Blogging, online video, Facebook, LinkedIn… blah blah blah! It seems that everywhere you turn there is yet another technology or site that everyone tells you… “Oh my God! If you want to do anything with your business, you better <FILL IN THE BLANK>”. Let me tell you how it is. Blogs are a fancy word for simple websites that laypeople can update. Web videos were already in the 10s of millions by 2005, and Facebook and LinkedIn… well they just got great funding at the perfect time. The point is that all of these trends, technologies and “hot items” that executives and businesses have to jump to at the drop of dime have been around for years.\n\nI’ve always said that the web has never and will never usurp a comprehensive marketing strategy… The web does not replace a phone call, a smile, trust, loyalty…(don’t get me wrong… there are plenty of lucky overnight millionaires that can be a challenge to this). The web is simply one of many tools which people use to communicate. So NEWSFLASH: Setting up a blog is not going to increase your sales overnight, having a cooler website isn’t going to better a broken organization, and using Facebook to bog down friends, semi-friends, and straight-up strangers with an irrelavant message isn’t going to make you more popular with current and potential clients.\n\nThat said however, its presence is not to be ignored. People are online. Not only are they online (as they have been since the 90s) but they are actually LIVING, SHARING, WORKING, LOVING, BUYING, WATCHING, READING, and LEARNING online! Web 2.0 (the foundation for social networking sites, collaborating tools and interactive websites), is defined as the 2nd generation of web development. Really its just more code; more indecipherable phrases that keep developers buying 5-hour Energy. What it really is is the evolution of human beings on the web and their demand for not just photos and text, but things that integrate into LIFE!\n\nTHAT’s why being online matters. Because as a businessperson who needs to market, you have to be where your customers are. (Yes! Even YOUR customers, Mssrs Conservative Construction Managers, Manufacturers, and Government Agency Directors). You have to be where they live, where they work, where they play, etc. And although being on the Internet is not a panacea for a broken organization it is a mandatory component to any marketing and business strategy… that’s the point. (If I’m wrong I’ll take you to dinner).