Two free advertising methods to advertise your online business is article marketing and social media participation. Webmasters may elect to use paid advertising and / or free advertising methods when starting an advertising campaign online. Utilizing both often renders the best results for a long-term advertising program.
Advertising your business online must be one of the most important steps to driving traffic to your web site and generating sales from your online presence. The time spent on creating effective campaigns will render profitable results in the long term. Using Pay-per-click advertising could result in overspending your budget.
Only after you have studied the way the paid advertising market works and you are confident that your budget would allow this, should you attempt to use this method to advertise your business and drive traffic to your web site. There are, however, several free methods to advertise your business online. All of these methods involve some amount of work and dedication, but the results often outshine the paid methods.
Article Writing to Advertise Your Business Online
Never underestimate the value of submitting quality articles to well ranking eZines and article directories. Check the rating of the article directory you submit to by visiting the Free Virtual Real Estate Toolbar . Be sure to submit only to article directories that are not “No Follow” sites, as these no-follow directories will not enhance the page rank of your site.
Some of the benefits of creating good informative articles about your business and related topics are:
1. You build a reputation as being an expert in your field.
2. Customers learn to trust you as you provide them with free valuable information.
3. With a proper resource box at the end of the article, the articles provide valuable back links to your online business. This in turn will assist in ranking better with the search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Depending on your niche, writing articles could be either time consuming or easy. If you are passionate about your business, it will show in the quality of the articles you submit.
Using Social Media as a Free Advertising Method for Your Online Business
Social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious and Furl, offer advertisers the opportunity to take their product to the mass public. Using these social media sites correctly and carefully takes a little more work on the part of the advertiser.
As with article marketing, you need to establish a measure of trust with your fellow Twitters or Facebook friends. Only submitting self-serving links will not drive much traffic to your online business. Again, the key is to provide value first and then offer other members of the social network an opportunity to find more information on your web site. As a rule, advertisers should give more than they take to ensure a successful online advertising campaign through social media sites.
Any online business should at least employ some of these free advertising methods online to drive traffic to their online business.