by Linda Smith

Created on: September 28, 2009   Last Updated: October 01, 2009

I had occasion to have an engaging conversation with a student studying internet marketing. Our discussion centered around how a home-based business owner could build a presence on the internet. To get our discussion rolling, I asked him to imagine that he was a small business owner, and posed a couple of questions:

*what is your business?

*do you have a coordinated approach to some basic internet marketing tools?

It's one thing to have accounts on sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn and quite another to know why you do and what the value is to your business. So I gave this student a simplified outline using just a few internet marketing tools. I pointed out that the key for a small home-based business is to utilize just a few online resources in the beginning, but to link them all by pointing them all in one direction. Once you can successfully answer the question as to "what" your business is and "who" your customers are, then you you can begin putting your business "out there."

My recommendations to home-based business owners, as a beginning foray for marketing their business using the internet:

have a presence on Facebook have a LinkedIn account have a Twitter account write a blog about your business if appropriate have either (a) a website for your business you've designed yourself, or (b) a replicated business website that is provided by the company you represent [this is the case with many direct selling companies - you are an independent contractor, but are prohibited from developing your own website for their products; however for a small fee, you can have a website developed by the parent company that links to and benefits your individual business.] write articles and submit to Ezinearticles for instance

Each of these has a value in and of itself. However, if you are utilizing all the above for your business as part of your internet marketing strategy, then I suggest that everything must link back to a "home base." I'm going to suggest that your home base is either your business website, or your business blog. You have to have somewhere you want people to end up so that they can either:

get information about your business purchase product or services from your business communicate with you about your business

To use the social network of Facebook as example, if you have a Facebook account, there are a couple of ways you can do this. The profile feature allows you to talk about yourself, give contact information and list websites to visit. For the purpose

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>