Marketing is a three-syllable word that seems so simple, yet encompasses so much. Marketing is a multi-faceted approach to promoting a product or service. Both traditional and unconventional marketing methods have a place in the small business world. Marketing helps small businesses focus on building their brand and identity.

There are few limitations to marketing options, and the opportunities listed here are just a few that will generally result in a decent ROI (Return On Investment) for most small businesses. That said, do not be afraid to be creative -- no one knows or understands a small business like its owner, so think outside of the box and don't be afraid to experiment.

Identity Continuity

Create continuity between an online website, logos, letterheads, business cards, and packaging. Create an identity that will make your business stand out from the competition, and leave a good initial impression on potential customers. A professional image associated with your company or product will remind customers of their past brand experiences, and will reinforce your product line.

Trade Publications

Niche publications are journals or magazines that focus on a specific market. If your product or service is appropriate for a specific market, then advertising in their trade publications will allow you to immediately drill down and target that very specific audience.

Promotional Items

Branded giveaways have long been used by marketers to attract potential customers. Products that have a long shelf life will help keep your business in the forefront of a customer's mind. Weeks, months, and even years after a product is purchased or service is performed, promotional items will remind the customer of your brand.

Reviews

Solicit product reviews from reputable industry sources, magazine reviewers, bloggers, or industry journalists. Product reviews lend credibility to a product or company.

Keyword Advertising

In order to help your website's search engine ranking, use keyword advertising. Focused and targeted keyword advertising will drive web traffic that has a genuine interest in your product or service.

Niche Directories

Use online niche directories to promote products or services. Visitors who frequent topical directories have a strong interest and are more likely to purchase.

Viral Marking

Once known as "word of mouth" marketing, viral marketing has taken on a life of its own. Encourage product buzz, as well as customers referring customers.

Opt-In Email Marketing

Use email as a marketing tool to notify your existing customers about specials, new products or services, or product releases and updates. While some say email marketing is dead, others say that measured results of email marketing tell a very different story. Opt-in, targeted email marketing works, and produces results when done correctly.

Partnerships / Strategic Relationships

We see large companies leveraging their assets every day, and small online businesses should too! Whether it be as a partner, an affiliate, or a strategic relationship, all of these relationships can benefit small businesses. Businesses can use strategic relationships to penetrate niche markets. Affiliates can expand their reach and tap into the customer bases of similar products. Partners can provide additional value to existing products or services. Determine what types of relationships could be beneficial to your small business.

Online Classifieds

Craigslist is likely the best known online classified system. Classified systems increase visibility and are often overlooked by small businesses. Consider posting classifieds that relate to product or services, and monitor the results.

Sponsorship / Contests

Contests not only encourage customers to have fun, but also generate publicity and draw attention to your company and brand. Sponsor industry events, run contests, or donate prizes to industry contests in order to increase visibility and generate goodwill.

Newsletters

Communication is critical to all businesses, and small businesses are no exception. Be sure to establish a communication channel with customers and potential customers. Newsletters are a very popular communication channel for software developers.

RSS

RSS is growing in popularity. It is an alternative communication channel that has the benefit of reaching a larger audience through syndication. Supplement and enhance email and newsletter campaigns by providing an RSS channel for their content.

Forums / Newsgroups

Participation in newsgroups and forums will result in building credibility. Business relationships will often result from online dialogue in industry forums and newsgroups. Actively participate and always behave in a professional manner.

Forum / Email Signatures

All forum posts and emails you send should contain a "signature" that advertises your business name, tag line, and URL.

Blogs

Blogging and posting comments on blogs can result in an increase in web links and traffic. Socialization and engaging others with well thought out comments can establish a business reputation and generate product interest.

Videos

YouTube is a boon to business. If you are creative, consider compiling an educational or humorous video. YouTube is a huge distribution channel and can generate product or industry interest.

Press Releases

The avenue to inexpensive press! Write a press release to promote new products or services and reap the benefits with media attention.

Article Syndication

Writing articles can help lend credibility to your product line and improve your business reputation.

Local Newspapers

Contact local newspapers and pitch a unique story to them. Publicity is free and can generate discussions and interest.

Consider exploring alternative channels for advertising and marketing. Keep in mind that advertising need not be costly; creative marketers can often find inexpensive avenues that will result in a great return.

About the Author: Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com audio recording and editing software.

The most important thing is writing more you can, every day for example. For the rest, I don't know if this is the better solution to do it but, I can say, it works well. With order, I suggest you to do in this way:

1. Publish your post and add it on digg.com

- Before to add your posts on Digg be sure to have a good number of active friends.
- Then, send a shout to everyone about your post.

2. Promote your contents on other communities with the same topics you publish on your site

- If your blog is about web design/programming I suggest to add your posts on DZone.com, PoshCSS (if your post is about CSS), Design Float (web design, css, graphic). These digg-like site can drive a huge traffic on your site for days if your post becomes famous! Use community message on MyBlogLog to inform your community members about all new updates on your site.

3. Don't underrate del.icio.us power!

- Add your post on del.icio.us and use traffic generated from digg/other communities submission to increase the number of users who share your post.


Plan your time
I spend not more then three hours/day. At the week-end I do a list of four-five topic I want to publish, so during the week I can spend more time to add contents and promote them instead of thinking "how can I write?".

I love this articel as remaining to myself. The articel written by Thinkblogger (thank you very much)

I hate to say it, but blogger’s sometimes get ahead of themselves. (I am no exception). However, this is a relatively new blog (about a month and a bit) and I think I am doing a fairly good job on promoting it. I am starting to see an increase of traffic and ‘life’ while going through the page hits on my awstats and google analytics.

This Blog’s Experience:
Within the month of this blog being online, I pulled in about 7,000-8,000 unique visitors in my first month. As most blogger’s may point out in their own thirst-quenching way, we all want more traffic. There are a few ways to increase the traffic to your blog which may not be considered by most bloggers:

1.Patience. I know, not exactly something that I should start with, but guess what: its true. Bloggers get ahead of the themselves. Unless your extremely lucky or a genius, it takes time to build up readership (unless you want to put in some money into it, then that opens up a whole new side of “how to’s”).
2.Comment on Related/Popular Blogs. I know, not exactly easy to do but if you are helpful and polite, it can definitely increase your chances. If someone comments something rude on this blog, chances are I wont even look at it and pretty much just delete it whenever I feel convenient. (I am sorry, but I like to have a positive feel on my blog, thanks.)
3.Update Frequently. RSS feeds are a great tool and weapon for your blog. Make sure to use it. I try to update my blog once a day in order to try and keep people interested. Unless your blog is overly popular, I wouldn’t post much more than 3-4 posts a day, as it may eventually overwhelm readers and get them to unsubscribe. Then again, if your posts are genuine and worthwhile, keep them coming ;).
4.Join Forums. This is probably a good way to do it. Find a forum that has a high alexa rank and great traffic flow. If you are a webmaster or in business/marketing, check out DigitalPoint. Though not my best source of traffic, it manages to still net me 50-200 visitors daily with only 300 posts (it also depends on how much I post that day and promote). Forum’s are a good way to also gain visibility by putting your site/blog on your signature. They are a great source of backlinks (but not PR juice).
5.Give Stuff Away for Free. Yep, no brainer here. Contests are great. Free Templates are great too. This has been discussed on this blog multiple times. It’s true though, these can help create a lot of back links, which in turn can give you higher page rank. etc etc.
6.Trackbacks. Though I have not utilized trackbacks on THIS blog, I must say that it is a great way to not only gain visibility, but can build a unique income of traffic if the blog is popular enough. (That is the main reason why I have not done many trackback’s yet, I’d hate to write about a heavy hitter and have him/her take a quick look at my blog and think to themselves, “Who is this guy?”). Trackbacks can wait, though they are great, if you know what you are doing.
7.SEO optimization. I know, I know, this topic has been discussed to death here too. Guess why? SEO optimization actually works! 25% of my traffic is coming from Google Search Engines. Wan’t to know what is funny? Some of my posts are on the first page (position’s 3-7 in some cases), and this blog is a PR0. What does this tell you?
8.Backlinks. Of course, the other greatest weapon of them all. I have not done many directory submissions or anything else as of yet (I will give it another month before I start - I wish to get some more content here first), though back links are crucial to your blog or website.
9.Linkbaiting. Something that is a mystery and yet so simple. There are different ways to linkbait a blog, that of which can help you gain the traffic from other blogs quite easily. This is a great way to get some nice traffic flowing to your blog.
10.List of Tips/Resource List. Genuine tips are really attractive to readers because they explain things in just a few seconds. Wan’t to know why you see them everywhere? because they work. Better yet, include sources to where you’ve seen these tips to the actual post and watch the fun. On my other blog I had a list of 22 tips; out of those 22, 17 trackbacked to my ‘resource’ list of posts
11.Social Bookmarking. You’ve probably heard of it. Heck, you’ve probably joined a few. Technorati, Digg, Stumblupon, Mybloglog, BlogCatalog, Entrecard, Deli.cio.us, Reddit, and many more. These are great for getting traffic if use properly.

Conclusion:
This is only the first splattering of tips. Though common guidelines, many blogger’s forget about the basics and try to work on the advanced ones. You have to walk before you can run. However, being outside of the box can always be beneficial sometimes, too

Who said forums are only good for getting help and advice?

There is often so much activity on certain forums that a normal forum-less website can only dream of.

While you can help other members and ask for help on the discussion forums, you can also tap into the abundant traffic of forums and drive it back to your blog.

Following are a few ways to get other forum members to notice you and visit your site at least once.

Start an argument with another member
And by this, it doesn’t mean you start a nasty kind of argument. Just a normal debate between you and another member where you quote each other and try to disprove your opponents’ claim or point of view.

When a debate starts in a particular thread between two members, other members usually don’t interfere. But this doesn’t mean they are not reading. They silently read the debate and derive their own conclusions.

If you wisely pick a weaker opponent to debate with, or you simply have more knowledge than your opponent to easily win the argument, you’ll get a lot of people clicking on your signature link, eager to read more of your thoughts on the subject.

Become an active member in a sub-forum
Pick a certain sub-forum (a forum category) that relates to your blog, and actively participate in all its discussions. Be the first one to solve a problem in a new thread. Always be eager to offer help and advice to fellow members. And Be welcoming to the new members.

This will definitely get other members to appreciate your help and altruism and have them wanting to know more about you on your blog.

Become a moderator
All right, you can’t really become a moderator at will, but if you try hard enough, why not?
Although becoming a moderator requires a lot more commitment and active participation in all the forums on your part, if you manage to pull it off on a fairly busy forum, the effort is worth it.

When you become a moderator, you are instantly promoted from being just another member with worthless opinion to a position of authority, where you are seen to have an authentic and well-researched opinion on all matters.

So, when a forum member clicks on your blog link, he already sees you as authority on a particular subject, which is the hardest part of converting a casual visitor to your site into a regular reader.

Therefore, by becoming a moderator, you not only draw more attention to yourself (and your signature) but you also get visitors who are already inclined to become your readers.

Optimize your signature
Do you have a signature link that says “My blog”? Or is it simply “yourblog.com” or some such anchor text?

Having a well-written link anchor text in your signature is essential if you want others to notice the link. If you did everything else right but have a poorly described link anchor text, you simply wasted your time.

The best way to describe a link is to put it in the form of title and a sub-title.

Example: Life with me: Do you know you can drastically improve your life with the help of me?

Above is much better and appealing than a simple “Life with me” or “lifewithme.com” (only for example.).

Drop your links in the posts
Not in a spammy way. Because if you drop links without establishing yourself as an active and helpful member first, you’ll be ignored, suspended, or banned. So don’t even think about spamming.

But if you want to help a member out and have already a post on your blog related to the member’s query, feel free to refer him to your blog.

If you are already seen as an authority member on the forum, no one would object to your occasional link dropping.