As we look toward 2012 with desires and goals for our business we should look back briefly and take stock of 2011. As the scope of this blog is about marketing, we will be focusing on that.

As the year comes to an end, thoughts about your marketing budget can't be far off, if not downright in-your-face.

In today's online world someone is considered a lead if they have decided to take some sort of action on your website where they leave contact info.

One of your top business goals for 2012 remains the same as last year - Get connected with social media! This blog post deserves a re-post because now, more than ever, your business needs to connect with your current and prospective customers.

When you visit your favorite websites for news, entertainment, socializing, or anything else, do you find the banner ads on those pages intriguing? Most often, if you are like me, you ignore them or even get annoyed by them. Generally, you are on these sites to accomplish a certain activity, and if you noticed one of those banner ads, and they were about something you didn't care at all about, what impact do they make on you? Think of the volume of website traffic involved and then consider how few eyeballs are interested in looking at those ads.

Small and medium-sized businesses that are looking to grow, regardless of what the media says about the economy, can benefit from some basic improvements to their website's performance. Smart business people see this time as an opportunity to pull ahead of the competition but may not have the tools to make well-informed marketing decisions. Now that you have a bit more time to devote to your website, here are a few suggestions on how to proceed. With strategic planning and gradual incremental steps you can make substantial changes over the next 6 to 12 months.

One major part of Internet PR also happens to be link building. This is when a company utilizes links from their website and other websites to help build their brand and strengthen their identity online, usually linking from blogs, like-minded websites, news sources, and content aggregators. One way to link build is through public relations.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should always be one of the top business strategies for any small business (and even bigger businesses), especially because Internet presence for a business is on par with commercial time on major television or ad space in a newspaper now. 



Building a sound online public relations strategy is vital to bolstering your company’s web presence, improving brand awareness, and developing two-way rapport with customers and stakeholders. At the same time, successful organizations are seeing the light when it comes to the benefits of inbound marketing:

Most physicians, lawyers and other professionals do a good job of getting the basic information posted on their websites: who they are, what they do, their education and experience and how to contact them. But is your website really marketing your practice?