What’s the one thing your startup needs more than great code, a killer marketing message or a compelling offer? Attention. Without attention, no one will know your startup has created the must-have web, desktop or mobile app of 2009, or that you even exist.

So how do you get attention? In this post I’d like to suggest 3 ways to get attention when you don’t have the kind of money it takes to hire a great PR firm with connections that will do more than spam every online writer with a heartbeat and an email address.

Be an expert – and share that expertise.

Two recent examples of this. First there’s Amy Hoy, who with her husband Thomas (script.aculo.us) Fuchs and two partners recently launched freckle time tracking. In early January as step one of her getting attention of her target market segment – developers and web designers – campaign Amy released a free ebook on credit card processing. Now this is one of those boring, utterly necessary subjects that a free ebook with great presentation + good graphics + humor + sourcecode is irresistible linkbait. And just to add value, Amy’s now working on version 2: a great reason to share your email even if your inbox is already stuffed.

Photo credit: NARA(SPB) - National Archives and Records Administration, Still Picture Branch

Unless you’ve been on a raft in the middle of the Pacific this last month, you’ve noticed more than a few financial sharks circling around your microISV or startup.

The Credit Crunch, Iceland – the hedge fund with glaciers – hitting the Titanic of ansy bankers and locking up more than few billion pounds in the U.K., Germany, with banks being reorganized faster than a new round of beer during Octoberfest; the United States – partly nationalizing its banking system in order preserve the Free Enterprise System (sic), governments changing their tune and throwing hundreds of billions of dollars around: Something is Going On. Call it the Global Economic Crisis, with film on every newscast.

I can’t tell you how much of the Global Economic Crisis is real, hype, or somewhere in between. I can tell you the other economic crisis, the measurable slowdowns in consumer/business spending, rise in layoffs and unemployment and flat or negative economic growth is real, and its name is Recession and it’s going to impact every IT company large and small.