A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go to Hawaii with family. While there, I got a lesson in stand up paddling, or what the locals call SUP.

The basics of stand up paddling aren’t hard. You kneel on the surfboard until you have your balance and then you plant your feet on the board and stand up.

Of course, you may feel a little wobbly as the water roils beneath you but if you’re in a pretty flat stretch of water you have a good shot at staying upright –for a few minutes at least.

Are You Letting “Irrational” Fears Keep You From Getting Started?

It wasn’t until I passed the pier that I panicked. I was suddenly overcome by an irrational fear that I was in really deep water. Irrational because I know how to swim, paddleboards float and I was close to shore. Yet, I was terrified. And then, when the teeniest wave came and the surfboard changed its balance, I fell off.

Imagine my surprise when I hit ground right away.

We were a couple hundred yards off shore but the water wasn’t even up to my waist. Of course, I didn’t know that when I let myself fall off the board and I braced myself for a deep submersion.

I hit the ground and my chest wasn’t even submerged though I was sitting on the ground. Ouch!

It’s Kind of Like Social Media

Some small business owners build social networking up into this big scary monster that’s going to lay them exposed and embarrassed like Tiger Woods circa 2010 but the reality is very different.

That is, if you have a plan in place and know what your goals are. If you don’t, take a step back and reconsider for a moment. What do you want your Facebook page to accomplish for your business?

Do you want it to bring in 10% new leads? Do you want to use it to connect with your prospects and engage them with useful and relevant information?

Do you want to build loyalty with coupons and special deals? What are your goals and how will you accomplish them?

Other Considerations

How much time do you have to devote to your social media marketing and who will maintain it? If you’d rather walk on hot coals than use social media to connect and engage with your prospects then maybe you should either choose not to do it or find someone to do it for you.

You’ll not only need to clearly outline your goals, but you’ll also need to create a plan for how to achieve them. What sort of content will your audience find useful? How will you build your audience?

Many of my clients find they need a hand getting started.

A few hours with a social media guide can set you on the right course so you don’t fall off in shallow water but rather keep paddling off into the sunset.

Promoting a product when working with online marketing (affiliate marketing, e-marketing, etc…) is one of the most important steps required, because without a good promotion sales will not occur.

In order to promote a product you must first take into consideration the niche’s needs and desires. When promoting a product the choice of words, templates for the web-site (if you have one), etc…, must try and create some psychological pressure on the customer to buy the product. If you are interested in learning more about how to affect a customer’s psychology, go to the web-site mentioned at the bottom of this article and enter the psychology area in the online marketing section.

Moving on to the different ways/tools to promote a product, it is important to mention that there are both free and paid ones.

Free ways include:

1. Article Writing

Write an article and submit it to different article databases like Ezine, Squidoo, HubPages, etc… By doing so you get many different benefits; first of all these sites have high rankings inside search engines (meaning a better exposure of your promotion). Second, some of these (like Squidoo and HubPages) share the amount of revenue they make with AdSense in your articles with you (meaning an extra income benefit); and much more.

2. Forum Posting

Write on forums and contribute (usually you may place your link in a space below posts).

3. Blog Posting

Same as with forums, but in here you will need to post the link.

4. Social Networks

Post the link to the product (or site where you promote it) on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc…, and tell those who are in your network to check it out.

5. Tell your friends

The advantage of telling your friends is based on credibility (which is a psychological factor), which will make a sale more probable.

6. E-Mail Marketing

Either send a message to everyone on your list, or create a new list (go to the site shown below to see an example, and at the same time look at the free online marketing guide).

7. S.E.O.

If you own a web-site and a domain name, using S.E.O. (Search Engine Optimization) is a great way to attract more visitors and generate more sales.

8. And virtually any other you may think of.

Since there is only two paid ways to promote a product/service online that are actually worth mentioning, the following list will mention only these two:

1. A web-site

Creating a web-site doesn’t need to be difficult or expensive, there are several different ways to accomplish this (more on the link shown below).

2. PPC

PPC (Paid Per Click) is a system where you pay for every click made on an ad you posted. The most common and probably useful ones are Google’s and Yahoo’s programs.

So basically not only there are more free ways to promote a product/service you are offering (or affiliated with), but they are more cost-effective (considering they are free and that they may remain for unlimited time). However, do consider getting a web-site, since this may allow a higher conversion rate, and more sales.