Then, when I asked each of you what you’d like to read about in future blog posts, my friend John emailed me and asked, “Why is it that during tough economic times, most companies reduce marketing budgets? If marketing is of real value to a company and if marketing works for that company, wouldn’t you increase spending in tough times?”

This brings me to one of my favorite case studies: How Kellogg won the cereal wars of the Great Depression. Forbes, The New Yorker, and several other national media highlighted this story earlier this year, when it looked like the economy wasn’t likely to get better anytime soon. Following is an expert I refer to a lot when people ask me the same question John asked.

In the late nineteen-twenties, two companies—Kellogg and Post—dominated the market for packaged cereal. It was still a relatively new market: Ready-to-eat cereal had been around for decades, but Americans didn’t see it as a real alternative to oatmeal or cream of wheat until the twenties. So, when the Depression hit, no one knew what would happen to consumer demand. Post did the predictable thing: It reined in expenses and cut back on advertising. But Kellogg doubled its ad budget, moved aggressively into radio advertising, and heavily pushed its new cereal, Rice Krispies. (Snap, Crackle, and Pop first appeared in the 1930s.) By 1933, even as the economy cratered, Kellogg’s profits had risen almost 30 percent and it had become what it remains today: The industry’s dominant player.

With social media you can now heavily push your brand, your company, your service, or your product at half the cost of traditional methods. If you listen, build your communities, let your brand ambassadors spread the word, and provide value, your business will come out of the Great Recession as a dominant player, no matter your size.

So my question for you is: If you decrease your spending and no one knows you’re still in business, which creates a drop in revenue and profits, doesn’t it make sense to spend money and time on the new forms of marketing, advertising, and PR?

Steve runs an ad agency in Albuquerque, McKee Wallwork Cleveland, and is the author of “When Growth Stalls.” A couple of months he called me and said, “The economists claim the recession is over, but what are we, as business owners, doing to reinstate spending?” And then he threw the idea of Find Your Nerve past me.

The result is a blog dedicated to business owners who are not letting the recession keep them down, but doing what they can to change the status quo.

Rather than cannoblize our readers, I’ll give you an excerpt from my post today here and you can go check out his blog for more.

One year ago, my company had a couple of “life-changing” events. Each of them, alone, could have put us out of business. They both happened within six weeks of each other. I went into a pretty deep depression. I beat myself up. Why didn’t I pay attention to the signs? How did I not know our industry is a key leading indicator of the economy? Why did I do some things my gut told me not to do? Were people going to think that I had a good three year run, but I couldn’t grow a business beyond that? How was I going to tell my staff we had to close? How was I going to tell our clients? How was I going to pay our outstanding vendor bills? Why had I built a business only to have nothing to show for it?

Read more here and check out the other guest bloggers, as well!