It is my humble opinion that no other time in the last 60 years have small and medium sized businesses had more opportunity to gain market share through marketing. Today there is a wealth of free or very low cost ways to reach customers effectively on the web and through social media outlets. Traditional media has seen rapid decline and consumers are becoming more savvy to tuning out television advertising. The engagement, conversation and cost of social media is designed for small and medium sized businesses.

The only problem I see is time. Small and medium sized businesses do not have the time to give social media the attention it deserves. So I decided to list the 8 least used and most effective free online advertising for businesses to hopefully make the online beginnings easier.

1. Google Local Business Center: Everyone uses search engines to find what they are looking for. Why would you ever not put your best foot forward and control the conversation? Google local Business Center allows business owners to add or claim their listing through either an automated phone system, or by mail. After you are confirmed as the owner of the business, you can get visitation figures, notifications of comments, add coupons to your company listing, upload photos, upload videos, write a summary of your business and fix hours/company address. Search for your business show in Google and in Google Maps.
2. Yelp: Yelp is a mixture of Citysearch and Facebook. Users go on Yelp to search for local businesses, find friends with similar interests and post reviews. Businesses can claim or add themselves to the listings. By being the owner of the listing, companies can get analytics of visitors, get email alerts when users review, adjust company information, upload photos, add announcements that show on the listing and respond to reviews. Yelp has over 20 million visitors per month, so ignoring it is not really an option.
3. Merchant Circle: Merchant Circle does not get a lot of traffic, but that is not really what they should be used for. Merchant Circle has partnerships with CitySearch and Dex (both cost money to get listed), but if you are listed on Merchant Circle, more than likely your business will be picked up by both CitySearch and Dex for free. Merchant Circle allows business to have total control of their listing. They do have dismal customer service, but honestly who cares if it’s free. Merchant Circle has all the same features as Yelp and Google, so customization and reporting is top notch. One last thing, they got something my good friend calls “Google Juice.” Merchant Circle will show up favorably in a Google Search.
4. Insiderpages: Insiderpages is a social search engine that works very well for businesses. Social search engines are user generated listings. I’m going to go into too much depth, but let’s just say they are exactly in the middle of Yelp and Merchant Circle in terms of traffic and features.
5. Twitter: Talk about your ultimate company microphone. Twitter is the top “microblogging” service that is exploding with growth. Build a company profile, be helpful and nice, gather followers and turn your company in to a broadcasting tower. See some of my other posts for more information: How to Use Twitter, Essential Business Tools For Twitter
6. Facebook Pages: Online marketing is about engagement not advertising, so make a free page on Facebook about your business before someone else does. Facebook is quickly becoming the worlds biggest tree fort. It is not only civilized (unlike MySpace) it is also extremely easy to use. Facebook provides very useful tools for businesses including: in depth analytics of views, viral “fan” gathering, an open platfrom for developers, uploaders for photos, videos, addresses and summaries. I could write a whole blog on Facebook Pages, but instead I’m going to say just start a page for your business, be patient with fan growth and have fun.
7. Craigslist: Now I know what you are thinking, “I know about selling my wares on Craigslist.” This is not about selling things, this is about events. No business can deny the sheer volume of visitors to Craigslist and so many people actually use the site to find things to do as well as things to buy. This requires a lot of updating, but it’s free and effective for any business wanting to make events aware to the public.
8. Your Company Blog: Blogs are so crucial I should have put them as #1, but this list is not sorted by importance.  But let me put it this way, if your company has a blog and you are not using it you need to start now. If you don’t have a blog, it’s time to hire some help and be energized to learn. If online marketing was a house, blogs would be the foundation. Your company blog is the starting point for any online marketing. Blogs allow you to incorporate RSS feeds that automatically update many of your other profiles above saving time and universally branding your company.

Although I could probably go on for several pages of many other tools available for businesses, I am going to leave it at 8. If you have any other suggestions, please comment below. I hope you can incorporate these tools appropriately and with success.