Gene Marks is a best selling author. He’s also a writer for BusinessWeek. He should therefore be trusted, right? Well, not necessarily.

Not to be rude, but small business owners should not take marketing advice from a CPA (nor should you, for that matter, take accounting lessons from a marketer). That just seems silly to me. And it seems equally silly that Gene Marks, a best selling author of books on business accounting and a promoter of CRM solutions, would write an article like this one I found on BusinessWeek this week. The article is full of bad advice, inaccurate statements, lousy leaps of logic, and just plain silly and nutty examples of people who made bad decisions. I tried - I really tried - to see where he was coming from and it finally dawned on me. He’s a penny pincher. It makes sense then that he’s approaching this topic from a small business “I want to save myself some money” perspective. I can respect that.

Nevertheless, I still stand by my opinion that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Why Gene Marks Is Wrong About RSS Feeds

Gene Marks says RSS is not important. I think it is. You can control when you receive your information. You can also control how. And that’s what RSS is really for.

Obviously, RSS is an acronym. It stands for several things, depending on who you listen to. The most popular phrase for which RSS is used is Really Simple Syndication. It really is simple. You can receive news and information on any topic of interest in your e-mail box or online and read it when you want to read it. There are a ton of RSS applications you can use. I recommend Google Reader for the beginner because it’s easy to use and very simple to navigate. It’s also free.

Any time you see a blog or find something online you’d like to subscribe to, just click on the RSS feed button or syndication button and your browser will take you to Google Reader (you have to sign up for a free account first). With one click you can be a subscriber. Whenever the publisher of that news feed publishes their content, you’ll receive that feed into your news reader. You can read it at your convenience. Don’t like a feed? Just cancel. No fuss, no muss.

There are other feed readers. Google Reader isn’t the only one. Some of them allow you to receive your feeds at a predetermined time if you want to. However you do it, you can read them whenever you want and receive only the information you want. Believe me, it’s a powerful tool.

Why Gene Marks Is Wrong About Spam Filters

Who likes spam? No one I know. Then why is Gene Marks telling people not to worry about it? Yes, there are difficulties. You might miss a few good e-mails and you might receive a few spam e-mails you don’t want. No software package is perfect. You still use a word processor, don’t you? You still use a computer even though sometimes it crashes, right?

Most spam filters will let you define what is spam and what is not. Did it flag an e-mail as spam that you don’t consider spam? Whitelist that e-mail address.

The problem with spam is that you might download a virus or malware onto your computer from an unsuspecting spam e-mail. You do need protection. Don’t ignore that. I’ve recently discovered Mozilla’s e-mail application, Thunderbird, with its built in spam filter. It’s better than Outlooks. I like it.

Why Gene Marks Is Wrong About Antivirus Software

Do you like computer crashes? Isn’t it fun losing all of your information because that new kid you hired decided to download a cool game onto your computer? Sure it is. That’s why Gene Marks says don’t use antivirus software. I’ve never experienced a problem with Norton or AVG slowing down my computers and I’ve never needed an astronaut to fire up my computer. This one just has me baffled, Gene.

Why Gene Marks Is Wrong About Blogs

Do you know HTML? You can actually have a website without one. All you need is a domain name, which you can get for $10, and WordPress, a blogging platform that allows you to create web pages and write directly to a website without knowing any code. Why pay a web design team thousands of dollars to build you a cool website. Just have one designer design you a unique WordPress template for about $500 and you can have your very own website that you can update any time you want. Pretty simple.

Even if you’ve got a static HTML website, a blog will add fresh daily content to your website and bring the search engine spiders to your site more often to crawl it. Like high rankings? A blog will help. Want to fall to the bottom of the content pile in the daily search engine shuffle? Take Gene’s advice. You’ll never rank well for your key terms anyway so why bother (wink wink). Trust me, I’ve got two blogs and I’m so glad I do.

Don’t feel like writing? Hire a ghostwriter. Don’t want to post every day? Post every other day, or once a week. That’s better than nothing.

Why Gene Marks Is Wrong About SEO

Gene Marks doesn’t like SEO. Why? Because one guy had a bad experience with a bad SEO consultant. That’s like saying automobile maintenance is bad because you were ripped off by a car mechanic once. Come on, Gene. It’s the 21st century and the Internet is here to stay. It’s called marketing. SEO is the name of the game. Learn it, hire someone you trust who knows how to do it, or sit on the sidelines and watch. Oh, and Gene, you don’t need a lot of money to do SEO right. That’s big myth.

Why Gene Marks Is Wrong About Mobile Applications

And I guess it’s science fiction, Gene, that people are actually making money by marketing themselves to mobile phone users? How would you know since you obviously don’t use facts. No, it isn’t for everyone. Are you an auto mechanic in the smallest town in rural Kansas serving a small community and the few passers through who stop by on their way to Topeka? Maybe you don’t need it. But if you own a retail store in L.A. trying to reach a highly mobile target market then that’s a different story. Sorry, Gene. But wrong is wrong.

Why Gene Marks Is Wrong About CRM Software

Gene Marks works for a company that sells CRM software, but he doesn’t think small businesses need it. So why does he cavort with the devil?

Well, he does make a good point. If you aren’t going to use it then don’t spend $20,000. That’s just throwing money out a window. But if you’re a small business on a limited budget, why not just get a free open source application that does the trick? I recommend Joomla or Drupal. Both are adequate CRM systems for small business owners. And since they’re free, if you don’t use them then you haven’t risked anything.

Why Gene Marks Is Wrong About AdWords

I’m not an expert on AdWords, but I do know people who have used Google AdWords and other pay per click models to turn a profit. You don’t need thousands of dollars. You can make money on a $200 per month budget. Many have. You just have to learn how it’s done. You didn’t know how to run a business either until you tried. Right, Gene?

Why Gene Marks Is Wrong About Online Video

What do Madonna and Radiohead have in common? They both made money and sold albums by using online video. So have other entreprenuers. Even nonmusical entrepreneurs. And you don’t need thousands of dollars. You need a digital camera and some creativity. Just look at the YouTube videos that people are using to drive traffic. Do all of them work? No. But then, 90% of all business start ups are out of business in 5 years. Gene doesn’t recommend you work at McDonald’s flipping burgers.

Why Gene Marks Is Right About Web 2.0

Most small businesses don’t need wiki or some high-tech gonzo gadget. If you want it and you can make it work for you, fine. But all you really need are useful tools for conducting your business. I’m not quite sure what Web 2.0 is. No one else is either. But I am sure that your business can use the Internet to market yourself. You likely don’t need every tool available. But it’s nice to know what is out there and how it works in case you can find a use for it.