Is your new website online yet? So far, I've shared with you ideas for creating a site and monetizing it. Now it's time to

talk marketing. In a recession, when you're on a shoestring or no budget at all, marketing can be difficult. Here are five ways to reach potential customers without spending a dime.

• Build Your Own Buzz -- Send out a press release when you launch your online business or introduce a new product. Popular sites like www.1888PressReleasecom, www.PRLog.org and www.Free-Press-Releasecom will distribute your release free.

BizBytes 101 Tip -- Court the media with newsworthy press releases -- no fluff. Take a look at national trends in your industry, write a release with an interesting local angle or useful tip and pitch it to a reporter or editor. If it's newsworthy, it will get noticed.

• Get on the List -- Get your business information listed free in online directories like City

Search.com, Yellow

Pages.com and Merchant

Circle.com.

BizBytes 101 Tip -- Yahoo Local, Google Local Business Center and Google Maps also offer free business listings that will expose your company to new customers.

• Engage Your Audience With E-mail -- Create an e-newsletter for your company and send it out on a regular basis. Be consistent and offer great content people can use to keep them clicking through to your site.

Create one free in Microsoft Word and distribute it in Outlook or use a service like Mail Chimp to do it for you for as low as $10 per month.

BizBytes 101 Tip -- Like Mail Chimp, Constant

Contact.com, Contactology and Stream Send are cheap options for you to create an e-newsletter, distribute it and track how your customers view your content. Use the free, 30-day trial each service offers to get started.

• Tweet Your Own Horn -- Most major corporations are doing it and so should you! Airlines like JetBlue and online retailers like Zappos.com are using Twitter to engage and inform their customers.

BizBytes 101 Tip -- Set up a Twitter feed to notify customers about sales, contests and order tracking, suggests Cristina Sotolongo, director of new media at Beber Silverstein Group in Miami. It's a great way to keep your customers focused on what you have to offer. While you're at it, Sotolongo suggests, create a page for your firm on Facebook and start friending your way to new potential business.

• Bookmark Your Business -- Use free social bookmarking tools like Newsvine, Google Bookmarks, Propeller and Digg to market your site to the masses.

Social bookmarking, in plain English, is essentially tagging a website and viewing it later, except you're not saving it just to your favorites list. You're saving it to the Web and because what you've bookmarked is online, millions of other people can see, creating instant exposure for your business.

BizBytes 101 Tip -- Get involved in the bookmarking communities you select by creating a profile, adding friends and posting regularly. Get your friends to vote for what you bookmark, including your site. Popular content tends to rank well with search engines, too.

[miamiherald]