Here are the top 4 things that small businesses must put on their 2010 marketing ‘todo’ lists:

1. Monitor Online Mentions

More and more people are blogging, posting, and twittering about their experiences, good and bad. Small business owners must monitor the web for these mentions and respond.  First off, it’s good karma to thank people for nice comments.  They will be impressed that you are listening.  Secondly, there is only one way to deal with negative comments or reviews, and that is to respond.  A positive, helpful and humble response will go a long way to turning a potential negative into a positive in the eyes of other readers.  Obvious plug: StepRep is great for this!

2.  Connect to Everyone you Know

You may ask what’s the point of friending everyone on Facebook, following people on Twitter and connecting on Linkedin.  Simply, each platform provides a way to communicate with your connections and you will find different acquaintances on each network.   Social publishing solutions will allow you to easily create one update and publish to multiple accounts.   There are other solutions that create innovative ways to leverage your connections too. MashedIn for example lets you show people how they may be connected to you.  This is like getting a warm introduction to someone who is otherwise an anonymous visitor on your blog or website.

3.  Communicate

Small businesses have to make use of their social networks.  If you go through the work of creating connections, use these platforms to push updates to your followers.  The follow up step here is to engage in conversation, but don’t worry about putting the cart before the horse.  It only takes a few minutes to publish an update.  What should you publish?  Keep updates relevant to your followers and be interesting.

4.  Ask for Recommendations

A lot of business owners are hesitant to overtly ask for recommendations.  In the past, a lot of website owners published testimonials.  The problem with those is that few people trusted that “Bob from Dallas” was a real people who provided that testimonial.  Online ratings or reviews have provided a more reliable solution for consumers.  Not all review sites force users to use a verified account, meaning it is easy to game many of them.   But in a late 2008 study of 2,445 US online consumers (by NATRO), 82% considered user-generated reviews “extremely valuable or valuable”.  Further, EConsultancy showed that 90% of people trust recommendations from people they know.  So reviews and recommendations from places like Facebook Fan pages, LinkedIn or StepRep are hugely valuable.

For businesses that are not really leveraging technology to get the word out, it does not take a lot of effort to start managing reputation and building connections that can pay off in terms of real future business.  It just takes a small commitment to take the first steps.