Local Business News and Best Places

Free advertising for small business?

I’m a sales manager for a local retail (clothing) store. I need to find ways to get my name out in the community.

The best free advertising online.

A while back I wrote an article titled, The Top 10 Free Websites to Advertise. This laid out the 10 best websites where it was completely free to advertise on them. They included:

1. Craigslist.com
2. Blogger.com
3. MySpace.com
4. Reference.com
5. EzineArticles.com
6. GoArticles.com
7. Backpage.com
8. Dmoz.org
9. Yahoo Answers and FAQfarm.com

Each of these sites are unique in their own way but effective in providing an outlet to advertise your business free. This is perfect for those who need to advertise on a budget, their products and services. Small business for the most part doesnt lend itself to have big advertising budgets, so finding a place to “get your name out there” without paying for it is important.

To advertise on a budget effectively you must have a web presence, and preferably a website. If you don’t your small business is only treading water before it goes under. A website is the door that can open your small business to a phenomenal growth track because of the power of search engine optimization (SEO). There is a reason why Google® and Yahoo® have been some of the fastest growing companies of all time, its because search engines work. I personally use Google so much a day I lose track of how many times, and this goes for a majority of its users. For more information about SEO and how powerful a high ranking can be in Google read, How Important is a High Google Ranking to Your Small Business

Now that we have the understanding that SEO is the number one way to get free advertising by a very wide margin lets focus on one of the other ways to work at making free advertising more effective for your small business.

Social networking as a whole are becoming as popular as search engines such as Google and Yahoo. In fact Google bought Youtube® and started their own Myspace® type website called Orkut® and Yahoo attempted to buy Facebook®. Social networking is such a bonanza that doesnt even know their own limits of how large they will grow. Where does your small business fit in? Since they are free there is no money investment to make, but you will have to invest your time, especially in the beginning. You will need to take time to learn the site, set up your profile, and make friends. Remember, you are looking for ways to make the time you spend using this website as an advertising tool as fruitful as possible. Of course set up your profile with the focus of your business objectives and reaching your goals, and always abide within the rules set by the websites. Your investment of time is your efforts to build your network, because it will take trial and error to learn what is best for your business in social networking. Taking the time to build your network is the number one emphasis when it comes to social networking for your small business.

There are other emphasis which I will list below in no particular order:

* Try an individual profile as a representative of your business before you try a group profile for your business to give an idea of the time it will require to build a network
* Dont sign up for too many social networks, you risk diluting your message and emphasis.
* Share the networking responsibility with other employees or business owners once you have a business profile
* Dont be distracted easily, remained focus on what your business objective and building your network to reach your goals. If needed, set goals for building your network.
* Dont be afraid to get a little personable, people do enjoy talking to other people when networking, not just a profile on a website.
* Dont be random when searching for friends for your network. Its a waste of time, choose your friends carefully, and then extend invitations to their friends and their friends and so on.
* Alter your preferences on your profile to reduce spam and unsolicited offers. This will save you time as well.

Remember social networks can be people who are very passionate in one way or another about their cause so you need to be the same way concerning your small business on social networks. If you are its a very easy way to advertise and grow your small business on a budget.

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