Television and print advertisements used to be the best way to build visibility. Companies used to fight tooth and nail over who gets the prime spot. Some corporations book centerfold ads a year in advance to ensure that their print ads do not get relegated to the inside right-hand pages.

With the advent of the Internet and mobile technology, marketers are now finding more efficient ways to promote a new business, product, or service. These promotional ideas are as diverse as blogs, social networking, mobile ads, and the like. Which one is right for your business? Let us dissect them:

- Blogs started off as online diaries but over the years veered away from self-expression and toward more interesting topics such as technology, politics, fashion, design, food, and culture. As more people go to the Internet for news, financial information, recipes, and new products, blogs have become a new business tool for touching base with the market, sending promotional information, and getting ideas on how to improve a product.

- Fan sites are for products or personalities with a cult following, ranging from laptops to shoes, phones to notebooks, authors to actors. Starting a fan site for a new brand can be difficult, as you will need to build an online community, but for brands with a huge following, it's only a matter of time before your fan site grows. This only means that you need to keep improving your brand. Fan sites can help your new business and may even be an effective promotional tool in knowing your market more.

- Social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, Plurk, LinkedIn, and Twitter enable users to stay in touch online. Facebook, for one, offers fan pages for brands, in which one can ?become a fan? of a product, a company, or a personality. These sites, like blogs, lend a face to your brand and make it more accessible.

- Mobile ads enable companies to be more visible with people through their cell phones. These usually come in the form of one-liner SMS or alerts, ringtones, or wallpapers.

The Internet offers many ways to launch your new business. Promotional ideas such as blogs, fan sites, social networks, and mobile ads are just the tip of the iceberg. Try to get the feel of things before you plunge headfirst. Remember that a marketing campaign, whether online or off, has more success if it is well planned.