Last week, I participated in a webinar by Gihan Perera, author of Fast, flat and free: how the internet has changed your business.

There were two things from the webinar that I wanted to share (as well as all the  tips I tweeted during the webinar!) – the first being the basic aspects of an internet marketing strategy:

1. create
   in other words, get a website and get online! Be it a static one page site, a blog or a fully interactive site with hundreds of pages, until you have a site it’s hard to market online
2. generate
   write some content – preferably good content and lots of it. Put content onto your website and/or blog plus in a newsletter, webinars, podcasts and on sites like YouTube, Pinterest and Slideshare
3. share
   let people know about your content, with the key method being social media links. Gihan suggested automating this as much as possible to save time and ensure it is done, and I agree
4. participate
   get online and join in conversations! So visit other websites and comment in blogs, add reviews, join forums, respond on Facebook, tweet and retweet, answer LinkedIn questions, share interesting things and so on. This step is necessary to engage with other people and should take a large proportion of your marketing time

When you think of it as four simple steps like this it is a lot less intimidating and a lot more achievable, don’t you think? And it is realistic to think of it this simply rather than worrying  about a big picture that overwhelms you.

I also like the priority of generating content before you get caught up in marketing and building links – I honestly don’t think you can build a strong foundation online until you have decent content that people will want to use – and share.

So now’s your chance – add a comment to this post to boost your internet marketing and share you ideas. It’s easy, I’ll answer you and you will get a ‘dofollow’ back link so – what do you think of Gihan’s internet marketing plan?