A new report brings further evidence that businesses are cutting their marketing budgets with more mainstream outlets, such as radio, TV and print, while aiming to build their on-line brand reputation. The joint research, by Econsultancy and Exact Target, estimates that there will be a 17% increase in digital marketing spending by the end of this year.

It’s thought that businesses are keen to direct their efforts into more on-line marketing strategies because they are cheaper than more traditional forms of advertising. It could also be that on-line marketing is more accessible and appears fresher and more exciting.

More than 70% of participants in the survey said they were increasing budgets for social media marketing through sites such as Facebook and Twitter, while 65% plan to increase their budget for on-site social media.

Other findings include:

* 41% of marketers plan to decrease spending on print and radio marketing in 2010.

* 64% of companies plan to increase budgets in SEO.

* 56% plan to increase budgets for mobile marketing.

* 54% plan to increase budgets for email marketing.

* 51% plan to increase budgets for paid search.

So you all know what a blog is. But there are still folks that need convincing of the merits of blogging and including a blog on their business website or e-commerce site. According to those in the know the reasons for having a website include:

*71% claim to have greater visibility in their industry

* 63% of e-retail and e-commerce sites report that clients purchased products and services

* 56% state their company is now regarded as a thought leader

So if you don’t have a blog it’s time to get with the 21st century. And if you don’t know the first thing about writing a blog then why not employ someone to do this for you? There is a growing industry of professional blog writers. Ask your web designer for contact details or go in search of a good blogger on-line.

We’re not sure how relevant this blog is to the average on-line businessman but it certainly makes you wonder. Posted via a video interview on Google’s Webmaster Central YouTube channel comes an answer from SEO guru Matt Cutts when asked the question: “How many bots/spiders does Google currently have crawling the web?”

And here’s what Cutts said: “It’s important to realise that it’s not really actual robots or actual spiders out there…instead, it’s banks of machines …at Google’s data centres who open up an HTTP connection and request a page and then get it back. So any bank of machines (even 50 machines) could easily be requesting a bunch of different content.

“We try to refresh a large fraction of the web every few days. So it turns out you really don’t need a ton of machines. Even a relatively small amount of machines operating in parallel and fetching pages in parallel can really be able to crawl of find new pages on the web in a very quick way.”

So, err, make of that what you will. Perhaps it’s enough to know that there are lots of machines doing lots of searches all the time.

Social media is one of the fastest growing marketing tools – and it’s cheap – so the chances are that most on-line businesses will want to make the most of it.

But to be effective you need a good plan as random twittering and facebooking really won’t cut it for your business.

The key points for effective social media marketing are:

Plan a strategy: What is it that you want to promote or inform people about? Do you have a specific audience? What do you hope to get out of the marketing campaign? Think about all these points and then come up with a strategic, point-by-point method of attack.

Get to know the sites: Before you start your proper campaign have a play with the social media sites. Find out how all the tools work and look at how others utilise the sites. The more you know before you start the more likely it is that your marketing campaign will work.

Make it worthwhile: You will not engage people on social media sites unless you have something significant or valuable to talk about. It’s rather like a real-time social gathering. If you’re got nothing interesting to talk about then no-one is going to bother to listen. Try offering interesting information or promote something exciting and new.

The art of conversation: Whether you’re talking face-to-face or on a social media site there are a number of points to remember in the “art of good conversation”. For example you might engage a conversation by making someone laugh, or think, or reflect. And you might find that they want to share in your thoughts, comment or engage in conversation. You are looking for an opening of conversation channels and not a dead end.

Know your audience: Social media chats can seem very niche but if you’re in a particular business sector then this is good news. Find the right audience and people will listen to you and, importantly, engage in chats with you. Once you have their interest then you can begin to market away.

Have patience: Social media marketing can take some time to filter through to improving your business. Keep at it and make sure you are regularly posting and chatting.

Google’s Social Search tool is now up and running ­ – and sorting search results according to an individuals social (media) circle. (Although this doesn’t include Facebook.)

Social Search is one of the many ways that SEO is changing and it’s now important that businesses have as many “connections” via social networking sites as possible.

So how do you go about tapping into Social Search? First you need a Google account. Through your Google account you will be able to see a list of connections that have been pulled from Google Contacts. For example, if you have Twitter listed then anyone you’re connected to could be utilised for potential search results.

The idea behind this new form of SEO is that if your website is connected to people, then search results
from those people will have relevance because you know and trust them.

According to Google you can “improve social search results for your friends and contacts by linking to content you have created such as blogs, photos and videos on your Google profile”.

Why not give the Social Search tool a try? When searching for something you should now find that a search result throws up relevant pages from your friends and contacts, as well as the other list of websites. For example, if you try a search for a pair of new walking boots it could be that one of the search results is a page from a friend’s blog that talks about their fabulous new walking boots.

So the Social Search is obviously important for businesses as it means there is greater potential for appearing on someone else’s search results.

So that’s another reason why you should be doing a lot more blogging, social networking and generally connecting with lots of others on numerous social media sites.

In a competitive Internet and ecommerce world it’s vital that your website is doing its job. Every so often it’s worth giving your website and its design a maintenance check-up. Here we bring you a check-list:

Title tags: They are free to create and will undoubtedly boost your search ranking potential. Make sure you’ve utilised your title tags on every page of your website. Ask your website designer to sort this if it hasn’t been done already.

Site maps: Almost all sites will benefit from a site map. There’s really no downside to creating one, just as long as you remember to update it.

Links: Make sure that visitors to your site can easily identify links to various pages etc. It’s an easy CSS change and one that will really benefit the user experience of your ecommerce of business website.

Check the text: Ensure that the font you’ve used on your site looks modern and is easy to read. Read over the site content again to check that there are no spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. And keep the content updated.

Web analytics: If you do not have analytics in place, for example Google analytics, how will you know how your website and business is performing? This is simple to set up and so worth keeping an eye on.

Cross browser compatibility: In other words, check that your website displays and functions in non-IE browsers. Via web analytics you can see the top five browser/OS combinations that you should test your site in.