There are tons of tools that you can use to get your messages across and keep your sites at the top of the search engines. Here are five of those tools, all of which are free.

• Twitter - Twitter is a microblogging application that allows users to post short messages. These messages are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to his followers via Web or text message to their cell phones. Twitter provides a great way to be heard in this age of short attention spans. You can announce specials, give out coupon codes, and more with it.
• FriendFeed - With all of the social networking and media sites out there, it can be difficult to keep up with all of our friends on them. Some former Google employees recognized this problem and developed FriendFeed, a social media aggregator that allows one to access friends' activity on dozens of sites in one place. Marketers can make use of FriendFeed to make it easier for their prospects and customers to keep up with them online.
• StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon is a bookmarking site that is primarily accessed via a browser toolbar. Users can view a website that is related to their interests with a click of the mouse, and they can rate each site just as easily. Sites shown are selected by user submissions and further featured based on ratings. This presents a wonderful opportunity to get traffic to your sites.
• Google AdWords Keyword Tool – You may or may not use Google AdWords, but its Keyword Tool is great for anyone who is trying to break into niche markets or get good rankings for a website. By simply entering a general keyword, you get a list of related keywords, along with the level of competition and search volume. This information can be very useful.
• SEO for Firefox - There are many factors that go into search engine rankings. We can better understand the importance of these factors by analyzing them on well-ranked sites. That's where SEO for Firefox comes in. This browser add-on displays information such as PageRank, age, incoming links and more for each page that comes up in Google or Yahoo search results.

Online business owners need to take advantage of every opportunity to get traffic and maintain good search engine rankings. These free tools can help us accomplish those goals and take our businesses to the next level.

Learn how to implement smart tactics like this one to start, operate and promote your business each month when you join the Smart Tactics Inner Circle

• Directories – Directories are essentially libraries of websites. They’re generally organized by broad categories like sports and then by more specific categories like baseball which is then broken down into micro categories like amateur, youth, video games, instruction, movies and so on. The benefit to listing your website with a directory is they send traffic to your website and they help increase search engine ranking. The caveat is that there are literally thousands of website directories.
• Search engine submission – One of the first things many people do once they’ve created a business website is to submit it to the search engines. The obvious search engines to submit your site to are Google, MSN, and Yahoo however there are a number of smaller search engines for which it can benefit your business to become a part of. They include:
  • MetaCrawler
  • AltaVista
  • Live Search
  • Ask.com
  • About
  • MIVA
  • LookSmart
• Press and publicity – Press releases are a great way to spread the word about your business and the benefits your company offers. Online press release websites like prweb.com are an excellent resource. One well written press release can generate a ton of website traffic, increase awareness of your company and present you and your business with new opportunities.

Website promotion is a continual process and part of an ongoing marketing strategy.

Learn how to implement smart tactics like this one to start, operate and promote your business each month when you join the Smart Tactics Inner Circle

Small business owners often feel that they do not have the resources to promote their business, so they just set up shop and hope for the best. This is one of the reasons that so many small businesses fail. If no one knows that you exist, how are you going to make any money?

You don’t have to spend a lot of money for your marketing to be successful. If you’re willing to take promotion into your own hands, you can get good results without going broke. In fact, there are some marketing methods that do not cost a dime. Here are some cheap and free ways to get the word out about your business…

• Write and distribute press releases. There are websites where you can submit them for free for anyone to read, but it’s also important to send them directly to media outlets. This could get your business featured in a story in the paper or a magazine, or maybe even the television news.
• Write articles about your field of expertise and submit them to online article directories. You can add a resource box with a short bio and link to your website. Webmasters can access these articles and add them to their sites as
  long as they keep them as-is, so this will give you publicity and links to your website.
• Seek out joint ventures with other small businesses. This could be a good source of publicity, and you can split advertising costs.
• Try bartering for advertising. If you run a cleaning service, for example, see if the local newspaper will allow you to clean offices in exchange for ad space.
• Distribute lots and lots of business cards. Business cards are a staple for any businessperson, whether a offline business or an online business. Hand them out to anyone you discuss business with, leave them at local business that cater to clients who might be interested in your products or services, and drop them in any correspondence you send.
• Donate items for fundraising raffles and other types of giveaways. This is a nice gesture of goodwill, and your business name will be featured on tickets and promotional materials.

Marketing does not have to be expensive to be effective. There is room for some amount of marketing in any budget, because some methods come at no cost except your time. So there’s no reason that you can’t get the word out about your business, no matter how little you have to spend.

Kick-Start your business by getting access to smart tactics like this one each month. When you join the Smart Tactics Inner Circle

Answer: Banners are a quick and easy way to promote or endorse a company, product or website you believe it.

How you add a banner to your sidebar depends in large part on the type of site you have. For example if you have a WordPress blog then it’s going to be a different process than if you have a HTML site.

Here it is in a nutshell –
First you’ll want to click on the button image and save it on your desktop. If you’re using Blogger then you’ll have to upload the image into an image host like Photobucket or Flickr.

WordPress Blog
1. From the admin panel choose “write new post.”
2. Upload the picture/button image you’re using
3. Go to “Manage” and then “Uploads” and click on the picture you want.
4. Copy the URL by highlighting the URL and hitting the control button on your keyboard and the letter C.
5. In the same ‘manage’ screen now go to ‘Presentation,’ and then ‘Sidebar Widgets.’
6. Add a text widget and enter your code. It will look something like this.
7. <a href=”www.insertbuttonlinkURLhere.com”>
<img src=”past your URL here”></a>
8. Close the text widget and save it. You’re good to go.

Typepad Blog
1. Login and access your files through your control panel.
2. Choose to upload a new file, find your saved image, and copy the URL.
3. Click the “Typelists” tab. Note if you do not already have a typelist follow the instructions on Typepad to create one.
4. Click “Add a new item” to your typlist and past the URL you copied in step two. It should look something like this.
5. <img src=”http://example.typepad.com/image.jpg”>
6. Enter the URL to the website you’d like the image linked to in the “link URL” box
7. Save and you’re good to go.

Blogger Blog
1. Login and click on “Layout”
2. Choose “Template” tab, then “Page Elements”
3. Click on “Add a Page Element”
4. Choose the “HTML/JavaScript” option and click the “Add to Blog” option.
5. Type the link code (found where your image is being hosted) into the “Content” field. Your code will look like this:
<a href=”http://websiteyourimageislinkingto.com”><img src=”http://www.yourimage.jpg”></a>
6. Save and your banner should be in the sidebar and linkable to the relevant website.

HTML website code
1. If you’re adding a sidebar banner to the HTML code on your website the code will look something like this:
2. <div align=”center”>
<a href=”http://yoursiteURL.com” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://yoursitename/images/banner125×125.jpg” alt=”Imagelocation?”></a>
</div>

Adding a banner to your sidebar is typically a pretty straightforward process. If you have any questions or difficulties, check with your website hosting documentation or blog developer documentation for clarification and FAQs.

Kick-Start your business by getting access to smart tactics like this one each month. When you join the Smart Tactics Inner Circle

Here’s how to use it:

• Step 1. Head to the website, www.stumbleupon.com and click Join Now.
• Step 2. They’ll ask for your email, your user name, your birthday, gender, and a few options for you to check or uncheck.
• Step 3. Choose which web browser you want to add it to. It will be added to your toolbar. If you’re using Internet Explorer when you visit Stumbleupon then it’ll assume that’s the toolbar you want to add it to. If you have both browsers installed on your computer, join StumbleUpon in the browser you plan to use it with. For example, if you use Firefox 90% of the time then you may want to join StumbleUpon in Firefox and have it added to that toolbar.
• Step 4. Click Install Now.
• Step 5. Restart your browser to get the program up and running.
• Step 6. Check your email. You should have a welcome message from Stumble Upon complete with a password and directions to get started. Now you can update and set your preferences.
• Step 7. Now you can start stumbling. Click on the icon in your toolbar and get started. On your toolbar you’ll see such things as stumble images, stumble videos, stumble news etc…You’ll also see a thumbs up or a thumbs down icon to rate the site. They do ask that you rate what you see to provide value to other stumblers.

Simply click on the icon of your choice and get stumbling. It’s fun. Enjoy!

Kick-Start your business by getting access to smart tactics like this one each month. When you join the Smart Tactics Inner Circle

Widgets are far and away the easiest and most common way to customize a blog theme.

There are literally thousands of widgets available and they do everything from mark comments as Spam to set your site up for social bookmarking. There are widgets which show a quote of the day, allow people to make a donation, or monitor the statistics of your blog.

In order to add a widget to your blog theme you must first make sure it is widgetized or ready to receive widgets. If it isn’t, you can make widgetize it and the steps to take are found on the WordPress website.

Once you’ve determined which widgets you’d like to add, and that your theme is able to include them, and then it’s simply a matter of downloading the widget and customizing it. Each widget has different options depending on its function.

To find widgets which are available for your theme, start by logging into your blog and getting into your administrative panel. Choose your ‘Appearence’ option and there you will see a ‘widgets’ option. This will show you what widgets are readily available for your theme and may also provide a widget search function so you can find other relevant widgets to customize your blog theme.

Colors. Changing colors of a WordPress theme is an easy way to customize the theme. Quite often a theme will come with color options, particularly if you’re using a theme provided by your website host. If your theme didn’t come with an option to customize the colors you can get into the CSS, Cascading Style Sheet, and edit the colors. This is a more difficult procedure because you need to feel comfortable editing your code.

The good news is that colors are identified by numbers, for example #F7BE81 is a peachy color. You can find the codes for colors by viewing the colors of your favorite sites or search for HTML Color Codes online – there are a number of tools to generate the right color code. Once you have your code, you simply need to get into the code of your theme and change the colors. To get into the code of your theme, in your administrative panel you will see a ‘Design’ option. Under that menu there will be a few choices including, widgets, theme, and theme editor. Click on ‘theme editor’ and your code will appear. Now you can edit the colors using the appropriate color codes.

Fonts. Using the same ‘theme editor’ as described in the above, you can change the font, font size, and font formatting like bold, italics, font color and so on. This is a good way to help brand your business.

Graphics. Graphics are perhaps one of the most significant ways to integrate your personality into your blog. This is commonly done by changing the header. Many themes make it easy to customize your header by walking you through an upload process where you can upload graphics and/or photos into your blog’s header. Again, you can also get into the theme editor and change the header however that is a more advanced coding project.

There are many small and easily manageable changes you can make to your WordPress theme to make your blog represent your personality and your brand image. Colors, widgets, and simple formatting make a world of difference both to you and your visitors.

Kick-Start your business by getting access to smart tactics like this one each month. When you join the Smart Tactics Inner Circle

Not everyone who visits a website is ready to make a purchase. In many cases, consumers will comparison shop, visiting several times before making a decision. So even if the website is the main portal through which customers place orders, an equally important purpose of the website is to generate leads.

Creating an ezine or newsletter is a common “freebie”. Subscribers opt in, which means they provide minimal personal information in order to receive the newsletter. Each new subscriber becomes another lead. The result over time is a large mailing list of qualified prospects. In addition to the newsletter, business owners email announcements of new products or services to this custom-made pool of potential buyers.

Many website owners give away “freebies” such as a special report or ebook to increase newsletter sign-ups. This gives visitors to the website an additional incentive to take action, an important step in converting the visit into a future sale. Making the offer time-limited increases urgency and gives prospects a good reason to sign up now, rather than later.

Another benefit of offering “freebies” is the valuable market information it provides. A significant response to an offer suggests the item is a hot topic among qualified buyers. Such data can be useful in driving new product development for the business.

Marketing experts have noted one downside of the free offer, the possibility of attracting people who solely want the “freebie” but are not interested in purchasing anything in the future. One way to decrease the likelihood of this is to make the free offer enticing to those in the market for the products and services offered for sale, but unappealing to others. A direct seller, for example, could offer a free item to anyone who books a sales party that month. By tying in the “freebie” with the desired action, only serious shoppers will respond.

A growing internet trend is to offer visitors a free membership to the website’s online community. Membership entitles the user to access restricted areas of the site, publish a profile, and interact with other members of the community. Usually only a basic amount of information is required to join, such as name and email address.

Industry estimates show that response rates triple when a “freebie” is offered as incentive for prompt action, effectively lowering the business owner’s cost per lead substantially. Even if the free gift increases the total expense of the campaign, the higher volume of qualified leads will result in higher sales volume, thus offsetting the additional expense.

Kick-Start your business by getting access to smart tactics like this one each month. When you join the Smart Tactics Inner Circle

Social media is, in the most basic sense of things, a shift in the way people share and discover news or informational content. It makes it easy for people to interact with the information they are receiving, instead of simply reading it in a newspaper or magazine. Social media allows people to instantly connect and interact with people all around the world.

Social media enables you to:

• Gain a presence online
• Improve your website traffic
• Establish credibility for you and your business
• Connect personally with your audience
• Glean valuable information to help you grow your business
• Enhance your likability, an important buying trigger

Whether your online business is just starting out or you’ve been in business for awhile the addition of social networking can be an imperative step to your marketing strategy.

Examples of such social media platforms are social networks like Twitter and Facebook, blogs, podcasts, wikis, content communities as well as micro-blogging. They share many, if not all of the following attributes:

• Participation – encouraging others to comment or contribute to any given conversation or topic
• Conversation - social media is seen as an open conversation instead of a broadcast you would receive from a news broadcast. Newspapers, magazines etc…
• Connectedness – using links to other people, sites and resources
• Community – sharing common interests such as business ventures, politics, pastimes etc…
• Openness – open to feedback and participation, encouragement of comments, and sharing of information

We are all human with a need to build business contacts, share ideas, and create friends and inspiration. Having communities at our fingertips with the support we need, or colleagues available instantly to hear a new campaign strategy makes today’s business and personal lifestyle easier in a sense. Time zone issues can be eliminated, postal times no longer worrisome and long distance bills potentially a thing of the past in most cases, whether for business or personal reasons.

This simple addition to the way your business is currently functioning can bring you clients from areas you never would have thought to look, and all with the ease of what social media has to offer you.

Jumpstart your business by getting access to smart tactics like this one each month. When you join the Smart Tactics Inner Circle

The relationship between you and your opt-in list members must be one of trust. If there is no trust, you will not likely get that person to sign up. If they do they may not stay. Here are a few strategies to build and maintain trust:

• They must be able to opt-out. Make sure each customer signing up for your newsletter or information knows they have a quick and easy option to bow out when they like. A simple checkbox and click for their subscription to be removed should do the trick. This is actually required by the CAN-SPAM Act.
• Offer interesting and valuable content. To build their trust in you, start providing your readers with valuable and interesting articles, blog and forum posts based on your niche topic. While this may be a lot of work, the benefit of them trusting what you have to say is well worth the time. You will soon be considered an expert in your field, which can easily bring more prospects to your business.
• Stick to the 80/20 rule. People expect a certain amount of marketing when they receive an email however if your email is too heavy on the marketing end, they're going to drop you like a hot-potato. Always make sure you offer at least 80% valuable content and around 20% promotional content. Additionally, make sure your marketing content is relevant.
• Get them involved. One great way to breathe life into your opt-in list is to get your readers involved. Take a poll or survey, and post the results, ask questions and provide feedback. Create a community with your prospects and customers, it's a great way to build a business.
• Finally, make sure to balance your communications. There's a fine line between emailing too often and contacting your opt-in list too infrequently. Find the balance. Study your click through and open rates. Test to see what frequency works best for your audience. While most people who sign up will expect contact from you regularly, they aren’t likely to remain happy if you email them several times a day. When creating your opt-in box, try to specify how often you intend to contact them, with room for extra mailings for the occasional special report or bonus.

Your list is the lifeline to your business. If you have nobody to communicate with, who will buy your products? Keeping them happy, waiting in excitement for the next mailing is the key to a happy list. Treat them well, let them trust you, and your list will not only start breathing again, but will have more life in it than ever before.

The first step is to register with the social bookmarking website of your choice. This permits you to store your bookmarks, create tags and decide what is made public or private. Some sites will even conduct periodic tests to make sure the links bookmarked are still active.

Once you’ve started using social bookmarking it’s important to alert everyone, or “ping” your site or blog. This permits search engines to be notified of updates, which is an important step in the success of any website or weblog. Traffic is the key.

Sending a “ping” or notification to any of the major directories finds its major use in the area of blogs. When it comes to web sites or social bookmarking pages, pinging means “getting attention”, or “bringing attention to” something. This gives the search engines a break, as they don’t have to search so hard for updates. The ping programs will make sure everything is in check, each and every time there is an update.

There are many programs you can use for social bookmarking. Listed below are a few of those more frequently used, though you will find many more out there by doing a simple web search.

• Digg.com is presently the most popular social news site. Getting something on the front page of Digg.com can potentially drive 20,000 to 100,000 visitors over a few of days, plus 100’s of unique links to your post.
• Del.icio.us.com is not only a social bookmarking website, but gives you access to links other people have tagged as favorites, providing insight to the content people are searching for, and how your site is positioned for this. Tagging allows greater flexibility – giving a post multiple tags increases your chances of being viewed.
• StumbleUpon.com is a unique social community using a toolbar to view pages that are voted into categories you subscribe to. Unlike the other sites, there is no need for popularity here. StumbleUpon.com uses a recommendation system based on your category preferences. Traffic from StumbleUpon.com depends on the category, and can range from 3,000 to 20,000 visitors a week.

With many other options available, a simple search should enable you to find the perfect match of social bookmarking site for your own experience, as well as categorical emphasis you require.

Jumpstart your business by getting access to smart tactics like this one each month. When you join the Smart Tactics Inner Circle