I recently attended an event for small business owners.  A panel discussion was being held and was moderated by Marilyn Johnson, Vice President of Market Development for IBM.  She started the presentation by asking the audience a question.  She asked, "How many of you in the audience are doing business internationally?"  A couple of hands in the audience were raised.  She then ased the audience, "How many of you in the audience have a website?"  All hands shot up almost in unison.  She then said, "Hello, what does the www in your domain names stand for?  World Wide Web!". 

 

What so many of us don't realize is that if you have a website on the Internet you are available to anyone anywhere in the world.  We are all global companies.  We need to start thinking about that and using it to the benefit of our companies.

 

There is a great article that was just posted entitled, "How Big is Your Global Sphere?", it is written by Laurel Delaney from Global Trade Source Ltd.   It talks about some of the tools available to get the word out about our company's.  We need to realize that the Internet and technology provides a level playing field for our businesses.  You can't necessarily tell the size of the company by reviewing their website. 

 

These days the only way to compete successfully is to differentiate your company from the others.  The Internet is an effective and inexpensive way to to that.