One has to remember that without the “sharing” piece, information is just something stored somewhere. Data becomes information when it is processed and shared publicly. Therefore, by posting and sharing knowledge via virtual services otherwise known as “The Cloud” we are marketing ourselves and our products to the prospective markets available.

Remember “the cloud” is another fancy word for saving things on the Internet. When using “cloud” services you do yourself a great favor by spreading yourself out thus giving your web presence a boost by having content in various places. Other places on the “cloud” may include article directories, social networks, and comments on other blogs and bulletin boards.

The new generation of buyer, which is now either in their mid-20s or early 30s, is the new market and they will be looking in new places; those places will be located online. The question to be asking oneself is, “What media should be used to market properties to this new target market?”

There is no solid answer to this question right now I feel. But…we can certainly begin to use methods such as Facebook and Twitter to broadcast new properties that have been listed. We might also begin to look at and consider using RSS feeds to broadcast new listings to those constituents who are looking in addition to automatic emails from the MLS.

The list is almost endless when we can apply a little imagination, creativity and common sense into Internet marketing. The world will find us as long as we make our selves known. Just like the old saying, “A squeaky hinge gets the oil.”, the more we talk and contribute content to the virtual world, the more we will get noticed and increased web traffic.

One problem which could be solved is meeting people. How many young people nowadays complain that it has become increasingly difficult to meet people. Implementing specialized sites could solve this problem knowing that it is a safe haven compared to the open dating sites which attract everyone.

With a little imagination, just about everyone could come up with some way to implement a Buddypress social network in their community. Every social organization, town, and non-profit with a cause could in essence build their own little world online in a time when getting together seems to be a rarity.

All new content management systems have a unique feature to them which is not inherent to traditional HTML sites, that feature is that they generate RSS feeds right out of the box. No extra coding is needed. The feeds can then be subscribed to, imputed into social networking sites and some email marketing campaigns. Blogging systems such as WordPress, have RSS feeds pushing out the newest posts which is why they are so important to search engine optimization and marketing.

The other way of syndicating content is through pingback. In other words, each time content is created or edited, the system sends alerts to the major search engines. Pinging the search engines could be compared to the kid in school who never stopped talking or always was the attention getter. Again, blogging software has this technology built in so the search engines are made aware constantly of new posts and changes.

Whether it be through RSS feed or pingbacks, both technologies play a significant role in search engine optimization. The more the search engines are aware of changes to your site, the more often it will come back to it thus improving your rank.

So, do yourself and your website(s) a favor, take advantage of one or both of these methods of announcing new content and you will see how much your traffic will increase.

• Search Engine friendliness
• Social Media Marketing
• Email marketing

The main question that surfaces is which ones to use and in what order. The answer to this problem is not simple. If there was a simple recipe it would have been figured out by now. But a good strategy to use is:

1. Develop good content on your web site or blog
2. Include related keywords into the various pages and references to those pages
3. Utilize the different social mediums to announce it to the general public (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
4. Develop and email marketing strategy to grab the email addresses of those who have visited your site to keep them coming back.

This is just one strategy to use to develop a stream of traffic to your site. There are many other deviations, but to start this is a tried and true method.

If you’ve heard of Twitter, but haven’t seen a need for your business to take it very seriously, allow me to urge you to give it a second, more careful, look.

But before you dive in blindly, allow me to introduce you to a global technology phenomenon that individuals and small businesses, probably just like yours, are already embracing in surprising numbers.

The reason?

They recognize that marketing and communications, like everything else in business these days, has evolved. Dramatically.

And micro-blogging platforms like Twitter are central to that evolution.

So meet Twitter, not a person, but a free social and professional networking platform that allows individuals and companies (“Tweeters”) to send 140-character messages, (“Tweets”) to anyone who cares to receive them (“Followers”) multiple times a day.

There is good reason why that probably sounds like the most clever waste of valuable time that one could possibly conceive. The reason is that it can be a complete waste of time.

But only if you fail to realize that the twitter.com website itself makes a terrible first impression and is not terribly useful on its own.

However, used with the right third-party applications, like TweetDeck.com (which is free), your Twitter account can be one of the best marketing investments you can make.

But don’t just take my word for it. Leading analysts are beginning to take note.

None other than The Nielsen Company’s Michelle McGiboney recently opined, Twitter “…offers a variety of ways for marketers to reach their customers, and it’s a tool that businesses will have to learn how to utilize to their best advantage.”

Ms. McGiboney is right on target. Sadly, though, some small businesses have already written off Twitter as a transient fad unworthy of their time, thus never learning how to use it to their company’s advantage.

But its rising popularity among all age groups is, I believe, likely to entice skeptics to at least give it a try. Many are already doing exactly that.

Data recently released by internet analytics firm Compete.com, claims unique visitors to Twitter increased a whopping 1043%, year-over-year, from 1,725,977 users in May of 2008 to 19,728,619 in May of 2009.”

That’s a bit of a spike to say the least, and a spike whose source may surprise you. While it is true that the 18-25 year old segment has signed on in large numbers, according to Compete, their usage intensity pales in comparison to Twitters’ most loyal age group of – are you ready? – 35-49 year-olds who, incidentally, also comprised roughly 40% of the site’s audience as of February of this year.

Although not every age group has embraced Twitter with equal enthusiasm, Twitter’s broad penetration within the US has been impressive, with many staking their place on the global stage for conversation that Twitter provides. From President Obama in the White House (whose Twitter username is @barackobama) to Christa’s Bistro & Deli (@christasat126), closer to your house, chances are someone you may least expect is already tweeting away on Twitter.

The prospect of a large and diverse US audience is ideal for big business and government, but for small businesses on Main Street looking to find customers, usually the right audience is every bit as important as a large one. Being a small business itself of only about fifty employees, I suspect Twitter is keenly aware of this. So are savvy small business owners who have already found clever ways to nail the hyper-local dimension of the network.

One well-known example is CoffeeGroundz Café (@coffeegroundz) a small coffee House in Houston Their website, coffeegroundz.net, is worth checking out. They claim to be one of the first companies to have taken a to-go order using Twitter. Now clients not only place orders for pick-up, some customers at the café actually place orders from the comfort of their seat in the café. CoffeeGroundz’s Operations Manager J.R. Cohen, has also successfully hosted charity Tweetups (social gatherings promoted via Twitter) to raise money for worthy causes.

Another case study comes by way of Namecheap (@namecheap), an internet company that claims to rely heavily on word of mouth marketing, a strategy similar, at least in that respect, to many businesses on Main Street. Namecheap marketing specialist, Michelle Greer, has used trivia contests every hour on the hour (she used the free app from TweetLater.com to schedule the tweets) with the first replies winning a one-year domain registration. As a result of a dramatic increase in Twitter followers, Namecheap’s traffic increased by 30% when they ran a promotion in earlier this year. Growing and engaging a solid Twitter following has become so central to their sales growth that they were willing to shell out more than $15,000 worth of prizes during their most recent trivia contest, which ended yesterday.

There are countless other examples like these where small businesses needing to find new ways connect with their customers in an ailing economy discovered Twitter was just what the doctor ordered.

To be sure, Twitter is not a panacea to cure all that ails Main Street, but for the price it is definitely worth giving a fair shot.

Before you do, though, recall what I alluded to above and what Time magazine writer Steven Johnson wryly observes as well: Twitter “makes a terrible first impression…[but] it turns out to have unsuspected depth.”

New York native Hugh Macken is an internet and social media analyst with Marshfield, WI-based VMR Communications, LLC. He welcomes your comments at hugh@i.am or on Twitter at @hughmacken