What's Your Online Marketing Footprint?

With so many options on the World Wide Web including social media websites, blogs, search engine optimization techniques, social media optimization techniques, and much more, how do you determine your online marketing strategy is effective?

I call this your "online marketing footprint”. It’s just like your carbon footprint but it helps you take a look at all of your online venues and not only put them into perspective, but also decide which ones are right for your business.

So how do you assess your online marketing footprint?

Step One: Analyze
In order to analyze your online marketing footprint the best thing to do is go through all your social media venues and blogs and ask yourself a few questions.

1. Is this online footprint in line with my business goals and objectives?
2. Is this online footprint bringing lucrative leads to my website, blog, or profiles?
3. Am I just taking up space or am I actually interacting users and potential customers as well providing relevant resources?
   

Step Two: Condense
Using your analysis from step one, determine which online footprints needs to be abandoned. Every online user has jumped on a new social media site and created a profile only to find that they never go back. It’s okay to delete your account and move on. If you can't delete your account, email the site organizer or web manager and ask for them to delete it for you

Why not just abandon ship? Well, it’s important to not look "sporadic" online. Remember, strategy and planning are important characteristics of great business people and looking sporadic and unorganized on line is just as bad as looking that way in the boardroom.

Step Three: Equalize
Now it’s time to really research and find what additional footprints you are missing that could be beneficial to your online marketing plan. Every business person with an online marketing plan should have a strong presence on what I call MTF; Myspace, Twitter, and Facebook. If video is an important part of your outreach then a channel on YouTube is also important.

Finally, there are the small gold mines that you have to research and determine if it’s right for you. It may be a forum, a social media site, or someone else's blog, whatever it is remember to assess the benefits first and it works for you go for it.

So what are you waiting for? Increase your online marketing effectiveness by Analyzing, Condensing and Equalizing your online footprint.