There are many online marketing options you can pursue, both paid and free, whether or not you have a website. The best part about using your resources is that your image and message is not set in stone like a print ad.

Following are free marketing ideas to get the ball rolling.

Free Online Marketing Ideas

• Social Networking (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn …)
• Free Websites (WIX.com, among others)
• Blogging (Blogger, WordPress) and Free Blog Templates
• Blog Commenting
• Press Releases, 250-400 words with up to 2 links
• Search Engine Profiles (Google Maps, Manta, Yelp, Yahoo Local, Bing, Merchant Circle, Citysearch …)
• Link Building: self-instigated and natural
• Video Marketing (YouTube, vimeo, Yahoo Video …)
• Article Marketing (Ezine, which you are visiting right now!)
• Industry Association Profiles (Chamber of Commerce, among others)
• Directory Submissions (Yahoo Directory, DMOZ Open Directory Project, Business.com …)
• Google Analytics (to track the success of your online marketing efforts)
• Online Communication (include links in your emails … possibly a visually appealing Email Signature?)

Taking advantage of free online marketing opportunities should be done patently over time. Because online marketing is also an SEO endeavor, search engines keep track of your business' trust factor. In the event that you tackle all of these suggestions at once in the course of a few days, search engines may take that as someone trying to cheat the system, and in doing so, you may in fact HARM your online presence.

Instead, take your time! Schedule to complete one or two per week and mix up the method with which you are marketing. This week, possibly fill out two new business profiles and write a blog post. Next week Submit your blog post as an article to an online article marketing website. The following week, send out your news worthy press release to local news reporters; do not forget to include a helpful FULL link (http: //) to your website in the article. After that, post a video to YouTube and update your Facebook and Twitter pages (or gosh almighty, start them if you have not already !!!).

Be the authority figure in your industry. In doing so, your consistent, online marketing efforts will be targeted towards helping and informing your audience. In turn, your website traffic and business can slowly increase.

Link Building = SEO = Marketing

NOTES:

If you are new to online marketing, begin with a few tactics rather than jumping into every resource at once. A slower, planned approach will allow you to feel comfortable with a few new responsibilities rather than overwhelmed with everything.

It is recommended that you 'claim' your spot, however. For example, if you are not ready to maintain a Twitter account yet, set up the account and 'claim' your business name before someone else does. For example, you could claim "http://www.twitter.com/Your-Company-Name". With Facebook you can set up a 'vanity url' at "http://www.facebook.com/username", but you must have at least 25 fans to be eligible for this feature.

The real concern is that if someone else claims YOUR name, they can write ANYTHING and that may misrepresent your company and your image. Should someone else have claimed your unique name, however, there are still ways to have the name transferred to you where appropriate.

Begin your new, online advertising adventure today and add reminders in your calendar to pursue this activity regularly! Microsoft Outlook is great for this, as you can enter reoccurring events!

Source by Kelly Heck