by David Gussin

   This article was originally published in The Productivity Institute (PI) Newsletter

Everyone should have a web presence. That said, the importance of the Internet for the majority of businesses is exaggerated. Being on page one of search engines will rarely make your phones ring off the hook. No doubt, being on page 1 of Google is better than being on page 2, 3, or 4, but to depend on that as the primary source of revenue for most industries, is a mistake.

It’s not just Google or other search engines or online social networking that you should depend on. If your picture was on front of a major publication tomorrow, in two days everybody would forget your name. Advertising, networking and promoting yourself and your business is about constantly working to get your name out there. You have to make the phone calls, you have to get out there and shake hands, you have to do the follow-up, you have to do a quality job when given the chance, than you have to wake up and do it again. The key to your success is your hard work, determination and perseverance.

“Determination and perseverance move the world; thinking that others will do it for you is a sure way to fail” - Marva Collins

Here are some tools and ideas that might help:

1) Blog.516Ads.com - While the Long Island information may not be relevant to the national audience, the concept of an advertising/community network is relevant. It’s about igniting business while doing good for the community – a major contrast to the mass media to which we’ve become accustomed. For example, instead of reporting on problems, advertising/community networks attempt to solve them. This is a major impetus for all types of networks. A walk for the March of Dimes or some important cause, for example, helps solve a problem while strengthening and enlarging networking activities. This is truly one of the beneficial advantages of a local and social network.

If your community doesn’t have an advertising/community network, consider building one.

2) Backpage.com – There’s Craigslist.org and Kijiji.com where you can place free advertisements. My favorite place to post free classifieds ads is Backpage.com. Owned by the Village Voice, it has some features that make it stand out including the ability to auto repost. For $3, it gets put to the top of the category 26 times, every three days. Backpage.com not only posts your classified but includes links for the last five. If you make full use of it, you can have six advertisements running simultaneously on one page.

3) HelpAReporter.com - HARO for short is a unique site with benefits and drawbacks. By signing up for HARO, on Monday through Friday, three times a day, you’ll receive e-mails with 20 - 30 inquiries from reporters across the country from many newspapers and magazines around the world. By simply responding to a reporter’s inquiry, you can find yourself in an article, sometimes “becoming” the article. It might also help brand you as an expert or begin generating a relationship with a particular reporter. The drawback is that the HARO inquiries are very specific and usually will be far removed from your area of expertise. As such, you might find that sifting through all of the inquiries is not worth the effort.

4) Yelp.com – This relatively new review site is receiving high search rankings. Take advantage of its rating system: review your fellow networkers and in turn, have them review you. Do it now! Down the road, Yelp’s operating paradigm could be flawed due to the threat (and problems) of negative reviews and manipulation. For right now, it’s still good. Use it.

One final tool: blogging and social media. A quality blog is an incredible tool for three quick reasons. 1. It’s easy to use, you can do it yourself and it allows you to keep your website up to date. 2. Search engines love blogs. A blog with quality information and active comments can greatly improve search engine rankings - particularly if your blog is in a localized area. 3. E-mails and newsletters that are sent out have a shelf life of one or two days, at best. By placing that same content on your blog, and offering an RSS feed, Feedburner or some similar feed, will allow your content to permanently remain on your blog while providing the means for anyone interested to automatically receive it. Remember that most major blog engines (such as Blogger, WordPress and WordPad) automatically trigger when updates are performed so that a high quality entry will not only trigger them but also help enlarge your network and reputation. Start blogging.

David Gussin is the creator of www.516ads.com, a rapidly growing advertising/networking community. David can be reached at david@516ads.com .