"I've got to spruce up the company image," I've heard some say. When it comes to Internet marketing, that sure is the right mentality--attraction. But there are various ways, in this era of--interconnectedness (if I may)--to attract customers beyond just the company image.

"Yeah, I know, I know--I've got get on Facebook and Twitter and start...twittering or whatever you call it." Well, that's one thing you can do, but the real trick is in gluing it all together with your website.

Number One: Get a Content Management System

Check out our blog post on Why Your Business's Website Has to Have a Content Management System to understand more about what a CMS is. A good content management system will allow you to manage your own website (or have your staff do it) without having to pay the web guy over and over again for small changes. With a CMS, you can also easily create a blog and connect it to Facebook and Twitter. How does that happen? See below "Gluing It All Together". A CMS will also allow you to easily connect your website to Google Analytics so you see how its performing.

Number Two: Plug Into the Social Web--Open a Facebook and Twitter Account

Everybody and their brother is on Facebook nowadays. They use it to keep up with friends, but they also use it to follow their favorite restaurants (for coupons) and other businesses of interest. That means that a Facebook account is a must-have for businesses.

Next, you should open up a Twitter account. Twitter will allow you to post quick, short updates about what your business is doing.

These two things together create a stream of information about your business that is easily accessible online. People that are on Facebook and Twitter will now be exposed to messages from your business that you wouldn't have had the opportunity to present otherwise. It also creates a wealth of content that Google can eat up. Now when people search for your product or service on Google, you'll come up in the search engines. For bonus, put your business on Google Maps too.

Number Three: Create an Email Newsletter

Numbers one and two allow potential customers to find you on the Internet easily. But now you can cover all of the bases by reaching out to them. Open a free account at MailChimp and start creating a mailing list as soon as possible. MailChimp allows you to connect your content management system so that people that visit your website can easily join your mailing list. It will also allow you to use your blog as a newsletter so that each time you create a new blog post, a newsletter is automatically sent to your mailing list with the same content as your blog post.

Gluing It All Together

Now let's take these three puzzle pieces and put them all together. First, just stare at this illustration for a few moments.

What we've got here is a virtual marketing machine. Your CMS (content management system) acts as the central hub of this machine. A successful Internet marketing plan will accomplish what this system does: A perpetual flow of interested potential customers.

Of course, you'll still need to write blog posts and send regular email newsletters, but now it's all efficiently hooked together. Now you can reach the maximum amount of people with the least amount of management effort, time and money. This allows you to spend your time on the important stuff--taking care of customers--current and prospective. The end result will be a better bottom line.

We would be glad to put together a system just like this for your business. It's what we do best--make the Internet work for you. Tell us about your goals. We're listening.