It is of course something which companies do and that is to put up a website, largely because that is what everyone else does yet many fail to incorporate their online presence in the form of the face of their company being in the website with their off line business strategy. That raises another topic for discussion, the lack of a coherent business strategy being employed by many small businesses.

The point of this discussion is one of blending more traditional Online business strategies with that of Off line strategies. Business must start to build their online presence to that it functions as equity for the business. There are various tactics which may be executed as a part of this such as blogging, article contribution and so on. Building an online presence and making it function as equity for your small business will open up the world to the local small business; indeed a global marketplace exists for any and every small business.

At first pass this may seem rather far fetched but consider the situation where a local business is highly skilled in say bathroom & kitchen tiling (like my father !) There exists in the world 1000s of people undertaking the tasks of renovating their properties and who turn to the internet for information on how to grout, or how to apply adhesive and all of the other specialist pieces of knowledge which exist for the purpose of being an expert tiler.

As part of the overall business strategy, any small business can 'package' their knowledge in video, audio, article format and make it available to the world employ specific techniques for which to monetize the interest in the information they provide (yet another topic of discussion for later).

This discourse has been prompted through the consulting work which is undertaken with may small businesses and the insight is gained when taking them through the process of building their online presence.

If you are a small business owner or work from home person, take steps to incorporate your online marketing strategy with your traditional off line strategy. Don't just 'throw up' a website but incorporate the site with various tactics which will over time build your global online presence in your particular market space.