Free On­line Mar­ket­ing Meth­ods That Have Noth­ing To Do With So­cial Media

First off, I have no is­sue with so­cial me­dia as a form of in­ter­net marketing—in fact, I think it is one of the best strate­gies out there.

But, I know there are many who are slow to adopt it, or are in­ter­ested in an ar­ti­cle where the words ‘’share’’ ‘’like’’ or ‘’tweet’’ are not the focus.

There are lots of great ways to mar­ket your busi­ness on­line that are free and that have noth­ing to do with so­cial me­dia. Here are just a few to get you started.

It is im­por­tant to note that when money is low, you have to in­vest more time. While some free on­line mar­ket­ing strate­gies are set it and for­get it, many will re­quire some ef­fort on your part.

Ar­ti­cle Marketing/Guest Blogging

In the on­line world, high qual­ity con­tent can be a pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing tool for your busi­ness; ar­ti­cle mar­ket­ing and guest blog­ging are two such ways to get said con­tent out there in front of peo­ple who want what you are selling.

There are many free ar­ti­cle di­rec­to­ries where you can sub­mit con­tent, such as EzineArticles.com.

Blog own­ers know the value of a con­stant sup­ply of fresh con­tent and guest blog­ging can help them achieve this goal. There are many ways to con­nect with blog­gers look­ing for guest posts, such as Blog­ger­LinkUp and My­BlogGuest. While I am a free­lance writer, and not a busi­ness owner, I can still at­test to the ef­fec­tive­ness of these two sites in plac­ing guest posts for clients.

Free Lo­cal Busi­ness Directories

Gone are the days when peo­ple are pulling out the Yel­low Pages to find what they are look­ing for. Now, peo­ple are pow­er­ing up the lap­top or scrolling through a smart phone. There are a host of lo­cal busi­ness di­rec­to­ries on the web that al­low you to list your busi­ness ab­solutely free.

A web­site such as GetListed.org, al­lows you to set up your list­ing on mul­ti­ple di­rec­to­ries at once, such as the on­line Yel­low Pages, Yelp, Google and Ya­hoo.

If peo­ple are look­ing for your type of busi­ness through an on­line search, you want to make sure you are on that list, oth­er­wise, you are miss­ing out.

Com­ment­ing on Fo­rums and Blogs

Fo­rums (see our list of 7 High PR In­ter­net Mar­ket­ing Fo­rums) and blogs are a great way to con­nect with prospec­tive cus­tomers, whether they are in­di­vid­u­als or other businesses.

Here, peo­ple can share tips, ad­vice, prob­lems and just gen­eral help­ful in­for­ma­tion in their comments.

  • Be­ing seen as some­one who is knowl­edge­able about the top­ics be­ing dis­cussed is im­por­tant when it comes to these types of on­line mar­ket­ing methods.
  • Posts where you can help peo­ple solve prob­lems are par­tic­u­larly powerful.

Be­cause you can cre­ate a sig­na­ture that in­cludes a link, read­ers can eas­ily visit your business’s website.

Free Clas­si­fieds

Free clas­si­fied ad sites can be a good ad­di­tion to a free on­line mar­ket­ing cam­paign; there are many out there that are highly traf­ficked, such as Craigslist. This site is ac­tu­ally one of the top 50 in the world—very, very good con­sid­er­ing the num­ber of web­sites float­ing around.

[rms] Ralf’s com­ment: I im­me­di­ately liked the ti­tle and idea of this ar­ti­cle.

So­cial me­dia is over-hyped. Mostly be­cause it’s a self-per­pet­u­at­ing beast. So­cial me­dia con­sul­tants hyp­ing sm are get­ting shared on sm by other sm con­sul­tants, get­ting shared fur­ther by their naive, in­ex­pe­ri­enced fans.

No other mar­ket­ing method has vi­ral­ity built in in its very fab­ric like this.

A lot of so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing I see every day is built on wish­ful think­ing. It does­n’t pro­duce the de­sired results.

While so­cial me­dia has its place in your mar­ket­ing mix, it’s vi­tal that you’re in­deed us­ing a ‘mix.’ Kelli has men­tioned a few meth­ods to add to the mix!