Blame it on Google. They went Chrome.

Yes, Google is introducing its own browser, but that’s not the subject of this blog post. Instead, I’d like to discuss how they are marketing it - through an online comic book. How innovative!

Yes, this is a great concept and it’s the kind of online marketing that companies need to be thinking about doing these days. It’s creative, it’s informative, it creates a buzz. My guess is that Google’s online comic book marketing their new browser, aptly titled “Chrome”, will get a lot of inbound links. Not just because it’s Google, but because it’s good marketing. The comic book is well laid out, well thought out, provides lots of useful information, and breaks down technical jargon into everyday language. If your company isn’t doing this kind of marketing online then you need to study Google’s playbook.

Will Critchlow has some interesting thoughts on whether or not existing businesses starting to do business on the Web should build from the ground up or build their Web presence on the backbone of their brick and mortar reputation. This is a very good topic and I’ll tell you what I think in just a minute. First, here’s Will:

There are a few situations where I would disagree with the conclusion that you always get a mess when you add new marketing to old businesses - particularly in SEO - understanding the basics of SEO (not even linkbait etc. but just keyword research and basic technical on-page SEO) can be enough to form a valuable sales channel for old-school businesses.

In other words, he is somewhat disagreeing with Seth Godin, a recognized expert on new marketing. I think I’m with Will on this one, though in principle Seth is correct.

When it comes to marketing online, you cannot compare it to off line marketing. They are two different things. The way you reach people online is completely different than the way you do it off line. It requires a different approach and sometimes that approach is counter-intuitive to what successful marketers off line are used to. That’s why many traditional marketing agencies don’t do so well online.

Will goes on to discuss link building and SEO. He has an interesting suggestion regarding viral marketing techniques online. I think that kind of marketing online can work for a lot of businesses if some thought goes into it. An example he gives is this one for a dating website.

That approach will work for many businesses, but what if you have a traditional real estate business, or a law practice? Can that type of marketing work? I think so, but you do have to give it a lot of thought. You obviously don’t want to talk about dating a unicorn, but you may be interested in a humorous take on ambulance chasing if you have a personal injury practice in your town. Or maybe you can make fun of real estate agents and drive people to your real estate website.

Online, people like to see things that are entertaining. If you can get them to laugh, especially at you or themselves, and capture their imaginations then you’ll get much further. You may set up a separate website to do that or you might just add a folder to your current site. Either way is fine, but the bottom line is, advertising online is not like advertising off line. You have to think outside the box, and sometimes way outside the box.

It is customary online when engaging in social media to upload a photo or image that accompanies your conversational pieces. These images are called avatars.

Forums use them. Blogs use them. Social networking sites use them. Social bookmarking sites use them. Microblogging sites use them. Just about everywhere you go you will encounter an avatar. Some people simply use a photo while others use a cartoon character or animated .gif. Some people use a cropped company logo or the entire logo itself. Does it really matter?

I think your avatar makes a big difference. You are communicating something very important about yourself and your business with your avatar. For instance, if your avatar is a picture of Cindarella, wouldn’t that say something, as opposed to a picture of Darth Vader? For some businesses, Darth Vader may be the appropriate avatar. But is it appropriate for you?

It will behoove you to think deeply about your avatar. It doesn’t necessarily need to be your own photo, although it can be. A photo says “I’m accessible.” It’s personal. But you also give up a little bit of a privacy if you use your own photo. That’s a decision you’ll have to weigh heavily.

On the other hand, a company logo says “I’m all business.” It can come off as off-putting if you manage personal relationships through your networking accounts. Then again, you are marketing your business and that’s the point, right?

What about cartoon characters or famous celebrities? I’ve seen people use images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. I’ve seen other celebrities too - James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Alf. What image do you conjure when you think of those celebrities? Is that the image you want people to think about when they see your avatar? Remember, whatever they think about your avatar is what they’ll think about you.

Your avatar is your brand. Just as you would put careful thought into your company logo and website header, you need to think about your avatar and what you want it to communicate to your prospects, business partners, and customers online.

If this survey is correct then your small business could be in jeopardy.

In addition, PayPoint found that among 1000 consumers, just 3 percent of online shoppers are likely to trust a small online business with their money, preferring to shop with larger online brands. A further 81 percent say they have doubt about the security credentials of small, unknown companies.

In order to be taken seriously by your prospect customers, you’ve got to convince them that they can trust you. How do you do that? One way is to make it appear as if you are larger than you are. It is difficult to succeed online if you look like a small business.

Keep in mind that this is true of online-only businesses. If you are a local business with an internet presence and you are targeting local consumers to drive them to your brick-and-mortar store then your strategy will be slightly different. But if you are an online-only business and you are targeting consumers globally, it makes sense to spend time branding your company and appearing larger. How do you do that?

Here are some ways you can make yourself look bigger than you are:

• Make your URL a keyword-targeted brand
• Have a customer service number where people can call you and answer the phone in a professional manner using your business name and personal name with a “How may I help you” greeting
• Include an online chat feature
• Go to great pains to ensure your customers that you provide security for their private information

People like doing business with people so keep it personal. But they want the security of doing business with a large company so be professional. There is still some skepticism about doing business online. Alleviate people’s fears as much as possible.

Michael Martine says generalists are better than specialists, and makes a convincing case. Has this ever happened to you?

Take SEO (search engine optimization) and web design, for example. You hire an SEO specialist after you hired a web designer who you thought knew everything about web design. In your mind, you lumped in a bunch of stuff in with “web design” that your web designer was clueless about.

After all, a web design specialist does not study SEO. He or she studies web design, and that’s it. You later find out you have zero SEO, and you’re ticked off. Now you hire yet another specialist who is going to do all kinds of changes to your site and other things you don’t understand. if this stuff had been done as part of the original design, you would have saved thousands of dollars.

Of course, he’s making a sales case for himself, but his point is right on. There are many times when it is good to hire a specialist and that’s exactly what you need. But if you are just starting out in business, or you are just making your first foray into Internet marketing, which is new territory for many small business owners, then what you really need is a guide, a generalist who knows how to get around in the field. There is more than one reason for this.

Michael pointed out of the reasons, which is the ignorance of specialists regarding other specialists specialties. But sometimes it’s not even ignorance. It could be differences of opinion.

You’ll run into some specialists who do things one way and another specialist who does things another way. Neither way is wrong, they’re just different, but they don’t go well together. You need someone who can reconcile the differences, someone who can analyze your situation and determine which direction is the best way to go - and sometimes that direction is between the paths of the two specialists.

What it all boils down to is directorship. Who’s going to run the program? Can you? Do you know enough about the different specialties of online marketing to direct the show and not end up lost? Most small business owners can’t do that. That’s why they need someone who can communicate across specialties to steer their business in the right direction. A director can tell the web designer not to include certain code, or to place it in an external file when it needs to be, based on the SEOs recommendation. Then she can convince the SEO not to be so adamant about the use of image files like Flash because in small doses and appropriate optimization techniques those elements can be implemented successfully. Your director doesn’t have to do the work; she just has to know how it should be done so that she can direct those who will do it. And if that’s the kind of expertise you need to steer your business in the right direction as you make the transition online, well then I’m your girl. And the best part is, I’m knowledgeable of online marketing and traditional marketing so I can help you integrate the two. Ready?

If you are worried about duplicate content on your website or blog, good! You should be. But you can worry yourself to death, too, and it’s not really necessary.

You’ll hear people talk about the “duplicate content penalty.” It’s not really a penalty, though. If you have duplicate content on your website you won’t be penalized, per se. But the duplicate content won’t benefit you either. That is, it won’t be listed in the search engines. How does this truth apply?

First, if you have content that appears more than once on your own website then you have virtually little to worry about. Google will index one of the pages and not the other. If you want Google to index a particular page, but not the other one then you can “noindex” the page that you don’t want Google to index. Pretty simple, right?

But if you are borrowing content from elsewhere on the web that belongs to someone else (make sure you aren’t violating anyone’s copyright - that’s a more serious offense!) then your biggest concern should be legal, not search. More than likely, if you don’t have permission to publish that content then you’ll get a cease and desist letter before having your ISP pull the plug on your site, but that’s a danger. If you do have permission to publish the content then the only issue you’ll face is the search engines not listing that content in their indexes. Again, it’s not really a penalty. You’re not going to lose anything; you just won’t gain anything.

So what can you do to avoid the duplicate content issue? Here are some ideas:

• Use articles from article directories
• Write all original content
• Borrow snippets, not whole pages, and add at least as much original content as you borrow
• Add a “noindex” tag on the page with the duplicate content
• Ask Google not to crawl pages you don’t want indexed
• Stick to print collateral

Yes, if you stick to print collateral then you don’t have to worry about the duplicate content issue, but you will have to worry about the rising cost of printing - paper, ink, equipment, maintenance, etc. At least online you don’t have to worry about paying someone else’s fuel bills.

Small business owners don’t get a lot of chances to place their products in front of a thousand people in video and film through product placements. This type of marketing is usually reserved for the big corporations who have the kind of money it takes to make that happen. But can small business owners take advantage of product placement opportunities?

Well, they certainly can’t call up Tim Burton or Quentin Tarantino and get in on the next big movie. But I think that small businesses can get in on the product placement action another way.

Video marketing makes product placement more affordable and more accessible to small business owners. You may not get your product or service in front of hundreds of thousands of people who view movies or read books, but you can get your product placement in front of thousands of video watchers on YouTube and other video sharing sites. There are two ways that I think you can go about this:

1. Piggyback Ride - The piggyback ride is just like it sounds. You find someone who is making a video for creative purposes and ask to put your product or service into their online video for a price.
2. Create Your Own - The second way to go about product placement is to create your own video that isn’t an advertising video, but is rather a creative output of some kind. You can even hire a firm to create and produce a creative video for you. It’s an entertain or educational video and you have your product placed somewhere in the video, prominently displayed, as a subtle way to advertise it without shoving it in people’s faces.

Both of these approaches require some kind of branding and if you do it effectively then you can spawn searches for your product or have people visit your website because they saw your product in a video online and wanted to learn more about you.

A new trend is emerging in the blogging community and that is guest blogging. It’s really nothing new. But guest blogging allows people within the same niche to network and share ideas on a topic through another person’s property. Anyone can do it, but there are a few guidelines I’d recommend before you start shooting off guest blog posts.

If you have an interest in being a guest blogger for another blog in your niche, you should first subscribe to that blog’s RSS feed and become a regular reader. If you are not a regular reader of a blog within your niche then there is really no reason the blogger should let you have a spot on his blog.

Also, before you submit your name as a guest blogger, try commenting on that blog a few times. Leave some useful comments on post that interest you. Make adding value your No. 1 goal for every comment you leave. Don’t be a spammer.

After you’ve become a regular reader and contributor to a blog, send a short note to the blogger praising them for their blog and offer yourself as a potential guest blogger. Be patient. You may not get an immediate response. Bloggers are busy people and he or she may be thinking over your proposal and planning to get back to you. So if you don’t hear anything after a few weeks, just keep waiting. Don’t pester the blogger and keep sending e-mails asking about your proposal. You’ll just annoy them and they may decide not to use you even if they were considering it before.

Guest blogging can be an opportunity for you to reach a new audience, but the most important thing as a guest blogger is that you improve the blog on which you blog as a guest. If you can’t do that then don’t offer yourself as a guest blogger.

When it comes to small business marketing, there are a ton of tools and strategies available for the average local business man or woman. It can seem like a sea of confusion if you don’t know what’s going on. It used to be, when all you had to worry about was off line marketing, that you could throw up a storefront, run an ad in the local paper, put up a billboard or two, run some radio spots, and you could at least count on a fair amount of traffic to your new business. Not any more.

Today, you have to think about marketing your local business online as well as offline. But how?

Of course, you know you need a website. But then what? Which offline methods should you abandon and redirect for online marketing your budget from?

These are important questions. And there’s no easy answer. Every business is different and what works for one might not work for another. Video marketing is very effective, but I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. Podcasting can be time consuming. Should you do it? Maybe. Maybe not.

But there is one online marketing strategy that I would recommend to every business with an online presence (i.e. website). Social bookmarking.

With social bookmarking you might want to start a blog, but you don’t need a blog to do it. You do need a website. All you do is establish an account at various social bookmarking sites and join in. Make a few friends, bookmark their sites, and ask them to bookmark yours.

Social bookmarking is more effective if you have someone else nominate your web pages for you. Social bookmarkers frown on people doing any self promotion. That’s why I recommend a service that will have social marketers bookmark your blog posts and web pages and ask their friends to do the same. You’ll get traffic to your site that you wouldn’t ordinarily get and some of that traffic is very good traffic. So the one thing you should be doing right now is social bookmarking.

If you are thinking about doing online marketing for your business (and you should) then you should consider that Internet market is different from traditional marketing in a number of ways. While there are similarities - you will of course require some of the same specialty skills - the differences are rather striking. One major difference with online marketing is the rate at which changes in the marketplace or the playing field can affect your business. One recent example illustrates perfectly what I mean.

Yesterday morning at 2:22 a.m., SEOmoz posted a blog post about how Google won’t index websites whose URLs end with .0. Later that morning, Small Business Mavericks followed up with a post about it as well. By 9:40 a.m., just barely more than one hour after SBMs post, Matt Cutts had posted on his blog that Google’s policy had changed to allow .0 file name extensions and URLs that end with .0. It happened that fast.

In the world of online marketing, things can change at the drop of a hat and because communication is instant, a company like Google can make a policy change and communicate that change worldwide within a short period of time. That kind of change has the ability to influence how every business online markets itself and if a change is sweeping enough it will bend the rules of online marketing just enough that those who know about the change before everyone else will have a distinct advantage over all of their competitors. That’s how alert and responsive you have to be to compete online.

When it comes to online marketing, you need to stay on top of the latest information by the minute or consult with a marketing company who does.