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As you probably know, marketing is something you will do for as long as you are in business. It may be tempting to skip it when times are good and you have all the business you can handle, but it is important to be in the habit of marketing every day.

By doing five things a day to market your business, you keep a supply of new business in the pipeline so you are able to stay busy–and profitable–all of the time.

Five things are more than you can handle? Well, you probably could do five, but if you really think you can’t, then start by doing three things. Think you can’t do three? Even one thing a day can help, but aim for three to five marketing tasks, every single day.

You do not have to do the same things every day. In fact, it helps to mix it up a bit. I have listed some ideas for marketing activities that can keep you in front of new and existing customers. Choose some of these, and mix in other ideas of your own.

• Get out of the office. Go to a networking meeting, Chamber of Commerce function, mixer, seminar or other event where you will come into contact with possible customers as well as colleagues and vendors.

• Post to your blog. Although you do not have to post to your blog every day, once a week should be considered a bare minimum. Three times a week is excellent.

• Write a press release and upload it to your web site.

• Send the press release to your data base of media contacts or upload it to a press release distribution service. See http://www.idealady.com/pr.htm for resources.

• Shoot a short video and upload it to the web. This does not have to be a big production, just something useful and/or entertaining. And short. We are talking about a couple of minutes long. See the great stuff Jim Kukral is doing with his (almost) daily video blog at http://www.JimKukral.com/.

• Write an article and post it to your web site.

• Write an article and post it to http://www.EzineArticles.com/.

• Send something to your email list. Encourage them to visit your web site-maybe to read that new article your wrote or watch your new video.

• Answer a question at http://answers.Yahoo.com/. Be sure to link to your web site. Although the link may not help your search engine rankings (Yahoo uses no-follow links) it can bring visitors to your site.

• Create a lens (page) at http://www.Squidoo.com/. Or update your existing lens. You can see an example at http://www.Squidoo.com/mysteryshopping. Of course, you should link to your web site from your lens as well as providing useful content.

• Submit one of your recent blog posts to a blog carnival for greater exposure. You can find blog carnivals related to your topic at http://www.BlogCarnival.com/.

• Send a handwritten note to one of your customers to thank them for their business.

• Send a handwritten note to a prospect who might become a customer.

• Call a local organization and offer to speak at one of their meetings. Keep calling organizations until you manage to book a speech. It probably will not take more than a few calls to find a group that is looking for a speaker.

• Read some of the blogs that your customers would read, and post a good comment on at least one blog post. Your comment typically gets you a link to your site. Although most of the links on blog comments are no-follow and do not pass search engine “juice,” people who like what you have to say may click through to visit your site. You may also cultivate a relationship with the blogger, and that could help both of you.

• Call a customer and ask for a testimonial.

• Offer a testimonial to a business or professional you love.

• Update your Facebook profile. Send a few friend requests. (You can see my profile and friend me at http://profile.to/CathyStucker.)

Whew! That is a lot of ideas, and I have barely scratched the surface. Each of these takes very little time, but making the time to do at least a few of them every day will make a difference in your business.