Whistlestop Web Tour -Volume 52

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Written by Vicki Welsh

Marketing Your Business on the Web

Recently I checked in on Linda Moran's blog, Marbled Musings. Linda makes beautiful hand marbled fabrics and is in the process of expanding the marketing of her business. A lot of the information that she has found is also pertinent to longarm quilters and other artists. With the economy being what it is, I think it is even more important that small businesses take full advantage of all of the potential markets for your goods and services. The web is a fabulous resource. My hand dyed fabric business is 100% web-based.

Back to Linda and her marketing exercise for the summer. Please go read her blog. She is sharing a lot of her experience and web resources to help with marketing your business. If you only have time for one post, please read this one, What's New on the Web in Marketing.

If you are marketing on the web, I am going to assume that you already have a web presence with a blog or web site. In this article we are going to focus on promoting these tools. In later articles I will talk about traits of successful web sites or blogs.

Business Know-How has a nice article on 24 Low-Cost Ways to Promote Your Business. This article addresses web and non-web based types of promotion.

Web Marketing Today has an article with 37 Ways to promote Your Website

Microsoft has an article with 10 low-cost ways to market your business, but there are lots of others in their Marketing Library

Mashable offer an article with 10 Small business Social Media Marketing Tips and 6 Challenges for Managing a Brand on the Social Web and 5 Rules for Professional Social Networking Success

Small Business Trends has this article on 5 Tactics to Improve Your Online Sales

The most important things I have learned in the past year are:

I have to keep my blog, Etsy shop and Facebook page fresh with new, relevant content every week
It's best to minimize personal content and NEVER talk religion or politics. Those topics will guarantee that you lose 50% of your potential market with one comment. If you want to have a personal blog or personal Facebook profile, keep them very separate from your business persona.
Participate in other forums (like this one!), comment on other blogs and partner with others when it makes sense. I get new traffic every time I participate in a new place. Sometimes it's a little and sometimes it's a lot.
If you want real traffic you have to advertise. Without question my best traffic growth is coming from advertising in magazines and on the web. It's important to know where your potential customers are so that you advertise in the right places.

I hope some of the articles might be of help to you and I hope you will share other resources and tips in the forum.

Vicki Welsh
Three Creative Studios

MY Blog

My Etsy shop of hand dyed fabric

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