If your business is retail, this is the post for you.  Mashable.com reviewed 10 startups that can help you to get your products “out there” on the Internet.

Now, it used to be that webmasters had to add retail websites and their products to directories but these days, it’s all about social media.  Meaning that the shop owner has to actually interact with their customers.  Yeah, I know, it’s more time consuming, but it’s more personal for the shopper.  And for small retailers, that’s their ONE major advantage – they can make the shopping experience very personal.  So check out these 10 online arenas!  I’m sure you’ll find at least one that’s suited to your products.

1) Mulu.me

Launched in December 2011, Mulu is a social platform for sharing the things you love and making the world a better place at the same time. Mulu allows users to make product recommendations, ask for suggestions and earn money for themselves or a social cause they want to support.

Mulu CEO and founder Amaryllis Fox says, “Zooey Deschanel and HelloGiggles are using their Mulu to support 826 LA, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.”

2) Stippleit.com

Stipple leverages cloud services to power interactive commerce and content inside of web images. When people mouse-over a “Stippled” image, pins display useful information about the people, places, products and prices shown. The company’s patent pending technology syncs these commerce and content tags to images within its network.

“Brands lose tens of millions of dollars in revenue each month simply by not tagging their products in web photos,” says Rey Flemings, founder and CEO of Stipple. “Editorial images generate billions of pageviews, and if your product is in a photo, but people can’t find out what the product is, then your brand loses marketing value and revenue.”

3) Buyosphere.com

Founded by digital pioneer and author, Tara Hunt, Buyosphere is the Quora for fashion, interiors and retail.

Want to find “the best iPad cases for under $100 bucks?” Instead of searching through thousands of irrelevant images, Buyosphere allows you to ask the question to its community, and then your peers make recommendations (with direct product links). Even better, Buyosphere was built with brands in mind — the companies are encouraged to actively participate on the platform.

4) Stylmee.com

Launched in December 2011, Stylmee is the first iPad app that allows users in the fashion and interior design communities to create virtual 3D boutiques. Users are able to “design” their boutiques with custom flooring, fixtures, furnishing, accessories and apparel from their favorite retailers and brands. For every action, users earn points for their activities and can cash them in for retailer rewards.

The app combines online shopping and product sharing (via Twitter and Facebook integration) with social game mechanics in order to increase brand engagement. For brands and retailers, the application offers the ability to directly showcase the latest collections and obtain feedback and exposure through game mechanics. Products are viewed and judged worthy of placement within members’ personal boutiques.

5) Svpply.com

Considered Pinterest’s primary competitor, Svpply allows site members to keep track of the things they want to buy, and to browse a personal feed of products from across the web, curated and filtered by the people and stores they find interesting. Users with blogs can embed their Svpply activity via widgets and retailers can integrate an “add to Svpply” button on their ecommerce sites.

6) Lyst.com

Lyst is a social shopping and product bookmarking site specifically targeted to fashion. The site allows users to follow their favorite designers, boutiques, bloggers and stylists for updates in their personally made style feeds. “Lysting items is a form of self-expression,” says Chris Morton, CEO of Lyst in an interview with Business Of Fashion. “The act of publishing their lysts also enables users to build their reputation within the online fashion world.”

7) Nuji.com

A hybrid of Lyst and Svpply, Nuji allows users to save items they like from any online store using the platform’s web bookmarklet tool. Users can clip apparel from retail websites they like and purchase the items later. Plus, they can follow interesting users and earn rewards and discounts from retailers by tagging their favorite items.

Olioboard.com

For aspiring interior designers and overall design enthusiasts, Olioboard is an easy way to communicate complex artistic concepts visually. Use it as a brainstorming tool or simply to visually organizing thoughts.

Users are able to share, embed and email their creations to their blogs, as well as shop retailer products within the site. Olioboard plans to launch iPad and mobile apps mid-2012.

Olioboard was created by web design company Keele UX Inc. “Our main goal for Olioboard is to provide a design and decor-focused creative tool that essentially allows members to get inspired and ‘try it, before they buy it,’” says founder Sheilah MacSporran.

9) GetVega.com

GetVega is list-creating service based entirely on visual content. GetVega users access the platform for product comparisons and reviews, create lists of products, and write reviews. Users can also use it as a social (or private) bookmarking site. Currently, the site is generating an impressive amount of content, from visual cookbooks to theme bars in Paris to the best guitarists. Users even create the proverbial “bucket list.”

Once a public list is created, other users can contribute (see: the quest for the best chocolate) and rate the quality of a list and its contents. With a much broader audience than just fashion, GetVega offers retailers the chance to create context between their brands and their customers’ lifestyles.

10) Styloko.com

Styloko is the new kid on the block when it comes to product sharing and discovery. The site is hybrid of Pinterest, The Cools and what Google Boutiques wanted to be. Styloko is worth paying attention to because it caters to fashion, art and industry insiders – those with advanced knowledge of not so mainstream products.

The site allows users to add items they find to boards, upload images via the site’s mobile app, and set up specific sale alerts for the brands they follow.

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own little worlds that we forget about what’s happening all around us. It happens to everyone. It also happens to businesses.

I think one of the most important factors to remember, when it comes to marketing, (especially on the Internet) is to understand what your audience needs. And because the Internet can be analyzed so intensely we can get the answers to these questions so, lets see how to do that.

What Does Your Audience Need or Want?

What do these people want? There are a few ways to do this.

1) Go to samepoint.com and type in a keyword phrase. Make it as relevant as possible (meaning don’t be afraid to type in 4-5 keywords). Something like “help for depression in atlanta”.
2) You’ll get a list of “conversations” from several social media programs and a list of related terms.
3) You can scan through these posts to read what folks are looking for.

For this phrase that I typed in I found…

a) Several mentions about postpartum depression. This then gives me an niche to target. If the numbers of people looking for help for postpartum depression in Atlanta is high enough, that’s certainly something that I would want to target.

b) I looked at the “social tone” for each post and that gave me some other areas that I should look at:
anxiety
help with
traumatic
humor for
These phrases give me ideas for additional information that I can add to my Internet marketing campaign.

Where Is Your Audience

Using the tool, socialmention.com, you can type in your keyword phrases and you’ll get an idea of where your audience is hanging out. For this particular phrase I found that folks looking for “help with depression in atlanta” are in…

digg.com
youtube.co
yahoo.com
google_video.com
bing.com
Yahoo News
and others.

This tells me that I want to submit articles and participate at digg.com and youtube.com.

So, I better get cracking on some articles and some videos!

Hope this was helpful for you!

Lately I’ve been seeing this question pop up here and there, “How many hours should you spend on SEO / Internet marketing?” I think like anything having to do with SEO and Internet marketing, the answer “depends” on a variety of factors. But I thought I would share what I do for my clients’ SEO campaigns.

Activity – Analyze Website Statistics
Time Spent – anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour
Purpose – the reason for looking through the website stats is not just to see how many visitors came to the site, it’s really to see how the website is doing. What I mean is, what pages are bringing in visitors (and which ones are not?), what keyword phrases are working (and which ones aren’t?), what call to action buttons are working (and which ones are not?). Basically, I’m looking for ways to improve the site, page by page, paragraph by paragraph. That’s the real purpose of website stats analysis.

Activity – Optimization Actions
Time Spent – anywhere from 1 hour to 3 hours
Purpose – This is where the nitty gritty of SEO really happens. If I discover that a particular page is not indexed in the search engines, I need to find out why. I need to correct any broken links throughout the site, or remove a duplicate description tag or increase the content on the website page or re-write the content somehow. I also need to make sure that all the tags are correctly written on the page. This is usually done during the initial SEO but if phrases change, links to and from the page change, and of course, search engine “rules” change – then all that means that the tags have to be changed as well. Optimization is a constant, never ending process of tweaking and re-tweaking website pages to get the most out of them.

Activity – New Keyword Research
Time Spent – anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes
Purpose – Finding new keyword phrases is not really that hard. Finding really good keyword phrases, well, that can be a bit difficult. The reason is that there are certain numbers you have to look up for each keyword phrase. I mean, is the phrase too competitive? Is the phrase typed in often enough to bring in traffic? Is the phrase relevant in your geography? Is the phrase the kind of phrase that “window shoppers” are typing in or is it one that “buyers” are typing in? If a page were added about this phrase, where would be the best spot to add it on the website? All these issues have to be answered before the phrases are chosen and sent out to the clients. The truth is, this one little service that we give our clients, each and every month, is the BEST way that they can get more and more traffic. But unfortunately, because it involves some work on their part (they write the content or at least pay someone to) – this is the least acted on!

Activity – Competition Research
Time Spent – anywhere from 1 hour to 2 hours
Purpose – I don’t think there’s anyone in business who doesn’t have a constant eye out for their competition. Internet marketing is no different. Knowing what the competitor down the street or the competitor on the first page of Google is doing can give you an edge in not just keeping up with them but surpassing the competition. The beauty of the Internet is that you can get quite a bit of information on your competition, without ever having to leave your desk!

Activity – Submissions
Time Spent – anywhere from 1 hour to 4 hours
Purpose – Although these days, it’s not necessary to submit websites to search engines, it still is helpful to submit press releases, articles and to find local directories and of course, niche directories to submit your information to. Especially now a days with social media sites such as Foursquare, Yelp, UrbanSpoon and so many others, it’s important to claim your space and be seen. Years ago you would have never imagined opening a business without getting listed in the Yellow Pages. Today, the same can be said but instead of just the Yellow Pages, there are literally hundreds of online sites to get listed on.

Activity – Keeping Up With The News
Time Spent – anywhere from 1 hour to 3 hours per day (every day)
Purpose – The Internet is amazing, it’s wonderful and at the same time, it’s frustrating and difficult. There are so many new events, new technology, new techniques, new algorithims, new engines, new online sources, etc. that keeping up with all of this information and sorting out what is working and what isn’t working can be daunting and is, absolutely, never ending. I scan through at least 50 articles per day and that’s certainly not keeping up! I have several thousand backlogged that I still haven’t gotten to. So, if you think that keeping up with what’s new online is not part of your Internet Marketing time frame, you’re in for a failed marketing campaign.

So, how many hours SHOULD you spend on SEO or Internet Marketing?

The minimum time I spend on a client’s marketing is 3.5 hours per month (not including reading up on new information). Of course, the size of the website, the willingness of the client to make changes on their site, all play a part in how much I can do on the website. And it goes without saying, that the more “action” that takes place on a website, the more it changes, the more new information is added, the more traffic the site will get.

Can all this be expensive if you outsource it? Sure – there’s no doubt, time is money and you’re not just purchasing time here, you’re also purchasing knowledge. But the truth is, if you are disciplined enough and if you are willing enough to put the time and energy into marketing your own website, it can be done. Would you be just as successful? Maybe. After all, who knows your business better than you do? But, then again, the Internet marketer knows the Internet – so, it’s a bit of a balancing act!

Know what you’re getting into, what’s needed to do the job of Internet marketing and you’ll be better off, not only with the campaign but with your expectations for that campaign as well!

If you haven’t been keeping up with the changes in the Internet Industry – let me be the one to tell you that 2010 brought about MANY, MANY changes.

In 2010:

1) Google changed their algorithim 300 times.  That means they tweaked and changed the rules of how websites are indexed 300 times.  They plan to continue this process.
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2) Social Media has exploded and if you don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account, well, you won’t be able to compete on the Internet.

3) Video has exploded.  Youtube traffic has increased to the point that it’s the second most used search engine on the planet.   With the integration now of Internet TV Boxes, it’s just a matter of time before Internet video marketing grows even more.

4) QR codes began hitting the mainstream.   Wrapping paper made of QR codes linking to videos.  A gift wrapping a gift!

It’s intense, I know.  So much happening, so little time to keep up and even less time to actually implement the changes!  Believe me, I know!!

But, with all that being said, I’m very happy to be able to say that I am taking my company, Eckweb, through this storm!  We’re determined to continue providing affordable Internet marketing services for small businesses and in today’s economy, that’s saying alot!

Our goal in 2011 is to work closer with small businesses and help them to understand all these complexities!  As a small business owner, you don’t have to know the details of every change that has to take place on your website, or your Internet marketing campaign, but you do need to understand the concepts.  It’s this fact (understanding the concepts) that can help you make educated decisions on where to take your Internet marketing campaign.

That’s our goal, to make Internet Marketing Clear and Simple.

Check out our new site at eckweb and keep on checking as we begin the process of streamlining each section of the website to make the entire Internet marketing process for you simpler.