Inbound marketing is something that most small business owners have heard of but few have implemented consistently. But for those who do take the plunge, many are experiencing a more cost effective and in many ways a more successful form of marketing, than traditional outbound marketing such as direct mail, trade shows and print, radio and TV advertising.

This is a question I get a lot lately. This feature of WordPress can be confusing, and throw in keywords for search engine optimization and people definitely get that glazed over look. And the more I read other good posts on the topic, the more I realize that there are a lot of opinions on what they are and how they are used.

Small business owners ask me a lot of Facebook marketing questions, so I decided to compile the 10 most often asked questions and answer them in an eBook specifically for small business owners.

These most popular questions include:

Should my business be on Facebook?
What does it mean to market my business using Facebook?

Have you come up with a great name for your business or a service you offer?
Did you have a great logo designed that is unique and memorable?
Did you know that your name and logo are valuable assets of your business?

Many businesses don’t understand the value of registering a trademark for your identifiable assets, but doing so allows you to protect your brand in the event someone infringes on your mark.

Marketing your business is a process similar to a home renovation: you need a general contractor to call the shots and make everything fit together.

I made this statement on my Facebook page and now will explain why this is an important analogy. I come in contact with many small business owners that hire different companies that “specialize” in one particular online marketing task.

Creating well-designed, custom Facebook pages to welcome your visitors and create valuable offers is important for making your page stand out and encouraging your visitors to “like” your page. This connection creates a communications channel between your brand and your fans.

Since the major Facebook page upgrade in March, however, creating custom landing pages has gone from relatively easy for the non-technical page administrator using Static FBML to relatively hard using an iFrame application.

There are many people who offer online marketing services. There are also many people who call themselves online marketing experts because they know how to: Build a WordPress website, implement search engine optimization (SEO), set up your Google Places page and other local business listings, develop an AdWords campaign, send out an email marketing campaign or create a Facebook Business Page with the new iFrames landing tabs. All good stuff and important. But do these experts know marketing?

Engaging your Facebook Fans and growing your community is really important to a small business marketing plan. Many blog posts review all the good things to do to promote your Facebook page and grow your fan base, but there are tactics that can cause a major reduction. According to a study by ExactTarget and CoTweet, “More Than 90% of Consumers Unsubscribe, Unfan or Unfollow Because of Too Frequent, Irrelevant or Boring Communications”.

Blogging is hard and a lot of work. I realize that some people make it look easy, but not all of us are naturally talented writers. If we were, we’d be writing the next bestseller. But with all the marketing benefits of blogging, we need to overcome the objections and add regular blogging to our marketing activities.

Most small business marketing is done online where first impressions, relevant content and social media integration are key requirements for achieving visibility, which ultimately should result in quality inbound leads. Your website, which is the hub of your online presence, needs to be created on a platform that makes it easy for you to maintain, add new content and keep it fresh for your ideal clients.