The other day I made a presentation to owners of new small businesses. My presentation was about how they could use the Internet effectively to get their business going. Some of them already had sites but hadn't yet put a lot of effort into it.

I talked to Frank after the meeting, and he was showing me a flyer that he was putting together for his business. It wasn't a very good design but it looked like he had spent a lot of time designing it. I think it would have been better for him to spend his time building relationships and talking to people about his business.

I see this a lot with small businesses. Most of them spend too much time and money on print material, and too little time on their web site.

If I were to give advice to someone starting a small business today, I would tell them to put their marketing budget into having a web site professionally design and then concentrate on getting visitors to the site. The print material they should concentrate on is getting a great looking, distinctive business card that they hand out all over the place.