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Promotion Myths - Debunked In this follow-up to our Promotional Myths Debunked article, we're going to examine some of the lesser used methods people resort to when promoting their website. Some of these techniques work, some don't. Hopefully by the time you're done with this article, you'll know which techniques to use and which to ignore. Its been called many names, but most often I've heard it referred to as "Viral" marketing. The concept is really simple. Market your site in a subtle manner by letting others market your site for you. Viral Marketing, or how to make your visitor work for you. For example, Yahoo!'s messenger is an ideal marketing tool. Its a program which contains their name, and instant access to many key regions of their website. All at the same as offering a useful service (instant messaging, chat, file transfer etc). This is taking the concept to an extreme, but it works well for them. It furthermore attracts new users because their friends are telling them to download and use this free program. In effect, the Yahoo! website visitors have caught a "virus" from Yahoo! and are spreading the word for them. Now before you panic, lets clear one thing up right now. This isn't your run of the mill computer virus. Its a marketing virus. By using the free software they provide, you become a carrier, a point of distribution, a unknowing tool of Yahoo! Thats what we mean by virus. Its a non destructive form of advertising that perpetuates itself. Now it should be obvious that Yahoo! has far greater resources than most small businesses, they can afford to set up a team of programmers that can develop the software and distribute it. Its a great idea and it works well. The problem is one of scale. How can a small Mom and Pop business expect to produce something like this? Obviously it can't, or can it? Now I'm not going to tell you to go out and produce a instant messaging system. But there are some very nice alternatives that really deserve to be looked into. Consider if you will, our purplemonsters.com company from the earlier article. They make a special line of clothing for unruly kids. Now the webmaster over at purplemonsters is a cagey sort. He's thought about it and decided it might not be a bad idea if he had more photos of kids wearing the clothing. So now with every item sent out, an offer goes out suggesting that if they can send him a jpeg image of the child, he'll put it online in the special "Gallery of Unruly Kids" he's building. He also asks people to put a link to his gallery on their homepages, so more people can see the gallery. What's not being said is the act of putting a link up on someone's homepage is in effect, a form of viral marketing. In this case, someone else is putting up a link to the purplemonsters.com website. Sometimes you can go easy and just make a small icon available to people. Something that says "I'm a preferred shopper", "I know class". Giving people a small image to put on their website works wonders. Here at Northern Webs we've been giving away icons since 1996, and the results have been spectacular to say the least. People running our Meta Medic, or our SpiderView software series are treated with a nice little award icon when they sucessfully pass all of the tests. Again, the presence of an attractive icon that people might put on their website makes for a unique and effective way of marketing your website. Icons and photo galleries not your cup of tea? How about something more exciting? Put yourself on your visitors desktop with a custom screen saver! You don't need to be a programming wizard to do this, just snag yourself a copy of the reasonably priced savergen by comis and build a screen saver by stitching together images from your website, or from your personal collection. Heres a unique and low priced way of building a screen saver that can function as a personal reminder to your customers that you appreciate their business. Offer the screen saver online as a free download, or if you want, ship it on a floppy with each customer order. In either case, people love getting something for free, and having a screen saver to offer is a great way of reminding them (and others that might see the computer) of what your url and company is all about. SaverGen Now that we've talked about some of the ways you can get others to help you market your site, lets turn our attention back to some of the other methods people use to market themselves online. In the previous issue of this article we examined; Automated
Banner Exchanges These are some of the most common methods, now we're going to turn to some methods less commonly used. We'll try to look at these methods from two aspects. One. Using the method to promote your site. And Two. Using the method on your site as a means of making it more attractive to potential visitors. Guestbooks A guestbook is a cgi application which allows a visitor to leave comments about the website. More commonly found on personal homepages than commericial pages, guestbooks do not significantly add any additional traffic to a website. Few people use the links provided in a guestbook to surf the web. Putting your link into people's guestbooks is a time consuming and less than rewarding effort. From the website owner's point of view, a guestbook might allow users to provide feedback on the design, navigation and content of your site. However guestbooks are not easy to edit. Someone could easily fill up your guestbook with inappropriate material and unless you check the guestbook often, it could be days before you're even aware of its existence. From a professional standpoint, it is our opinion that a guestbook has no place on a commercial website, and even less of a place as a means of promoting a site. This one is a wash either way you look at it. Classified Ads Classifieds work well for people when they are in a newspaper. How come then, have the classifieds turned into such a disaster online? Unfortunately an online classified has several disadvantages going for it. How many people see the ad? Publishing a classified ad in a newspaper gets your message out to as many people as the paper prints copies for. That could mean hundreds, thousands or even millions of people depending on the newspaper. An online classified is ONE ad, and since you rarely have any idea of the traffic the hosting site has, the distribution of your ad can be extremely limited. From a site owner's standpoint, installing a classifieds system is not difficult, but is it desireable? What use would the webmaster of purplemonsters.com have for a classifieds system? Classifieds tend to be generic content. The only type of commercial site that should consider installing a classifieds would be one that is looking to build a community of people, ie, a portal. Portal content tends to be very generic, non topically specific, therefore a classifieds would fit well into that sort of site. For all the others out there, installing a classifieds would be a dilution of content. And thats something to avoid at all costs. BB Systems A BBS or Bulletin Board System is a double edged blade. If done right, a bbs can have significant impact on repeat traffic (something that is very desireable). If its done wrong, a bbs can hurt your site. Lets take a closer look at bbs's and why you might want to consider adding one to your site. Fundamentally a bbs is a lot like a guestbook. The big difference is that a bbs is a two way street. While your guestbook is only a one way street. The idea behind a bbs is deceptively simple, a visitor can post a comment or a question to the BBS. The comment is viewable by everyone like the guestbook. Unlike the guestbook however the bbs allows someone (usually called a Board Operator, Sysop, or moderator) to post a reply back to the user. This reply is also visible to everyone. Most bb systems thread their messages, that is they group the messages in such a way so that one topic and its replies are all bunched together. In the case of the website owner, bb systems can have an excellent repeat visitor attractive quality. The key here is focusing the board topic down to a particular issue. For example, our crafty webmaster over at purplemonsters.com recognizes that people that have unruly kids sometimes can use some help. So he installs a bbs on the site dedicated to answering questions about dealing with unruly kids. He even goes as far as co-opting the purplemonsters.com founder, Dr. Sigmund Kidsmasher to provide the occasional advice and tidbit for the parents. Our webmaster takes this one step further and decides to let other people post replies as well. His thinking is that by letting people share the problem, and solutions they have come up with, he will foster a community feeling amoung his site visitors. Finally as an added blow to the senses, he opts to install banners on the bb system which point to sales and specials from purplemonster.com. The key to using a bbs sucessfully for a website lies in its focus. Here are a few simple rules which we use in our Beginners' Central BBS that you might want to use in your bbs. Post the rules of the board and follow them explicitly. For example our Beginners' Central site has a bbs with the following rules. Notice that because Beginners' Central is a site designed for new net users, we've decided to use a very soft tone with the rules. Beginners'
Central BBS The following are the rules of posting for the Beginners' Central BBS (copied verbatim). 1) Thou shalt not use this board for promoting your website, UNLESS your site addresses an issue which has been raised on this board. 2) Thou shalt not use this board for promoting any sort of "get rich quick", mlm or other money making schemes, legal or illegal. 3) Thou shalt conduct thyself with the utmost of behavior. Think of this board as talking to your Grandmother. If you use profanity, your posting will be deleted and you will be banned from using this board again. 4) Thou shalt treat thy fellow netizens with respect! You want and deserve to recieve respect, extend that courtesy to others. 5) Thou shalt not post questions concerning web design issues specific to your problem. If you have a web design problem there are plenty of websites out there which can help you. If you fail to provide sufficient moderation to your bbs, you run the risk of it becoming a hangout for the wrong sort of people, bad content, even if its coming from someone other than yourself, reflects badly on the people maintaining the bbs. If you do not intend to monitor and moderate the board, then don't bother installing one. We use YaBB, an excellent freeware BB system available from this url; YaBB For the person promoting their website, using a bbs system is really a poor way of promoting a site unless you're specifically answering someone's question. In most cases off topic posts are deleted immediately. Our suggestion is a simple one, don't bother trying to promote your site or your services on a bb system. If you're going to insist on using BB systems to promote your site, become an active participant. Promote not your site, but promote yourself by sharing your expertise and knowledge on the bulletin board. Wrapping it all up During the course of these two articles, we've seen that quite a few of the promotional methods people use are really of less value than people think. There are promotional methods that work, and others are a waste of time. The key element in all the methods that work, is the work required in order to get your message out. No technique, no matter how sophisticated, no matter how automated, is going to succeed unless you're willing to commit the time and energy required. In this particular aspect, web sites are quite unlike traditional advertising methods. Website promotion requires careful planning. Pick a method or perhaps two, and commit to making it work for you. Dedicate yourself and recognize that you will need to spend at least 1 hour per night promoting your site and services online. Used
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