Marketing Blagger

As you may know if you read my blog regularly, I’ve just got married to my lovely wife. (Thanks to those who sent your congratulations by the way).

One of the wedding presents we received from a friend of the family who has a small wedding videography business, was for him to film our big day. I haven’t seen the video yet, but I’m sure it will be great.

To say thanks I wanted to recommend his company to some friends and hopefully send some business his way. To my astonishment, he doesn’t have a website or even an email address for me to pass on. I didn’t realise that was even possible in this day and age? I was staggered.

Shortly after this discovery I received an email from Startups.co.uk.

In the email was a link to an article about the surprising number of micro businesses without an online presence at all - “a survey of micro businesses – those with one to ten employees – found that two thirds still operate without an internet connection, email or website.”How can this be I hear you say! After all, if you’re reading this blog it’s likely you’re quite tech savvy, probably have at least one website, numerous email addresses and more than likely a blog yourself. You probably achieved all of this for next to no cost as well, it truly is amazing what you can do for relatively little money these days.

However, if you’re just starting out on your internet adventure. Where should you start? How can you achieve something special with very little budget?

First of all, I suggest you read my earlier post ‘Websites for the very small‘. I reference a plan of action from marketing guru Seth Godin that teaches you to generate an online presence using blogs and squidoo. I’m a big fan of blogging for small businesses as you can achieve a lot without much technical know how - although the time required to run a good blog is actually quite an overhead. I wonder how many small companies have this time available?

It would also be worthwhile checking out Gobala Krishnan’s Easy WordPress Adsense System. This will walk you through setting up a WordPress blog in really simple steps and, if you want, it will also show you how to make some money with Google Adsense adverts - although this is not for everyone.

If you’re looking for a more established and standard online presence, have a look at Mr Site.

For as little as £35 (approx $70 USD) you can get a domain name, a year’s hosting and a highly customisable website template. I’ve used this product a few times and can highly recommend checking them out - there are literally hundreds of testimonials and great sites built using these guys.

Failing the blog or Mr Site option, you can look at hiring a professional web design company. But you better have deep pockets, because your looking at thousands of dollars here, rather than hundreds. The choice of web designers is truly astonishing and there are lots of pitfalls to run into when choosing a web designer - look out for a guide coming soon.

But the message overall is if you’ve got a business, get online. It’s easier and cheaper now than it’s ever been. As a small business you simply cannot afford not to have a website in this day and age. It’s like having a shop without a shop window.

I think I will repay our videographer friend with a website of his very own.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 11:16 am and is filed under Blogging, Web 2.0, Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.