Social media marketing has changed the face of the internet over the last few years and is one of the most effective ways of marketing that is currently available. When done properly the amount of exposure you can get for your message, brand or product can be enormous.

The basic premise of Social Media Marketing is that you post your content to a social network and hope that it is picked up by others who then recommend it to their friends or followers resulting in an avalanche of visitors to your site and lots of links back to your site which gives a huge boost to your search engine rankings.

Amongst the most popular social media sites are networks such as Facebook, and content sites such as YouTube, Digg and Twitter. Posting a video to YouTube can be a goldmine if it goes viral and quickly spreads all over the web.

Email Marketing is one of the most intimate and effective ways of reaching your customers. When you obtain an email address from someone it can keep on paying you for years to come.

Most small businesses do not understand how effective email marketing can be. Just imagine if someone is browsing around a shop and when leaving they hand a card to the owner with all their details on it and ask to be contacted with any updates. This is precisely what email marketing can do.

When people visit your site and are encouraged to give you their email address they are effectively giving you permission to contact them whenever you want. Any further information you send to them costs nothing at all. Compare that to a direct mail campaign.

You can use the email to inform them of special offers, new promotions or any products that you care to recommend to them. The message you send is entirely up to you. An auto-responder service takes care of all sign ups and all delivery of your message.

Web Design plays a very important part of your business as you need to use your site to build your business. When the visitor comes to your site you do not just want them to comment on how lovely your site is, you want it to an effective sales tool. Being able to navigate their way around the site is important. The layout of the site does not need to be overcomplicated but rather needs to be user-friendly.

If you want the visitor to buy from the site you must make it easy for them to do so. Leaving a site is very easy to do if they get frustrated by too many instructions. If you want to capture their email address (and you definitely should), make sure that you have something to offer in return.

Web Design is a skill that takes account of the visitor experience and is not designed to show how clever the developer is. Subtle use of colour and font size can make a huge difference on whether someone stays on your site or leaves immediately. The placement of adverts is also something that a web designer can do to gain maximum benefit from each visitor.