We posted Free Advertising way back in October of 2010 about some ideas on getting advertising for free, but there we concentrated mainly on the telephone. I ran across an article recently that takes a different approach, free advertising opportunities that focus on some online possibilities.
Get Free Advertising Online for Your Business begins by reminiscing about the old days when an putting an ad in Yellow Pages was about all that was needed to promote your business. A fun fact is that the Yellow Pages were first published as a listing of businesses in the United States in 1886 and in fact as of April 2010 has rebranded the Yellow Pages to YP. Enough about the old days, the article recommends these 6 ways to get free online advertising for your business.
- If you’re selling locally, claim you Google Places listing
- Set up a business or Merchant Facebook page
- Set up a Linkedln Profile for yourself and your business
- Set up a Wikipedia Entry
- Set up listings at the other 56 reputable site and directories online
- Make sure people on mobile phones can find your business!
Notice how the last item on the list is the only one with an exclamation point? It turns out that there is a good reason for that emphasis. I remembered reading something about smartphone usage in the United States and did some research and found Nielsen: Smartphones Used By 50.4% Of U.S. Consumers, Android 48.5% Of Them. This trend is only going to continue to grow, and the article makes this very strong point.
“With so many people buying web-enabled phones, the Internet has become the new Yellow Pages. You need to make sure that anyone with a phone that has web access can find your company (you don’t need to have a website to do this).”
So you don’t have the technical expertise or time to follow these tips? The article concludes by mentioning that you can hire a person or company to do this for a very reasonable cost based on how important it can be for your business long term. One last point is that there are a lot of great links in the article to other resources, including business listings and mobile marketing.