Here are 3 simple ways to promote your business for FREE

There is a Fortune in Talking

The question I always ask business owners is how bad they really want to promote their business. They usually look at me as if I have lost my mind but there is rational and logic behind this question and it has to do with the drive and hunger that a business has currently bearing in mind the economic times we are living in and the challenges businesses face. Promoting your business requires a givers mindset as well as the ability to see value in the smallest exchanges when communicating with people day to day. For example, as entrepreneurs we all shop, pay bills, fill our cars with petrol, go on holidays and interact daily with a vast range of businesses. Yet how many of us spend the time talking small talk and not actually letting our network know ( in the nicest possible way) what we do and what benefits there might be for your network in them knowing about you and your business . If you are a shrinking violet perhaps its time to start blowing your own trumpet after all who else will do so! Statistics tell us that on average we will meet over 2000 people either as friends or acquaintances – let them know you are in business and have a product or service that perhaps they or a friend could benefit from. Lets be honest there is a fortune to be made in talking one only has to look at how a personality like OPRAH WINFREY has turned herself into a multi million dollar talking business! Its big business and getting bigger with the advent of new and interactive internet technologies like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. We all love to chat and talk so why not use this easy and informal medium to drop some hints or leave a friend thinking about who you and what you do.

Write Articles

We all know how little time we have or perhaps you are time rich and cash poor then now is the time to reconsider. Many of the old rules of marketing no longer apply for example if previously you wanted to be in a magazine you had to beg and plead with the reporter and then there was no guarantee that they would even publish your article. Many of us have been on the receiving end of tough and unpleasant publishing decisions. One business told me that it took 3 years to get an article published. Now we have a powerful free opportunity to publish as much as we like for free with little or no interference from publishers and an audience of not just few thousand but potentially millions. The internet now offers unlimited opportunity to write and build your own archive of articles and publish these on your web sites which gives Google the opportunity to re-visit your site and push it up the rankings. Alternatively you can turn your articles into blogs which is simply a way to turn your ideas into opinions and publish them online for free on YouTube, Facebook or in any user specific forums that talk about and discuss your industry. Publishing articles online can also be done through Prweb and Prnewswire here there might be a charge involved but check them out to understand the terms. I am not suggesting that sending news worthy stories to newspapers and magazines is a waste of time as these media are always hungry for news and new stories however once you start publishing your views online this does not mean you will become an overnight celebrity however it does mean that with consistent effort you will over time start to build a database of interested prospects who value your views and will start to respond to your opinions and suggestions. All for free.

The Internet ... the world on your doorstep

There are very few opportunities in business today that offer as much diversity and free admission without the start up costs and that provide almost unlimited enterprise to entrepreneurs. It took almost 80 years for the telephone to take hold and even today there are communities without fixed line telephone access but the internet has established itself in under 10 years and offers unprecedented access to all. It is truly the democrstisation of business. So...what can you do to move your business forward utilising the world wide web. First and foremost having a web site available is a must for any person seriously considering starting a business or running a business. The costs for establishing a web site are small and cost effective and provide great value for money. Secondly there are now very specific tools online to help you drive your business forward. The first and most important step is to ensure that your web site holds current, relevant and up to date content. This is vital to ensure that you grow volume traffic to your site and generate revenue from the traffic. The Internet will not work for you if you are providing old, out of date and irrelevant content or information. The best way to provide content is to decide what information you have and how it will benefit others. Then the trick is to update your site weekly with new articles, notices, news, offers and as much relevant information as possible aimed at your target audience. Thirdly if you want to drive your site up the rankings one way to do this is to have opinions about relevant topics and discuss them on your site. This is called a BLOG and will start to help your site generate the type of feedback and volume traffic that you need to be successful. You can either sign up to a blogging site like Google or link a blog-specific site to your own web site.