In order to evolve as a business professional, you have to see yourself as a student of innovation. This means steeling yourself to the reality that you have to be on top of all the latest technological trends. Otherwise you risk falling behind and missing important signals. The lay of the land right now with regard to entrepreneurship is heavily geared towards online visibility. There is incredible movement right now in the worlds of e-commerce, search engine optimization, and Internet marketing. Any business plan with a strong foundation will be heavily invested in all three of these.

A business that is not online is no longer a business in today’s world, it’s a ghost. And a business that is online but lacking robust tools for optimization flirts dangerously with a phantom existence. Think about it logically. If you’re looking for a business contact with the white pages and you don’t find it, you’re probably going to assume it’s gone out of business, or is so behind the times that it’s not worth the effort. A business that doesn’t have a great online presence isn’t going to show up in search engines and consumers won’t be able to find it.

Once consumers find you, now what? Whatever service or product you’re offering doesn’t have to be ground-breaking in order to present it and market it in ground-breaking ways. You know the saying, “we don’t sell the steak, we sell the sizzle.” That’s how you have to think nowadays. On the Internet, you have to sell the sizzle, figuratively speaking. When people find your product or service, the manner in which they have come across you will impact how they view you. For example, if tech-savvy consumers find you as the result of a clever Internet marketing campaign, they’re going to feel like they’re in good hands. Products and services are now subject to the laws of innovation. The manner with which they are presented should be just as innovative as the thing itself. You wouldn’t advertise a cloud service with a newspaper ad, would you? No, you’d launch a viral Internet campaign using Twitter, YouTube videos and email marketing.

A business entrepreneur should think of himself/herself as a spider, a reverse spider. You’re spinning a web that will draw in as many clients, investors, customers and innovators as possible. And once you’ve got them in your web you don’t want to drain their lifeblood, you want to provide them with the energy they will need to make your business grow. Using SEO, Internet marketing and industry innovations, you want to provide continual upgrades and consistently retool your ideas, your resources, and your areas of expertise.