Looking to promote a product or service? There are many ways to go about doing so, including print, radio, television and the Internet. All of these are good and work well, but the Internet which became popular in the 1990’s is the most widely used. Look around, almost every large company and most small companies have a presence on the web. The problem is that if you have ever considered the Internet as way to promote anything, you probably found that it can be very confusing.

If you ever thought about starting a business on the web you probably asked yourself the question “where do I begin?” You probably thought that you needed a web site, but did not know how to construct a web site or how to go about getting one built for you. Many people never get past this point, but building a web site is not that difficult and I can point you in the right direction, feel free to contact me. The biggest problem selling online is that a web site alone is not good enough to do the job anymore.

Web sites have sprung up all over the Internet since they first became popular back in the mid 90’s. Back then, because there were so many less than there are now and the World Wide Web was so much less crowded web sites worked well. However, now your web presence needs the ability to interact or have a dialog with the reader. You need your web site to speak to the reader and the reader to be able to speak back - you need to communicate. The Internet is now all about socialization.

Enter web2.0

Socialization is taking the Internet by storm. Now instead of just listening to what the site has to say and not being able to reply back, you can now speak to the voice behind the site and say what ever you want. You can give your opinion or ask a question. There can be meaningful conversation between not only you and the voice behind the site, but you can speak to others who visit the site as well.

Web sites such as My Space and Facebook are two popular examples of interaction on the web. At first these sites were only uses for personal reasons, but even these sites now are being used for product promotion. The popularity of web logs or blogs is also another example of web 2.0.

One reason that this concept works so well is because the consumer of today no longer just wants to be sold. They do not want a product put before them and then and told this is it - take it or leave it. No, today’s consumer needs dialog or a relationship before they buy anything. There are too many products out there and the products, up until now have been sold to hard.

This is what today’s Internet is about - relationships by creating conversation. This is how today’s consumer buys.