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ARTICLES WRITTEN BY MATTHEW LYLES HORNBOSTEL BROWSE BY CATEGORY: Miscellaneous / Drawing & Painting / Miniatures / Creative Writing / Video Production / 3d art & Visual Effects / Game Design / Web Design Tips for making a better website or blog / How to effectively promote your website HOW TO EFFECTIVELY PROMOTE YOUR WEBSITE Well, the first key is simply to make the site *good* as described in the article 'Tips for making a better website or blog". But let's say you've got a good site and nobody knows it exists. Here are some ways to approach the issue. FORUMS & BULLETIN BOARDS Become an active forum member, a regular in a community related to the website you run. I imagine you had a reason for the website you made. It was probably about something you liked, right? Chances are some community out there is interested in the same topic. So become a member of that group and communicate in a friendly way with them, engaging in their conversations. And while it shouldn't just be spamming, there's no reason you can't place a link to your website in your forum signature! BLOG COMMENTS Search for the phrases that you think are relevant to your website, phrases that your potential audience would be likely to search for. Odds are, there's a blog on the topic somewhere on the first page of results. Try commenting on that blog post, not overtly spammy, but again, friendly, helpful, mentioning your website in terms of how its content is directly relevant to the conversation. SOCIAL NETWORKING Simple. Tell the people you know about the site. Encourage them to take a look at it. If you have something awesome on your site, it's even likely they may share it and it could spread virally. It's also smart to integrate social networks into your site. I certainly did! You can see the Twitter, FB, and Google+ 'follow' links at the bottom of every page. Be active enough in posting cool stuff about your website on your social media feeds that maybe people will 'like' and 'share' those posts. Again, things that people like, will probably go viral, spreading outwards, and the best place for that to happen is on social media. PAID BANNER & SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING You can advertise on Google with AdWords or on Facebook or Twitter or other big ad networks. It's not that expensive to start out - you can commit with just $5 or so to start. For now, I'm really liking Project Wonderful also. MAKING A GREAT BANNER AD: Remember here that you want to give people a good reason to click on your ad. Make it flashy and focused - keep wording simple, terse, and focused on the viewer who knows nothing about your site. Tell them in a handful of words, why they should visit. Why they should want to visit your site. Make the ad flashy, with vivid colors and some animation if possible, because people notice motion and strong colors. Warm colors like orange and red are especially effective in my experience. I have an ad that has a couple of images of my artworks and says "99 CENT HANDMADE ART" and another which similarly says "AMAZING, AFFORDABLE ART". And it's not even misleading, because I DO have some auctions that start at $0.99, and people HAVE in many cases managed to win auctions at that price. Don't mislead or lie with ads, but do emphasize your best stuff. Focus on what people like most about your site, and boil your message down to that. A button at the end saying directly, 'CLICK NOW' is also effective. People might need a final prod to actually do something, and not move elsewhere, so make it totally, directly clear what you want them to do and that they should do it NOW. It isn't enough for them to like how your ad looks. They should be compelled, convinced to interact by clicking it. By the way, I know what I'm talking about. I've been getting high click counts - as many as 2.4% of people who see banners advertising my sites, actually click them. So I must be doing something right, especially considering that average click rates in this industry are a fraction of one percent. |
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