Blogs. Web sites. Social Networking.

When you ponder the plethora of the online venues from which you can promote your products and services, it’s hard to know where to start.

Prospective customers need 8-to-10 “touches” from you before they remember you or your brand. Cyberspace is a great place to reach out and touch someone. NOW is the time to begin making those touches.

Here are a few tips for building your online presence:

Build your hub.
Think about the International Space Station. Construction began in 1998 with the Control Module. Gradually, additional modules have been added.

Your online hub should be a Web site and/or a blog.
A Web site generally contains static content that changes infrequently. A blog is an interactive Web site-its content is updated on a regular basis (at least weekly).

More and more often, businesses are creating sites that seamlessly integrate blog content with static content. For example, here at HeBlogsSheBlogs.com, our blog is on our Home page. Navigation buttons on the Home page lead to inside pages that function more like a traditional Web site.

Gradually add spokes or “modules” to your hub. I consider social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace) and social bookmarking sites (Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon) as spokes. You’ll create a profile at each site (registration is free) and link to and from your hub. Millions of people subscribe to social networking sites, substantially increasing your chances of being found and “touched.”

• Don’t feel compelled to instantly sign up for each of them. Spend time looking around, visiting others’ profiles, and studying how members market themselves.
• After you’ve visited a site several times, ask yourself whether you feel comfortable joining the community, and whether it’ll be worth your time investment to become an active member.

Here are some sites to explore:

General Networking:

• Facebook - http://www.facebook.com
• LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com/
• Ziggs - http://www.ziggs.com/ (for business professionals)

Targeted Networking:

• MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/
• Shoutlife - http://www.shoutlife.com/ - Christian social networking for authors, music artists, comics, organizations, and regular folks.

Video Sharing

• YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/
• GodTube - http://www.godtube.com/ - Christian version of YouTube

Book Sharing

• Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/
• Shelfari - www.shelfari.com
• BookTour - http://www.booktour.com
• Book Marketing Network http://bookmarket.ning.com/ - You can set up your own customized social network at ning.com

Micro Blogging

• Twitter - https://twitter.com
• Plurk - http://www.plurk.com/

Social Bookmarking

• Digg - http://digg.com/
• Delicious - http://delicious.com
• StumbleUpon - http://www.stumbleupon.com/

What sites do you use/recommend? Leave us a comment!

This article was originally published on the WinePress Publishing Company blog, Oct. 20, 2008. WinePress is the leading company in the Christian custom publishing industry.

Tags: blogs, book sharing, internet marketing, Marketing, micro-blogging, promoting, social bookmarking, Social Networking, video sharing, Web sites