Whether your business is fully online or not, we all know the drill about being found online. Or at least we think we do.

We tell ourselves to buy ads in search engines, because that’s where people look when they want to find something. To an extent, that’s the truth. But it’s not the whole truth, so help me God. (What a strange expression.)

To see this clearly, we can simply turn to our offline lives. I once needed someone to assess whether we needed to pull up the carpet in the basement due to too much flooding. The first thing I did was call someone I already knew did something similiar. They weren’t available so I asked my friends and family if they knew anyone. Of the people I could reach, most of them didn’t have basements that flooded, but made suggestions. Finding the suggested paths would take too long (in my mind, I needed someone today), I looked online. Before searching I went to some local home improvement sites I knew about. Then I tried a couple of sites with national audiences. Then I did a few searches, a general search, then finding nothing, got more and more specific until I game up.

After finding no one with the searches I made, I then went and looked in the phone book. Finally I found someone to ask who actually referred me to someone else.

Let’s break that down.

First I sought out a person I knew already. Then I wanted people my friends or family knew. ONLY after finding my resources and their advice unsatisfactory, did I go looking online.

But what happened when I looked online? The phrases I used to find someone did not yield the results I wanted. Local businesses in my area either aren’t catching on to the fact that people use the web so often to find information or they are not producing content on the subject their clients are searching for, and hence, not getting ranked for them.

Even worse, the topics that their clients need help aren’t being discussed at other sites in connection with their names. I saw a bunch of clues in forums, blogs, even social bookmarking sites that helped me figure out that it was probably a good idea to take up the carpet. But no one to help if I didn’t want to do it myself.

That made me wonder, where are the small entrepreneurs who work for these companies - why aren’t they, or someone who works for them, doing more to be proactive in these discussions? Then, when someone like me looks for information about my problem, in places where I might gather online, or through a search, it would lead me to their site for the solution. They could do things like:

1. Write articles about the types of problems a homeowner could have, but not be willing to fix on their own.
2. Comment on the types of articles written by do-it-yourselfers, offering additional tips
3. Create a blog and make blog posts about the types of problems their clients have had and how someone like me should know to call them, maybe with some tips on what I could do on my own in the meantime.
4. Join discussions in communities where they are being held, with links back to their site
5. Create content on sites that can redirect traffic to them

The tactics you see online businesses use to get the word out about what they do can help you too. Just because your business is offline, doesn’t mean you can’t create a site that is more than a billboard– offline businesses can turn their sites into 24 hour a day online lead generators.

We’ll keep talking about this topic all week.