Today Chris Brogan put out a post called “5 Things Small Businesses Owners Should Do Today Online” which is an excellent overview on creating a basic social media strategy for a company. The jist – start a blog, listen to twitter, get involved in social networks. This post should have been titled “5 Things Small Businesses Should Do To Get Started In Social Media”. Why the suggested change in title? Chris left out extremely important facets of developing a well rounded web strategy.

Here’s our list. If you are just getting started in optimizing your website to be more than a brochure placeholder, here are our “5 Things Small Businesses NEED To Do Online“.

1. Create Goals

If you don’t have goals for your website than your website has no purpose. Goals give you something to strive for and metrics to measure. Goals give your website purpose. And most importantly – goals drive business. That’s what your website is there for right?

2. Get Local

A vast number of small businesses operate in geographic based markets. If your small business has not created a local web str