Next Steps: Top 10 online marketing mistakes

I have been doing a lot of research lately on what it takes to cut it in this always growing, always changing on-line game called marketing. Most say to get on twitter, Facebook, and any other social media that you can find. But, is this enough? The short answer is no, just being there and calling on the field of dreams incantation, “If you build it, they will come” simply doesn't work. Below is a good list of blunders that on-line businesses tend to make, hopefully this will help you and get your marketing going faster.

If You Build It They Will Come. How will they know you have built it? Print your web address on anything and every thing that you market with. Use a signature when posting to blogs, replying to emails, etc that have your address prevalent.
Fear of Conversation. Just because you have a Facebook or a twitter account doesn't mean leads will fly at you. You have to build a conversation with people and get them to trust you.
Insular Thinking. Your target audience is not in your “bubble”. Reach out to people that are not in your circle to gain a better market stance.
Ignoring the Search Engines. This is one of those catch-22 things, you build a site for customers, NOT SEARCH ENGINES, but at the same time if the search engine can't see it what good is it? This is where avoiding flash and non-standard web languages where possible.
Being Stagnant. A website should be relevant to today or at least this month. Always update the site as often as possible, it you aren't updating people will think that your information is out of date and go somewhere else.
No clear conversion mechanism. Do you have your email/phone #/etc prevalent on all of your pages? The idea behind a website is to drive a sale!
No real follow up system for the leads a site generates. Do you answer inquiries? If not customers will go somewhere else.
Sites targeting product numbers and industry terms rather than what people are looking for. This goes hand in hand with #4. Don't build a site for search engines or for special cases, build it for your market.
Assigning Internet marketing tasks to the companies “tech person”. You know how to fix a computer you must know how to rank a website. WRONG!
Not doing quality link building and digital PR. Get involved with the community that you serve and begin building relationships that can give you reciprocal links, get the name out there, but be weary of purchased links and get it quick gimmicks. This takes time!!