Building an effective online presence is a significant undertaking. It requires time, diligence, and either knowledge or the willingness to acquire the necessary knowledge. Alternatively, you can engage a marketing company to create an effective online presence for you.nBuilding an online presence is similar to putting a jigsaw puzzle together: it must be done one piece at a time. At the start, the first few pieces look isolated and disjointed.  However, as the pieces begin to come together, the picture becomes clearer.  So will your online presence.nSteps to Building an Effective Online PresencenThe list of potential activity is almost endless.  So let’s start with the major steps to building an effective online presence.n1. Build Your Website – The first step should be to build a website. Although this can sound overwhelming for a small business, there are many free and paid tools available to assist the Do-It-Yourselfer to create a professional looking website. Alternatively, you can identify a company that can cost-effectively build a professional looking website for you.  This has to be your first step because all other steps will point your soon-to-be clients to your website.n2. Article Marketing – Article marketing is a very important step in directing customers to your website. This means writing and posting relevant, interesting articles to article directories, or placing them in on and off line media.  It also provides more links to your website, which will help to increase your rankings in the search engines.n3. Blogging – Building your own blog relating to your website will also draw a crowd. You will develop a following there while also increasing the number of links to your website.n4. Social Networks – Social networking sites are fast becoming a popular and powerful method to increase the effectiveness of your presence online. Because they are designed to be fun and keep in touch with people, it is very easy to accumulate a large crowd of companions. When you are able to integrate business with pleasure, it allows you to communicate the personality of you and your business, and build a network of business partners.n5. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) – If you’ve already put the previous four steps into practice, then your business should already begin to see some profit. When that’s the case, PPC is a great place to invest some of your profits to reap an even greater harvest. Before doing so, make sure that you understand how it works. Be cautious in your campaign until you feel confident in your ability to manage it.nWhile there are many other marketing techniques that can be added to your campaign, the ones outlined in this article are the major components that will be the core of building a potent online presence. These days, most people research every kind of business online before committing to it. A small business with a huge online presence can become a large business very quickly, so begin building yours today!nIan Gill is a Group Development Director at Business Internet Directory, www.businessinternetdirectory.com. His experience in strategic planning, marketing and advertising help BID’s clients expand their business online. For a free online directory listing, sign up at http://www.businessinternetdirectory.net/.