invitation-only basis to create non-commercial, educationally focused content around value-add goods and services for distribution through their small and medium-sized business (SMB) communication channels. They refer to this form of strategic marketing as an edutorial where the message focus is on conveying the value proposition from the customer’s point of view instead of a sales pitch about a particular brand.

“It’s about answers not more information,” Osgood said. “In an economy where small business is the backbone, we knew we had to create a better option for entrepreneurs than their turning to Google only to be given over 255 million possible options when searching for small business help.”

# # #

About Knowledge Institute: Knowledge Institute is a think tank and consortium of experts that specialize in entrepreneurial education, development and marketing communications. As creators and sponsors of multiple business-to-business resource and referral communities, Knowledge Institute is serving millions of entrepreneurs on a monthly basis and driving economic recovery and job creation. The U.S Small Business Administration (SBA), government agencies, Fortune 500 companies and nonprofit economic development agencies have formally recognized Knowledge Institute for its economic development impact and small business educational contributions.