Unfortunately, traditional media offers only a “start and stop” ability to stay in contact with customers and prospects. A television spot captures attention for 30 seconds, but can quickly be forgotten. A direct mail piece is opened, read and perhaps even saved, but just as readily finds its way into the trash bin. Today’s newspaper ad is tomorrow’s birdcage liner.

The process of building the relationship becomes a series of blips, forcing marketers to start over again and again. A costly and time consuming process that requires us to be intrusive and inefficient.

Internet marketing, however, offers the advantage of never disappearing or fading away. Because of the enormous breadth and depth of the world wide web, anything and everything you post on-line stays there forever. More important, all this information can be searched and found at any time.

This presents a fantastic opportunity for marketers. Instead of pitching the same story over and over again, we can build a more complete and compelling picture of the products and services we are trying to sell. The entire narrative is preserved and works to point new customers to you, 24/7/365.

This opportunity also comes with a burden. The information you put on-line must be sufficiently persuasive and helpful to stand up to scrutiny over a longer period. This applies to everything from web sites to blogs, Facebook pages to Tweets. The content becomes more critical than ever because it is always available to anybody with a web browser.

(So you might want to rethink the idea of putting the 20-something kid in the mailroom – the one with the piercings and tattoos – in charge of your social media effort. Just because somebody knows how to Tweet and use Facebook does not automatically make them qualified as an effective marketer.)

More attention than ever must be paid to the story you are telling. Your reputation does not ride on a single, soon-forgotten commercial or direct mail piece, but on the cumulative effects of all the information you post. You must be prepared to tell a better story, over a longer period of time, to take full advantage of the power inherent in the web.

GenNext Media Lab Guest Author

Bob Sheehan is the founder of Coastline Advertising and a Surefire Social Certified Coach. As an advertising executive with broad experience in advertising and marketing, Bob is focused on generating actual measurable results for clients in a wide array of businesses. Bob has become a leader in contractor coaching by catering to the needs and wants of our clients.

So, how do you know which directory will be the best fit and produce the best results for your site?

No need to get stressed out. Next time your stumble-upon a reputable looking web directory, ask yourself the following questions:

• How long has the directory been online? Many Internet marketers feel that a domain that has been present for longer than 2-3 years will produce better rankings with Google.

• Is the directory selective with URL submissions? The more selective the directory is, the less links they will have. Don’t submit your site to a directory that appears to be a free-for-all of links.

• Lifetime or monthly cost? Many paid directory sites do, either, a lifetime subscription (flat fee) or charge you by the month. Generally sites that charge for a one-time submission fee are easier to manage and more reputable. Best of the Web is a good example of this.

• Will the directory allow you to edit your submissions? Think about all the changes your business has gone through. Whether it is your target audience, URL’s, keywords, etc. Choose a directory that will allow you to edit changes from the initial submission.

The key to entering your URL in a site directory is to do your research. You do not have to spend hours of time looking up reasons to join a site, but simply browse around the directory and look for any red flags.

It is extremely important to evaluate these directories and spend your time and money in a place that will give your site results. Think: smart marketing.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Your favorite directories?

Imagine a 28 year old starts a business competing in your market. You spent years building a brand and reputation in your community. One day, you realize it is all taken away by this person who became an “authority” overnight. This is going to play out with businesses all across the country over the next few years. So what can you do to stay relevant?

Some business marketing tips just aren’t all that successful anymore. What worked for Internet Marketing for small business a few years ago is not necessarily what is going to pull in the customers and the profits in today’s social media-dominated environment. In order to stay in tune with your niche and prospective customers, it is important remain current with your efforts—from marketing communications to brand strategies. Rather than allowing your competition to pass you by, you can update your marketing strategy and keep your business relevant.

The new, effective marketing for small business is a shift in focus from “advertising” to “engaging.” What this means is that you are getting in the middle of discussions that are happening on the social web, building relationships and attracting customers—not because you have the best ad, but because you are offering valuable information to these conversations.

You may hear reference to the “distributed web.” This is related to the fact that people are going to search engines like Google and Yahoo and even YouTube to find solutions to their problems. As customers become savvier, they are beginning to see banner ads and other forms of advertising as gimmicky and even scammy.

In fact, consumer studies show that 78 percent of customers value peer recommendations versus a small 14 percent who trust advertisements. A move away from this type of marketing to a more social method is your ticket to staying relevant and competing with the big dogs in your niche.

Because of this change in the online environment, you will see greater results for your small business if you focus on meeting these customers where they are. Utilizing content distribution and affiliate marketing are two simple and relatively easy ways to connect with your ideal customers and convert them into buyers.

How content distribution works

Content distribution is creating keyword-rich articles, audios and/or videos to provide quality content for customers and then distributing around the web in key places where your customers will be seeking information. The reason for the key-rich content is because search engine spiders are crawling around the web trying to find content that contains certain keywords.

You can find the best keywords for your business by utilizing free web tools, such as Google’s Keyword Tool, finding out what keywords your competitors are targeting and what your customers are plugging into the search engines. Once you have a keyword and phrase list, you place them into your titles, headings, tags and content and distribute them to a number of free article directories online. This is how you become a search engine spider magnet.

The search engines will find your content, place it into the search engine results, and the customers will eat-up the quality info you provide. Once you have established yourself as someone who knows your topic, the customers will then come to your business when they need a solution to a problem.

How to utilize affiliate marketing

What if you had dozens of people who knew your business and wanted to share it with others? This is basically every small business owners dream. Affiliate marketing can make it happen. Marketing 101 tells us that word of mouth is the number one best marketing method, and affiliate marketing is where it’s at.

Because people are more likely to trust recommendations over advertising, affiliate marketing is becoming one of the most effective methods for pulling in customers. The typical affiliate marketing program is based on the business owner paying affiliates who refer a paying customer to the business. Rather than having to pay people up-front for marketing on your behalf, you only pay when the customer makes a purchase. This is ideal for small business owners who typically do not have a lot of money to invest in marketing.

To ensure you have quality affiliates who will spread your message as effectively as possible, you can offer trainings and reports to keep them connected with your business. Furthermore, by doing this, you are creating loyalty and trust with your affiliates who will in turn do a better job marketing for you.

Is it possible to have free internet marketing? With content distribution and affiliate marketing it is. Thanks to a plethora of no-cost article directories at your fingertips and affiliates you only pay once you’ve made a sale, you can create a free internet marketing strategy that works.

Chris Marentis is a serial entrepreneur and recognized Internet Marketing expert having served as SVP at AOL and CEO of Clearspring Technologies. For more information on Online Marketing and Advertising, go to GenNext Media LLC. today.

1) Sing your company’s praises with happy customer testimonials on your website. Nothing beats converting leads to actual sales by using satisfied word-of-mouth referrals. Yet, this alone would not be effective in generating leads if no one came to visit your website.

How to get visitors to your website? Luckily, small business owners can now easily and affordably set up a blog using WordPress, Typepad, Blogger and other web services.

Once your blog is up and running, you start blogging or writing smart, useful and fun articles that show the breadth and depth of your expertise. Of course, you’d include links on your articles back to your website—and that’s how online surfers get to visit your domain.

Yet, that’s still not enough to get the mega hits you’d like to end up prospecting with. So, you’ll want to join social groups such as Facebook and LinkedIn (the leading social site for professionals and businesses) and the new kid, Twitter, with its 140-character microblogging “tweets” or posts.

Once you start telling friends and followers on your social sites about your posts, and they find your suggestions extremely helpful and they’ll start referring your posts to friends in their other sub-groups. Before long, your snappy posts have garnered you followers, legions of whom are keen to hear what you have to say with your updates.

So there you are—star of your own blogging show. A “pro celebrity” in your own right, effortlessly sending scores of visitors to your website, based on writing your heart out in your blog posts (also called articles).

They say love of doing what you enjoy doing eventually pays for itself, and this is clearly where singing your songs of expertise and authority will gain praise for your main website, as well, and generating leads.

2) Ping! As you keep up writing your articles, keep in mind you’re building up an archive of relevant pieces you can repurpose later on. Such as seasonal fall and spring tips for home maintenance. Such as seasonal holiday goodies your catering service never fails to surprise—from golden orbs of chocolate persimmons to frosted amaretto snicker doodles.

Each time you submit an article for publication on WordPress, it’s automatically “pinged” to search engines. And less your articles get to the bottom of the slush pile, be sure to sprinkle them with a light dusting of SEO keywords.

For example, it’s important to use SEO primary keywords in the title and first paragraph. Sprinkle in a few longtail (lower-ranked keywords) SEOs in the body of your article. That’s how search spiders will locate and index your article. The more you write, the more you’ll be noticed.

3) Ding! Statistics reinforce how potent this form of viral communication and info-sharing is:

• 79% of American adults used the Internet in 2009, up from 67% in Feb. 2005 (source: Pew Internet & American Life Project; October 8, 2009)

• 300 million Facebook members use 300,000 servers, and Facebook is on tap to add another 300,000!

You get the idea. Small business marketing strategies jumping on this new wave of online social media because it’s low-cost, easy to control for out-going content and most of all fun to implement and are head and shoulders ahead of competition in generating leads.

Chris Marentis is a serial entrepreneur and recognized Internet Marketing expert having served as SVP at AOL and CEO of Clearspring Technologies. For more information on Online Marketing and Advertising, go to http://www.gennextmedia.com today.