Marketing a Small Fish in a Big Pond – Guest Post

This is a guest post by Ben Lumely of NoLimitsEducation and SmashingBusiness He can also be found on Twitter. A great business mind and fantastic writer. For more information on how to guest post follow the instructions at the bottom. Over to Ben;

There is nothing better than the moment when all of your hosting details come through for the first time and you realise that you now own your very own little corner of the internet.

In my head there’s something very cool about that, especially when that little piece of web real estate has be purchased as your own little business. It’s probably how so called “real” people feel when they purchase their first shop or factory in the “real world”.

But when you’ve tended to your little internet plot, sown some seeds and got the shop front ready, what then? How can you possibly compete with those bigger businesses down the street? How does a little fish like you get noticed in a big pond?

Well with the explosion of the more social web any online business regardless of size can market themselves successfully. Just take this site, The Infopreneur, which has gone from nothing less than a month ago to;

• 15,759 hits

• 1,397 Unique Visitors

• Most Daily Hits 1,743

• Alexa Ranking 7 day average; 137,916

• 67 comments on 30 posts

(correct as of the 20/11/09)

Staggering really when you think about it. So how can you market yourself little fish is a big bad pond? Well it’s not all about using Twitter or Facebook but its also about a mentality. The mentality of the fish!

• Get In the Right Pond

No one expects to catch a shark when they’re fishing in a river for Salmon. There’s no point in trying to get your website known in circles where no one will be interested. You don’t see car manufacturers trying to get new business by placing click through ads on websites about arts and crafts. The Infopreneur has a great post entitled To Niche or Not to Niche all about how important picking a niche can be when running an online business. Once you’re chosen your niche, market within it. It’ll be more time-effective for you and will offer you a much better ROI.

• Swim Around The Hooks

If you fish, you’ll know about how important it is to try and get some bait into one area of where you’re fishing so you can attract lots of fish to play around where your hooks are going to be. If you’re a business who wants to be noticed than there’s no point swimming off on your own waiting for someone to accidently hook in to you. Go get involved with the community that surrounds your niche. Talk to people, offer help and advice for free (yes I said free), engage in the ongoing conversation and become respected in your area. That way when people want something that you offer you’ll be there ready.

Word of warning! Don’t whore yourself out in your community. Talk to people don’t just sell sell sell.

• Create Some Bubbles

Whenever I go fishing the first thing I do is look for where all of the action is going down on the water in front of me by noticing where all of the bubbles are that get given off by feeding fish. If you want to be noticed then you want to start creating some bubbles. Use tools like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, as well as comments on your blog or website to allow people to drive that buzz for you. If people are involved in and around your site they’ll spread your bubbles.

• Shoal Up

There’s nothing more satisfying when you’re out fishing then finding a shoal of fish that you can keep casting into and keep getting bites. If you’re running a business online then getting to know some other people who operate in or around your niche is a good thing as it builds contacts. As a small business owner you might not be able to provide everything to your customers but if you can offer them an alternative or somewhere else that can help them they’ll keep coming back to you over and over again. In the 90s in the business world this was call “networking”, now it’s just called getting to know people.

However you market your online business, whether it’s through social media, email newsletters, ads or link baiting, having a fish mentality can be a good thing.

How do you market yourself and your business online?

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If you would like to submit a guest post just like Ben did and open your post up to litterally thousands of readers which will convert to hits to your site then please email me at contact @ theinfopreneur.net.