Small Business Internet Marketing is not anything new. Small business owners have been promoting their products and services in various ways since the beginning of time.

What has changed is the way that small businesses go about marketing today.

If you have a small business that is struggling to promote itself here are a few things to keep in mind.

What is Small Business Marketing?

This is basically done so that you can promote what you have to sell. Today small business owners include off-line local business owners, and Internet marketers who are building their business online. It also includes home business owners who run their business from the comfort of their own home.

Why do Small Business Internet Marketing?

You have to be out in the marketplace where people can find you. Businesses of all sides struggle with the best way to do this.

The big difference with small business owner is they do not have the staff to hire full-time workers to handle their advertising for them. Unless you’re able to build a business strictly on word-of-mouth advertising, you will need to promote it, and the Internet is the best place to do that.

Where to Do Small Business Internet Marketing?

Internet marketing is great because of the many different avenues available to you. Regardless of your budget you can find ways to promote online.

You will want to consider search engine optimization in any Internet marketing that you do. People still log online looking for information and you have a chance to provide that for them when you promote online.

When to Do Small Business Marketing?

In the past off line business owners would sit down with their yellow page rep and put together their marketing plan for the next year. Then based on how business was going they would throw in additional advertising such as newspaper ads, direct mail, or even radio ads. Today that is not the best approach to take.

Small business Internet marketing should be done year round. You can automate much of this so you do not even have to pay attention to it and you can still benefit.

The best thing to do is to put together a marketing plan and then consistently monitor how it is working. You can make adjustments based on the results you are getting and eventually settle into a consistent successful advertising plan.

How to do Small Business Marketing?

Whenever possible take a broad approach to promoting your business online. Here are a few ways you can do that.

1. Pay per click advertising. This is a fast way to get on page 1 of the larger search engines for keyword phrases that people are searching for.

You see these ads across the top of a page and down the right-hand side. You want to be as high up on the page as you possibly can based on your budget. You will be billed every time somebody clicks on one of your ads.

Googe Adwords is the number one place to promote on the Internet. Because Google gets the majority of search engine traffic today it only makes sense that you advertise with them.

Yahoo Marketing is an affordable alternative. They are the #2 search engine and you can generate more website traffic for considerably less money than you would with Google.

Facebook ads. They now have over 500 million users and have become a power player in the online advertising arena. You can purchase targeted Facebook ads at an affordable rate.

2. SEO. Search engine optimization should be done in every type of advertising you do.

This means you need to develop a keyword list that people are searching for relating to the niche your business is in. Your goal is to rank as high as you can on Google for those keyword phrases.

Once you know what these keywords are you can begin to implement them into all of your advertising strategies.

3. Article marketing. This is a good way to develop backlinks as well as provide information that people could be searching for.

Always remember that people do not come online to purchase something all of the time. Many times they are just looking for information and you may be able to provide that in the form an article.

If you do not like to write you can hire a freelance writer to write for you. Hands Off Article Marketing is a good way to develop an online presence with articles. In this program the articles are written for you, and submitted to online article directories, blogs, and shared video site such as You Tube.

4. Social media. This encompasses a large number of small business Internet marketing opportunities.

For sure you want to start a blog and add content to it on a regular basis. Search engines love blogs and this is a good way for you to develop an online presence and drive traffic at the same time.

When you make a blog post you want to also submit it to online social directories. Use Only Wire to reach the top directories with the click of one button.

Search engines spider these social directories all the time. It’s a good way to get them coming to your blog and spidering it as well.

Social networking is important to be involved in. You should set up a FaceBook and Twitter account for your business. ou should also join LinkedIn and personally interact with people whenever you can.

You can also outsource all of your social media to a professional. This is money well spent because it allows you to reach a segment of the market you might otherwise never reach.

5. Email marketing. Building an email list is smart for the long-term growth of your business.

You can add a sign-up form to your website and let people subscribe to your email newsletter. This is a good way to sell products as well as keep in touch with your subscribers whenever you have something new to announce.

6. Other types of small business Internet marketing. Other things you can do to promote your business online include ezine advertising, classified ads, banner ads, starting an affiliate program, and much more.

Over time you can dominate your market when you have a large number of small business Internet marketing strategies working for your business!

Google Caffeine?

On the role of real-time search results in the search engine industry, Google has long realized that it falls short in terms of real-time search and has been busy! In recent months Google was working on a secret project: a complete renovation of the architecture in Google’s web search.

If you want to watch the videos:

…. and

Google Caffeine: Under the Cover

Google spokesperson Matt Cutts explains that Google Caffeine changes “under the cover” event. On Google’s user interface will change nothing. Caffeine Google’s search results are largely similar. The big difference is that new content much faster will appear in the top 10 Google Caffeine. This will ultimately lead to faster, more accurate and complete information in Google’s search results.

Real-time search

“Google is certainly faster Caffeine. New content will be indexed twice as fast. Google is rolling out some new adjustments to their sandbox. Performance, speed, reliability, accuracy, Relevancy and other parameters are some features that are being improved.

Here are some questions and answers, discussed on Matt Cutts Blog:

Q: How do I check out the Caffeine update?

A: If you search on URL you can get a preview of how the search results will change over the next few weeks and months.

Q: It doesn’t look any different to me?

A: The Caffeine update isn’t about making some UI changes here or there. Currently, even power users won’t notice much of a difference at all. This update is primarily under the hood: we’re rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure. But some of the search results do change, so we wanted to open up a preview so that power searchers and web developers could give us feedback.

Q: Is this Caffeine Update because of Company X or Y is doing Z?

A: Nope. I love competition in search and want lots of it, but this change has been in the works for months. I think the best way for Google to do well in search is to continue what we’ve done for the last decade or so: focus relentlessly on pushing our search quality forward. Nobody cares more about search than Google, and I don’t think we’ll ever stop trying to improve.

Q: How do I give Google feedback?

A: If you want to give us feedback on how the search results are different, look on the search results page for a link at the bottom of the page that says “Dissatisfied? Help us improve.” Click on that link and type your feedback in the text box. Make sure to include the word caffeine somewhere in the feedback.

Conclusion #1

Business owners need to heavily promote & manage social sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook,Linkedin, and others. It also means photo sharing sites such as Picasa Web Albums & Flicker are important. It also means means blogs & local search sites such as yelp and citysearch are important….

Bottom Line folks Social Media is here to stay and your business needs to be in front of people looking for you…..

Conclusion #2

Business owners need Quality Content. Why? When you are signed into your Google account (many business owners are always signed in) Google is showing results from Social Circles in the result! How crazy is that. That means if we get all of our clients to follow us on Twitter, or all interested business owners to connect with us on Linkedin, or people follow us on YouTube.com.

THIS MEANS WHEN WE PUBLISH NEW CONTENT THEY SEE THAT CONTENT IN THE SEARCH RESULTS.

What a great way to target your target market. Google is practically telling everyone with this new addition that CONTENT is the new LINK VALUE online!

Internet Marketing? Is it Right for My Business?

If it feels like your online business is lagging in last year’s dust, keep in mind that it’s normal to fall behind in the race. With all this talk about Facebook, Twitter and the plethora of other Social Media Marketing tools it sure is easy to be confused if not down right overwhelmed. However, it’s absolutely possible and critical to pick up the pace of your marketing strategies and increase your chances of of bringing in new business with Internet Marketing.

To go forward in your marketing efforts it’s not a bad idea to look behind you. What I mean by this is; what old school method no longer work in your business. Yellow page ads, print coupons, billboards, classified ads and the many other traditional means to reach your prospects are being used little to none. PERIOD! Just last week I had a backed up toilet, you all know how irritating that can be. Without even a thought I went directly to my PC and brought up Yahoo, yes I still use that for search, and I typed in “Portland, OR plumbers”. I got what I needed, it really is as simple as that folks, your prospects are no longer looking for your product or service in the “old school” ways.

Before I get into some suggestions and some things to not do let me first say this. Get professional help in this area. Think of it this way; if you were a Real Estate agent back in the pre-Internet era you wouldn’t tell the local newspaper that you can run your own classified ads, “no thanks, I have a printing press right here and can print and distribute my own ads” or you wouldn’t tell the billboard company, ” I can put that billboard over the highway myself.” So be realistic, you shouldn’t be up a 2am trying to figure out what mySQL is or html, css or where and what do I say or do in my ads. Enough said!

But where do you begin and how will you know what to do? The key to Internet marketing and the path to web success in 2010 and beyond is anticipating customer needs and making every second count for your business on a daily basis.

Here are some suggestions of what companies, large and small, should look out for now and going forward in 2010:

Blogs Will Expand in Importance and Distribution

This year will be all about how a company fights its way through a bad economy. What better way to reach your target audience than provide quality content that is easily accessible and leaves a reader wanting more. Blogs create a community within your field of interest and work to spread your brand. Don’t blog to advertise, blog to help customers by providing informative material. Remember this; Social Media is conversational.

Does Mobile Marketing (SMS) have any potential for my business?

Whether consumers will respond and communicate to businesses via cell phone is worth experimenting with since a large percentage of companies used text and multimedia messaging last year. It’s an effort towards new ways of reaching loyal consumers and potential customers.With the load of apps for smart phones, Google’s new phone certainly makes this method appealing to a small business to reach customers looking for products and services through mobile search. Text SMS Marketing is one of many options that could be right for your business or at least a beneficial look at what your competitors may be using.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Social Media

This is worth repeating, Don’t underestimate the power of social media! More than ever, Internet-users find it convenient and amusing to maintain social networks and professional relationships through sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and FriendFeed. If your online business does not have an account with all, if not one, of these sites, then now is the time to make one. It’s a great way to establish new connections and provide links to your site to help reach your target audience and increase sales.

Be Open to Modification

The spirit of being an Entrepreneur is all about taking chances, predictions and implementation to improve current conditions. This kind of growth requires change. The cyber industry is evolving at an increasingly rapid pace, so your marketing strategies and web tools should evolve too. No of our daily mantras at bulbwired.com is; Plan, Do, and Review.

KYSS Chaos Goodbye

Keep Your Strategies Simple And Gain More Time To Enjoy Your Riches In Niches! You’ve likely heard of simplifying your life. From bookshelves to daytime talk shows, simplicity is a hot topic. When it comes to your business, pairing down and doing less isn’t usually the prescribed strategy for success, but it’s certainly essential to staying satisfied in your niche.

As a Entrepreneur, you lead a busy life. Backbreaking labor isn’t always enough to outdo competitors. To-do lists stack against you. Your foundation remains uncertain, squabbling over big ticket items to bail you out of a down economy. Sadly, good intentions don’t always yield top results.

To ensure lasting business success, you must embrace niche simplicity. What is niche simplicity? In essence, by doing less each day, you accomplish more. How is that possible? When you select strategies that meet multiple business needs and achieve exponential growth. That’s what niche simplicity is all about. Think of it as de-cluttering your business deals.

Niche simplicity isn’t just good practice. It’s a smart solution that lets you…

* Closely examine what works and what doesn’t.
* Identify key strategies that grow your business.
* Let go of all good intentions that aren’t working.

Niche simplicity gives you time to develop smarter strategies for success. By releasing bad-result recipes that take time away from strategies for riches in niches, you gain more energy to grow your business. Instead of doing anything and everything, you can do one or two things really well.

Just as smaller markets lead to BIG results, doing less can achieve more.

Ready? Let’s simplify. Take a deep breath. Exhale. Do this slowly a few times, and with each exhale, let go of those to-dos and don’ts. Release any preconceived notions of what you must do by tomorrow. Relax, it’s simple. Once you’re calm and cool, let’s look at how we can corral some strategies for success and-dare we say-under-do the competition. Are you ready to simplify? Here are three suggestions.

Writing fever leads to expert fervor.

By writing a tip, trick or article. Publish your good advice. This gets your name out there, educates your niche and generates media curiosity. Do this at least weekly , and you’re much closer to building your brand, boosting your credibility and being noticed by media. Your fervor becomes their fodder.

Exercises regularly to build media muscle.

Want to build media muscle, but don’t have the strength to carry on with everyone? In your boilerplate message, include your social media links that help keep you on all the time. By regularly checking-in through your social media profiles, you quickly become a media magnet, attracting the attention you can’t afford to lose.

Spread your expertise through education.

Often it’s who you know that helps you succeed, but, more times than not, it’s what you know that accelerates your expert status. To remain in pole position as the quintessential go-to guru in your niche, share your knowledge. Seek out other experts that support you and team-up to teach your niche.

Instead of looking at these strategies for success as different tools to transform your business, think about how you can do one or two of them well to achieve lasting results. By pairing strategies together, you’re building a different kind of daily formula that is… well… simplified.

You can achieve more with less.

You can serve your niche better without hundreds of half-done projects. And you can out last your competitors by doing less, and doing that more effectively and efficiently than they do.

Keep your strategies simple, and you just might get rich in your niche. One thing I would like to share with you in closing is; in the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, and I am paraphrasing here, ask yourself this one question, “What is the one thing that you can do better than any other company?” This one question was the genesis of the bulbwired.com story. Find one thing and do it greatly!

… and other Social Networks

Posted by Joel Burslem

I’ll admit it. I’m hooked on Facebook. I somehow missed out the whole MySpace craze (thankfully, visiting a MySpace page now just makes my eyes hurt) – but Facebook has me hook, line and sinker.

Over on the Inman Blog, I wrote a post recently about real estate marketing through social media – where I implied that you should be thinking about marketing your listings in the places where your target markets are these days. Believe me, that’s rarely in the classifieds sections of your local newspapers anymore.

Now, industry social networks like ActiveRain are great for connecting with your peers; but let’s face it, Consumers aren’t hanging out there. If you’re looking for buyers and sellers, in this day and age you need to be a little more creative.

The news that Facebook may launch Local Classifieds got me thinking on how you can take this idea and use social networks like Facebook to really power your business.

Here’s how:

1. Encourage past clients and new clients to ‘friend’ you or ‘add’ you to their networks. Include links to your profile in your marketing materials, business cards etc. Build out a brand new online “sphere”.

2. Creating Groups – This is the most obvious way to use the site. Create a “Portland Homebuyers” group for example and help first time buyers with their questions. Leverage your expertise to become the expert in the group.

3. Creating a unique Group is also a great way to keep in touch with business networking contacts you meet – maybe it’s at a local Chamber of Commerce meeting or even a Real Estate Connect conference. You can engage in post conference discussions, share information in a neutral open forum that doesn’t demand the intimacy of an email or telephone contact.

4. Shares – You could use Facebook to market properties to a select group or share properties with your friends . A handy bookmarklet lets you add external links to your Shares. You could add a link to a property from your own site, even a vFlyer page or Sellsius listing etc.

Think about it, you could have an exclusive Group of Realtors in your market, maybe its even inside a single branch office, and you could share great listings with each other even before they hit the MLS.

5. If you’re a blogger, add your RSS feed to your profile. Facebook lets you add a Blog feed to your Notes. You could find new readers and even drive traffic back to your blog by sharing your posts with your network.

I think that maximizing your exposure on social networks like Facebook are going to be increasingly important to small businesses – especially in industries that are already so network-dependent like real estate. Unfortunately, due to the fleeting nature of these sites, the trick is going to be to stay on top on where everyone is. The real danger is arriving too late and finding your audience has already moved on.

Update: Drew Meyers from Zillow wrote a great post along the same lines – check out How to Productively Take Advantage of Online Communities

Twitter Marketing – Do You Follow?

Twitter is a relatively new web 2.0 site that is beginning to gather a lot of popularity. That implies that a lot of people have heard of it but it is also rather common to run into individuals who haven’t learned of it.. yet. Twitter.com is this social site that promotes users to post frequently about what they are currently doing.

Lots of individuals are using it to better their selling reach, by being an involved twitterer they gain followers who are interested in what they got going on. This implies individuals being exposed to their updates on a regular basis. For example, if you have hundreds of followers in Twitter and you decide to post an affiliate link, that means that hundreds of people have immediately been exposed to your offer. In this article I will discuss ways to maximise Twitter for your selling, and also a big mistake to be aware of.

In order to have a fan base per say of followers in Twitter you must be able to keep their involvement in you and what you are doing now. “What are you doing?” is the whole foundation of what Twitter is about in the first place. Make sure to post daily if not several times throughout the day updates about what you are doing. The magical thing behind this is that many of your contacts will be able to feel like they know you so much better, will trust you more, and feel much more comfortable about working with you. On the other hand, when you follow others you can learn about them and their possible needs.

The big fault to watch out for is only posting affiliate links or offers on your Twitter page. This looks like Spam and many individuals will see you as just abusing Twitter for your own personal gather. Think of it this way, if you would not want to invite your friends or family to keep up with you via Twitter then you are going about it all incorrect. As with anything you send out or provide, ninety percent should be content and ten percent (at most) advertising. So this concept is quite simple… constantly post throughout the day what you are doing.. it is usually very simple and only takes a few seconds to post! Secondly, if you write articles or provide content online, provide a link for those in your Twitter posts. You may post many things within one day, but the last thing you post for the day is usually the most crucial because it will be there the longest. This implies that your last post for the day should very well contain a link that you want your followers to see before your start Twittering again the next day!

Another part of Twitter is contributing. As with any social site it should be a give and take relationship. Notice that give comes first… the more you give the more individuals will want to work with you and the more attention you will receive. Make sure to read and follow other users in Twitter. If you read something interesting or helpful then make sure to reply and say so, or even put a link for it on your Twitter so that you are directing others to more quality content. This can also be as simple as connecting with other users, if they know you are reading their Twitter page they will be much more likely to check out what you have going on too.

To get started in Twitter you should first invite contacts who aren’t using Twitter and also find contacts who are already using Twitter so that you can start following them and also start getting individuals to follow you. Twitter has a nice invite and find feature that makes this incredibly easy. To grow your reach even more you can start following individuals who follow or are followed by the people who follow you.. or that you follow. You might need to read that sentence again.. but basically you can find other users to connect with that are already connected to other users.

Now for a big tip. If you really want to maximise the potential with Twitter, you should make sure to take advantage of any plug-ins or sites that support Twitter. Here are 3, but I’m sure there will be many more in the future if not already. Squidoo allows you to input your Twitter account info into your Squidoo account and then it can automatically post updates to your Twitter account when you create or update Squidoo lenses. Facebook has an application called Twitter, it automatically updates your Facebook status when you make a Twitter post. The other tool is a free WordPress plug-in called TweetMyBlog that allows you to create a two-way connection from your blogs to Twitter. TweetMyBlog allows you to use a widget on your Wordpress blogs that will display your current Twitter feed.. that way all visitors to your blog can look at the widget and see a running feed of your latest Twitter posts. If they click on that they will be brought to your Twitter page. In addition, when you make a new post to your blog, TweetMyBlog will automatically make a post to your Twitter page with a link to your latest blog post. Imagine the extra exposure you can receive by using these tools that help people see more of what you are doing.

A Case Study

Bin Ends located in Braintree, Massachusetts is a discount online wine and spirits retailer who has started to stream live online videos of wine tastings with pros that consumers can view via the Twitter social network

To watch a live tasting all you need to is create a profile on Twitter, then receive notifications of upcoming events via the social network. The wine tastings also are promoted on the retailer’s web site and through social networking site Facebook.

When the wine tastings are happening, you can log into Twitter to view the broadcast of a panel discussing selected wines. Viewers can ask questions or offer comments online during the live broadcasts. The tastings are promoted at least two weeks in advance so that consumers also can order featured wines from Binendswine.com and taste along with the experts, Bin Ends says.

The first online tasting, held last week, drew 200 viewers from around the globe. About 10% of them ordered the promoted wines in advance from the company’s web site, according to a company spokesman. Shoppers who live in states that don’t permit direct shipment of alcohol to consumers can use the site’s “virtual sommelier,” which directs them to in-state retail locations where they can purchase the wine. That way no one has to miss out on a tasting, the spokesman says.

This is a great example of a small company using social networking to expand their market reach. Instead of just targeting wine drinkers in the greater Boston area, Bin Ends is able to reach potential wine buyers worldwide. They joined Facebook and Twitter and then thought outside the box on how to stand out in these social networks. A virtual taste test is very creative and I am sure that the 200 viewers was several times more than what they would have expected for an in-store event.

Lastly, have fun! Twitter is a social site… so interact and enjoy!