Your internet marketing efforts are a crucial part of your business, and that’s true for pretty much everyone, regardless of the size of the company, the industry, the product or the service. But even though we know that it’s important and that we have to do it right, so many businesses seem to fall into bad habits that hinder their efforts much more than they help. Fortunately for you, however, the most common Internet marketing mistakes are also the easiest to avoid, so armed with a little information, you can make sure your campaigns are as effective and as efficient as they can be.

Internet Marketing Mistake #1 – Spamming

Everyone hates spam. Even spammers hate spam. This is not relegated just to poorly-spelled email blasts advertising cost-effective medications, but also applies to your social media behavior, blogging behavior, newsletter/opt-in email list behavior, and more. If you tweet the same exact message over and over again all day long, you’re spamming. If you send several emails out to the same list several times a day, you’re spamming. If you leave worthless comments on blogs as nothing more than a way to get your link on the blog, you’re spamming. There’s no faster way to both lose all credibility and ensure you’ve wasted everyone’s time than by spamming. So don’t spam.

Internet Marketing Mistake #2 – Underkill

Even though you don’t want to go into overkill mode by spamming the daylights out of everyone, you also don’t want to go into underkill mode by never updating anything at all. Many companies get all gung-ho about the importance of blogging, only to lose the thread after a couple of months and quit updating at all. Don’t start a Twitter account, link it to your website under a “follow us on Twitter!” banner, tweet once and then disappear. You have to work at maintaining a regular schedule, so your potential customers can see you.

Internet Marketing Mistake #3 – Foot in Mouth Disease

WAIT! Before you post that tweet, you need to ask yourself one question: is this appropriate? Social media is something of a deceptively casual environment for businesses, and there are way too many examples out there of high profile brands inserting their feet into their mouths by posting injudicious tweets, Facebook updates, and blog posts. It’s fine to put up the illusion of being casual with your followers, but you should always remember that you’re running a business, and your brand’s credibility is always on the line every time you submit something. Don’t confuse a business Twitter account with your personal Twitter account, and when in doubt – don’t hit that “submit” button.

Internet Marketing Mistake #4 – Bad Design

Bad design comes in many forms, and all of them will hurt your marketing efforts. First and foremost, your website needs to be easy to use and easy to navigate. Too much clutter, bad graphics, poor navigation, broken links, eye-searing color schemes, hard to read fonts, unnecessary bells and whistles, slow load times – the ways web design can go bad are many and varied. Your website doesn’t need to be the fanciest one on the virtual block, but it does need to be clean and professional. This also applies to things like newsletters or other emails you might send out.

Internet Marketing Mistake #5 – Bad Content

Even the best-looking websites will fail if the content is no good, so dedicate yourself to making sure your website is the best representation of your business that you can. Your site needs to have well written content with no spelling or grammar errors. Make sure that visitors have all of the information they need about your products and services, as well as a clear and easy way to contact you. If you’re blogging, make sure all of your posts are interesting and something people would actually want to read, not just a keyword dump.

These are just five of the more common Internet marketing mistakes that are actually easy to avoid, but if you are diligent and careful about how you build your online presence, then you can easily avoid all of them and end up way ahead of much of your competition.

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• General Internet Marketing