Build it and they will come.

Well it use to be that way way back in Web 1.0 days when the internet was in it's infancy. This is no longer the case. Between the need for SEO, blogging and social media, a lot more time and energy go into being found on the internet.

When it comes to marketing your business online, it does take effort, PERIOD.

That sentence should be our entire blog entry for the week, but we'll expand on that idea.

If you don't have time for business awareness through these types of web mediums, your web marketing results will yield little or no ROI.

We've had potential and current clients contact us interested in marketing their business with social media because Facebook & Twitter is all over the news and is buzzing all over the web. However when we explain how Facebook, Twitter and blogging work to help their company stand out, the first statement inevitably is "oh I don't have time for all that." Our reply is, "well social media is about being 'social', building a rapport, putting out solid content and doing it frequently." "We just don't have time to do it every day or every week. Maybe we can use Twitter, Facebook and Blog quarterly."

Nope that won't work at all — in fact why bother? You will not generate business overnight even if you do utilize social media frequently. It's a nurturing process that takes time, energy and patience — plant the seed and watch it grow.

Here's a great video that breaks down the reality of social media and a slide show with even more startling facts.

In order to build an audience, fans or followers, quality and frequency are key. Just like anything else in business, life or relationships, if you approach it with zero passion, your results will equal that. Anything of importance takes work especially in online relationship building. You can't expect the world to know about you if you only make brief appearances on the web every three months.

There are some psycho Facebook and Twitter people out there posting their every breath, but there is a happy medium between that and only posting updates around the time your quarterly taxes are due. There are plenty of tools out there like ping.fm, hootsuite, etc to streamline your social media efforts so you don't have to be online every two seconds.

Bottom line is you need to let people know you exist and stay top-of-mind by being out there in the social media arena. If you don't your competition will.