It used to be that anyone thinking about doing business with you would first consult with their colleagues or friends to see if any of them had worked with you before. If not, they would likely turn to the Yellow Pages and give you a call. That would put you in a good position because you have total control of the information they receive about you and your company.

Five years ago, that same potential customer would get online and visit your website, learn about your products and services and contact you if they were interested. Again, a good situation for you to be in as you have total control over what appears on your website.

Today, things have changed. Social media sites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. have become so powerful that they constantly appear at the top of the search engine rankings. More importantly, consumers are more apt to trust the information found on these sites because they believe this information is posted by non-partisan people ie. your happy or disgruntled customers and it is more likely to provide them with an honest assessment of what you have to offer. Continue Reading ->

I have been preaching to small business owners about the importance of utilizing sites like Twitter, Squidoo, LinkedIn, etc. for quite a while now. My experience has taught me that leveraging such powerful social media sites can allow you to build quality links back to your main business site for SEO purposes, to build your credibility as the expert in your field and to create one-on-one relationships with your customers and future customers.

All of that is true but now there is one more reason… and it is a BIGGIE. Check out the video below recently released by Google. Google is showing live Twitter feeds on their search results pages. Considering Twitter is free to use, can any of us afford not to be on there?

Most of us are familiar with online joint venture partnerships.  We often refer to these as affiliate partnerships.  Essentially, a merchant wanting to sell more of his or her product offers a partner a commission in exchange for promoting the merchant’s product.

When done properly this is a very effective way to sell online.  But does it work offline?  Continue Reading ->

Video marketing is a relatively new and very promising form of online marketing. Basically, video marketing is the producing of short promotional or informational videos and then distributing them throughout free video hosting sites like YouTube.

Such a form of marketing serves two very key purposes. First, a lot of people can see your video and contact you either directly through the video or by visiting your website to learn more about what you do. Second, these video hosting websites have strong page rank with Google and by placing your video on them you can gain some powerful links back to your site. Continue Reading ->