Three Tips That Will Change the Way You Promote Your Site
Promotion is something that every single website needs. Even the largest of corporations need to advertise to retain their positions as market leaders. On this website we typically all have small websites in the grand scheme of things, so the need for cheap and effective promotion tactics to help build your website traffic is critical. In fact,that's why you are reading this article right now, it is why you are a member of any promotion or admin forum that allows you post your link. Promotion forums are only so useful, and to reach those who are specifically interested in your niche is a harder task. Promotion and admin forums are fantastic for gaining knowledge, conducting exchanges, and finding staff; occasionally they may find you a member or two, but to find the members you want you need to look elsewhere, you need to work harder and expose yourself to new outlets of promotion. Let's go into the different ways you can promote your site.
Promote your site using social networks
Most forum administrators believe that social networks are a killer of their communities, for this reason, many people avoid delving too deeply into promotion of your site via a social network. This is your first mistake. Social networks are critical to mass exposure of your website and the amount of traffic that can be generated using this method is extraordinary. Most people believe that by just posting the occasional link to your site, or the latest and greatest discussion threads on a forum is good for social marketing, they are wrong. Social networking is so much than just that and this guide will show you how to use it more effectively.
A guide to using social networks to promote your site.
- As a starting point make sure that you have a well presented social network account. By this I mean make sure your handle/username is the same as the website name, make sure that you have good quality graphics for both your avatar and banner image (you can find cheap designers to create these on sites like Fiverr). Doing this will help create a professional image, instantly drawing in people who stumble across your social account to make sure they know what it is you are doing through the graphics and the bio.
- Follow/like niche relevant accounts. There are likely many accounts, whether official or fan accounts that relate to your niche. Give them a follow if they have a decent following already as the likelihood is that doing this will gain you a few followers already. Above that, they are likely to be sharing some good niche related content, replying to those sorts of posts and interacting with them in anyway, without directly promoting, helps you with indirect promotion. Users following these key social accounts will see your passion and will build your presence within the community.
- Join in the relevant conversations. Using Twitters hashtag feature search for relevant tags and see the conversation. There is likely to be many people asking a certain question or just posting something interesting. Try your best as a passionate member of the niche to respond to questions, favorite good posts, and discuss interesting things with like-minded people. Do not directly promote to them, spamming links will scare people away, sharing a link with followers a couple times a week is fine - just don't make that define your social account. By helping others the people you help will be more inclined to help you, this involves following your accounts and checking out any links you share at a later date.
- Be active. There is nothing worse than a dead social account, filled with links to pages of a forum or website helplessly trying to increase traffic. Make sure you are posting interesting content that is niche related. Include images, retweets and anything of the sorts without always thinking you need to send out a link. You should spend an hour or so a day on social networking to help build up an audience. It won't take away content from your site, instead you are likely to find many more people willing to join in.
Promote your site using offline promotion
Users of communities like Forum Promotion seem to be under the impression that the only way to promote your website is through the use of online methods like promotion bulletin boards. There are many ways that you can create successful promotion offline too. Many of these are free or cheap methods that can work if you direct it towards the right people. Try something in terms of offline promotion and see how far you get with it, it is worth a shot! Here are some examples:
- Tell your friends and family: I get it, sometimes opening up about a website you have created can be tough and embarrassing at first. However, it seems a lot worse than it actually is. Just tell your friends and family if you know they are interested in the same thing as you. You are likely to get some of them to come and join in with the content you share, which means easy and active members from offline promotion.
- Leaflet distribution: If you have a word processor and a printer you can likely create some basic leaflets really easily and cost effectively. Drop them off yourself to nearby roads and see the results. It is something that is definitely worth a try for the cheap cost. Has it worked? Take it to the next step with distribution on a wider scale; contact your local newsagents and pay a small sum to have your leaflet distributed with the newspaper deliveries.
Promote your site using niche related websites
But they will say no I hear you cry, wrong I proclaim in response! Seriously, niche related websites don't hate each other if you are all of similar size and are obviously passionate about the niche and not the profits. Find niche related websites using search engines and any key terms you can think of. Find fan websites and blogs easily and send them an email. Tell them about your website or forum and really sell the benefits that the website brings. Ask for a little link to be posted on their website and explain how it will benefit the visitors to the website you want the link to be posted on. This isn't competition, this is helping visitors get the best experience, you need to sell this idea to the site owner. The worst thing they can say is no, but the chances are that you will get a couple of responses saying yes and this will help you generate visits to your website. Tied with this you should also be leaving comments on niche related blogs with the URL section linking back to your project, not only will this help with SEO but good quality responses are likely to entice people to coming to your site to see what else you have to say.
That is all I have for this article, well over 1000 words to help you promote your site. I hope I have managed to help at least some of you who have bothered to read this. This article was created because I feel not enough people who own forums, blogs and websites actually think about other methods of promotion and as a result end up demotivated because they don't reach enough people to grow. If this article goes down well, I will try to get some more articles posted at the Forum Promotion community. Please let me know what you think in the comments section.
