Business promotion is getting easier and cheaper, thanks to social media. However, don’t mistake cheap and easy with ineffective or a waste of time.

Many experienced businesspeople are still married to traditional marketing and business promotion techniques. They still think in terms of advertising in broadcast and print media. They still think about eyeballs, open rates, and CPMs (cost per thousand views). They’re thinking about impressions, drive time, and prime time. But business promotion has grown beyond traditional marketing and advertising, and moved online.

Why Is Business Promotion Changing?

It’s because of Generation Y and the explosive growth of social media. There are 82 million members of Generation Y (compared to the 78+ million Baby Boomers), and 96% of them are on a social network of some sort. Whether it’s Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or other networks, these online tools have reshaped business promotion as we know it.

If you want to reach Generation Y through business promotion, consider social media as your best bet. It costs less than traditional advertising, can be targeted to reach only the people you want, and can easily be measured. The problem with traditional advertising is that you can’t effectively measure whether it was your TV commercials or billboards that resulted in increased sales, and even if one of them was more effective.

How Can I Use Social Media for Online Business Promotion?

Social media is all about communicating and building trust through relationships. By speaking to your customer base on their terms and their turf, you can earn their trust a lot more easily, which can make your business promotion much more effective. Generation Y spends a lot of time online, getting their news and entertainment from the web. They communicate via text messages on their cell phone. And they are the biggest consumer of mobile videos of any generation.

Social media is becoming more popular and widespread. The biggest demographic on Facebook may still be Generation Y, but the fastest growing one is women 50 and over. If that was your biggest customer base, how would you reach them? You could advertise during shows that women over 50 typically watch, but you’re not going to necessarily reach them. Plus, you need to repeat those ads many times, which will get expensive. But with Facebook, you can create fan pages and groups specifically for your target audience. You can even purchase ads that are served only to women in their 50s. You can’t do that with traditional advertising.

Your online business promotion campaign should consist of Twitter, Facebook and/or MySpace, and blogging. Set up accounts, fan pages, blogs, and communicate with your potential customers about the things they want to talk about. Don’t tell them what you do, talk to them about what they do, like, and enjoy. Become a resource for their interests by forwarding articles, providing tips, and telling people about other resources that meet their interests and needs.

Whenever possible, use online business promotions to support your offline promotions as well. If you’re attending a trade show, are sponsoring a special event or team, or are still using traditional marketing, tell people about it through your social networks.

If you’re at a trade show, encourage people on Twitter to stop by your booth. If you’re sponsoring a special event, talk it up on your Facebook fan page. Or if you’re sponsoring a sports team, consider setting up a fan page for that team. Put your Twitter account and Facebook URL in your advertisements, and encourage people to follow you or become fans. There’s no reason these two business promotion methods have to be separate.

While we’re not predicting the death of traditional marketing methods, we are encouraging you to add social media as a big part of your business promotion toolbox.

Congratulations! You’ve started your own online business and now you’re ready for online business promotion. There are a number of schools of thought about online business promotion, they all come down to the same basic techniques: social media, search engine optimization, and offline promotion. If you start this early on, the entire process can be automated and create recurring revenue for you

Online business promotion starts with a blog.

You’ve started your online business, the catalog and shopping cart software are running, and you’re carefully written dozens, if not hundreds, of product descriptions. But you’re not done. Make blogging a part of your online business promotion. Blog posts are great landing pages for your website, with a much longer and keyword-rich description than your catalog entries. Write articles about typical problems your customers will face, and show how your products are the solutions. Post customer testimonials and photos with the products in action. The blog will become the center of your social media campaign, and improve your search engine optimization results.

Use social media for online business promotion.

Social media is another important part of your online business promotion. Create accounts for yourself and/or your company on Twitter, Facebook, and any social networks that fall within your target market. Follow/friend people who fit within that niche, and focus only on them. But rather than spam them with product messages, promote your how-to articles on your blog, answer questions related to your product, and let them see you as a solution, not a pest.

Online business promotion means optimizing for search engines.

It’s crucial that your website is optimized for search engines, otherwise you’ll waste a big part of your online business promotion efforts. Do simple things, like use important keywords in headlines and anchor text, having back links to your website and blog posts. These will lead to higher search engine placement. As you rank higher in the search results, more people will find you, which will lead to more visits, which leads to increased sales.

Offline marketing is important for online business promotion.

Offline marketing is an important tool in the online business promotion toolbox, especially as you focus on a particular niche. If you sell hand degreaser to car mechanics, go to the places where the gearheads gather. Go to car shows, trade shows, and conventions. Visit the garages in your town and the surrounding area. Buy a mailing list of auto repair shops around the country, and send them a sample of your product.

Tell everyone they can only buy the product on your website. Make cards and brochures with your URL on it. While you can certainly sell your product at these events, a lot of people will say “not right now” or “maybe I’ll come back.” Give them a card and tell them to find you online when they’re ready.

By following these online business promotion steps, you can set your business to run on autopilot. What you’ll see is that your blog will be picked up by the search engines and seen by social media friends, they’ll continue to visit your website, buy your products, and this will be an automatic revenue generator for you.