The opportunities available to all small business owners when it comes to online marketing are endless and I often feel like a "kid in a sweet shop" however with all these distractions you can often dabble in many things and get success from very few.
I believe the key for all small business particularly with the economy the way it is and has been for some time now is to concentrate on a few things that will give maximum return for the least effort and if effort is required the return justifies the input.
Below I have detailed ten great ideas all proven and all capable of delivering exceptional returns for small business owners.
For the sake of the article I am going to use Car Dealers as the example however as you will see the concepts and principles can work for many different companies all you will have to do is replace your product or service for cars and be a little creative.

1. Twitter - Set up a twitter account for each model of car you sell and call the account after that car i.
   e.
   @fordfocus or @fordfocuscar or @fordfocusforsale and then tweet about that particular car.
   You could tweet about maintenance, servicing, model news, someone who has won a rally in this car, general news about the car, etc.
   You will then encourage owners and enthusiasts of this particular model to engage in conversation with you and other owners and develop part exchange opportunities for your business.
   This could work for many other businesses if you had a group of hotels create twitter accounts for each area and tweet about what's on in each area etc.
   If you had on hotel set up twitter accounts for facilities in your area and tweet about those.
   
2. Facebook - As with Twitter follow the same process on Facebook but if you have a number of businesses do this by location i.
   e.
   one account could be Ford Focus Manchester.
   To save time set up hootsuite.
   com account and post or tweet once and share it across all your social media accounts i.
   e.
   you write a tweet and this will go on twitter, post on Facebook and any other account you have.
   
3. Product / Service Specific Web Sites - create a specific web site for each of your products or services.
   So in the car example try to buy the domain name fordfocus.
   co.
   uk or.
   com and if this is not available fordfocusforsale.
   co.
   uk or.
   com or fordfocusforsalemanchester.
   co.
   uk or.
   com etc.
   Less is more (car dealers in particular should learn this) - do not clutter your site with 360 degree views of the inside of some generic model of car or allow the client to build and configure their car and then not show them what it looks like.
   Show them pictures.
   If you create a site dedicated to a Ford Focus you can then display all the Ford Focus cars you have in one place, you could feature a car of the week, they could change on a regular basis as new models come in and the site could be full of lots of content dedicated to the Ford Focus (lots of pictures of each car).
   This kind of dedicated and focused web site helps tremendously when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation and particularly with Google.
   This also doesn't have to be expensive you can build web sites for the price of the domain name using wordpress, Google sites, 1&1 and many other template based site builders.
   
4. Target Your Competitors Customers - Set up a free account with tweept.
   com and once you are live you are looking for the "Follow Followers" section on the dashboard.
   Now you need to find the Twitter address for your competitors - you do this by conducting a search on Twitter for your competitors or by looking at their web site and following their Twitter link.
   Once you have their Twitter address which will look like this @yourcompetitor you then enter this into the "Follow Followers" section on the Tweepi dashboard.
   You will now see that all your competitors followers are listed in one place and you have the capability to follow them who will in turn follow you back.
   You now have access to all your competitors followers who will be customers and potential customers.
   
5. Find Instant Customers - Go to monitter.
   com which allows you to enter a keyword or phrase and create one or multiple columns.
   With our car example we could create a column for Ford Focus and Ford Fiesta and Ford Mondeo (three cars sold in Britain) and you will now have three columns of constantly live and real time updated Tweets.
   This means that anyone who mentions these cars on Twitter will appear live and real time in your columns so if someone is looking to buy a Ford Focus you will see it, if someone is asking where to find a "Cheap Ford Focus" you will see it, if someone is looking to sell a Ford Focus you will see it.
   You could also put your competitors name as a column and you will see anyone who is mentioning them, what offers they are promoting etc.
   
6. Facebook Groups - Search on Facebook for a product, service, or location.
   So if you are based in Manchester search for Manchester and then click on "Groups" - you will now see a list of groups that have been set up to do with Manchester, people that live their, football fans etc.
   If you join the group and get involved with the conversations then you can start to promote what you do to people within your catchment area or offer discounts to all Manchester United Fans or Manchester City Fans etc.
   You can do the same for products i.
   e.
   "Car Owners" or "Ford Focus Owners" etc.
   
7. Social Bookmarking - Set up free accounts on digg.
   com - stumbleupon.
   com - delicious.
   com and then write an article, post comments on other articles, add each page of your web site (they are all really easy to use and self explanatory) or add a link to your videos.
   You will be surprised at the amount of quality, targeted traffic you will generate from these sources.
   
8. Video - create videos for your products, services, business, people.
   They do not have to be television quality in fact a more personal approach is often better.
   A simple camcorder and tripod will do the trick, you can video your product, you can discuss the uses of your product, maintenance, funniest use of the product, staff discussing their favourite products or services, customers giving testimonials.
   Once complete load onto YouTube (create your own channel - again really easy and self explanatory) using keywords and phrases best suited to your business.
   YouTube is now the second biggest search engine in the world behind Google - you will be amazed at the amount of traffic and leads you can generate from this source.
   YouTube isn't the only platform vimeo.
   com or dailymotion.
   com are just two of many.
   
9. Facebook Likes - Encourage as many people as possible to "Like" your page on Facebook.
   It can be people who purchase or book something at your retail outlet, or someone who visits your web site or as part of an email marketing campaign or even someone who visits your stand at an exhibition.
   The average Facebook user has 130 friends and if they Like your web page this gets presented on their wall to their friends, you have now been recommended to 130 people if only 10% of these Like your page you have now been recommended to 1300 people and if only 10% of these Like your page you have now been recommended to 16,900 people!
10. Ecommerce - Whilst this final idea is limited to companies with ecommerce web sites it doesn't warrant inclusion.
    You should add your products to Google shopping - this is a very easy process for most ecommerce sites with modern shopping carts which will link and upload direct with Google's service.
    Google do not like "Loss Leaders" however if your product is cheaper than anything else in the market then you will appear on the first page of Google for that particular product or service search phrase.
    However regardless of if you manage to get one of your products on the first page or not you will certainly get a lot of traffic from this platform anyway.