Most of us will face a time in our work lives where we’ll need to figure out how to do something on the cheap – to DIY to get the marketing done. You might be a one-person-band doing all your company’s marketing. You might work for a small business (or maybe you are the CEO of that small business) or a non-profit that just doesn’t have the budget to hire a full team. Actually, these days even massive corporations are cutting marketing budgets so we’re all affected.

On one hand, it’s fun to be flush with cash and resources. I’d love the opportunity to build a team full of strategists, writers, designers, digital specialists, videographers, social media managers, project managers, UX folks and a team masseuse! Plus, please give me millions to invest in video production, podcasts and a nice social budget! 

But I have to say there’s also something satisfying about figuring out how to work within a smaller budget. (Because sometimes, in the wise words of The Notorious B.I.G.: “Mo money, mo problems.”) (R.I.P. Biggie.) And when it’s just you doing the work – or maybe working with another person or two – you can be nimble and still get great results. It’s usually a matter of strategically choosing where you want to invest your time and effort and finding ways to be scrappy. I’ve made something of a specialty of being scrappy or what I call “bootstrappy” over the years, and I’d like to share some of those ideas with you. 

In fact, there are so many ways to do this that I am creating a series — “Bootstrappy and Scrappy” — to talk about some of the easiest ways to get by when you don’t have budgets and resources (without — and this is crucial — exhausting yourself and/or your team). In the coming weeks, I’ll give you actionable ideas for: 

-Content marketing

-Starting a TikTok

-Launching (and managing) a Facebook Community

-Using LinkedIn for thought leadership

So, tune in again next week and the following weeks, and we’ll get bootstrappy together!

— Shayla Thiel-Stern, Uncommon Teal