Creating Your Website's Promotional Strategy
By Shelley Lowery
Posted Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Creating a successful Internet presence involves much more than designing a great web site or having the "perfect" product. Listing your website with the Search Engines is your first step, however, you must not solely depend upon the Search Engines to bring you traffic. You must design a complete promotional strategy and work it every day.
A good way to organize your promotions is to set up a webpage, for your personal use, that will contain your complete strategy. This page should be stored on your hard drive and not uploaded to your server. Your page should contain four sections.
- Daily Promotions
- Weekly Promotions
- Monthly Promotions
- Miscellaneous Promotions
Each of these four sections should contain the appropriate information for each of your promotional resources such as, website name, user ID, password (if applicable) and hyperlinked web addresses for each website you plan to use for your promotions. This will enable you to open your webpage each day and visit each daily promotional link you have listed.
Your daily promotions should include posting your ads to a list of free classified ad and free for all sites. In addition, visit some
popular discussion boards. Although you may not advertise on discussion boards, you can include your signature file with your post.
There are several websites that will enable you to submit your classified ads and links to an entire network of sites with just one form. Here is a list of resources to get you started:
Yahoo Classifieds
(http://classifieds.yahoo.com/)
AdlandPro Networked Classifieds 5000+ (http://www.web-source.net/adlandpro.htm)
Web Sitings Networked Classifieds 40,000+ (http://www.websitings.com/classads/sites/source.htm)
Epage Networked Classifieds 16,000+ (http://www.web-source.net/classifieds.htm)
SmallBizFFA 35,000+
(http://www.smallbizffa.net/ffa.pl?35984)
FFA Network 10,000+
(http://www.ffanet.com/submit.htm)
Free Submission 9,500+
(http://hbb.nu/freesubmit/)
MGA web 5,000+
(http://www.mgaweb.com/submit/mgacat.asp)
Link Place 3,000+
(http://www.linkplace.com/)
Link Station 8,000+
(http://global.gr/mtools/linkstation/)
USubmit 9,500+
(http://www.usubmit.com/)
Wizard 8,000+
(http://wizardsoftheweb.com/partners/wizard/links.shtml)
URL Submitter 183,500+
(http://urlsubmitter.com/url.shtml)
For a complete listing of some of the top discussion boards, visit:
(http://www.web-source.net/web/Discussion_Forums/)
Your weekly promotions should consist of placing a paid ezine advertisement and/or arranging ad swaps with fellow publishers. Visit the Free Directory of Ezines for all the information you'll need to place and/or swap ads with over 700 ezines. (http://www.netmastersolutions.com/)
To organize your ad placements and swaps, place the publication names, publisher names, ad dates and hyperlinked web addresses within your weekly promotions list.
Your monthly promotions should include writing an article in the area of your expertise, Search Engine submissions, promotional exchanges with similar websites and offline promotions.
Writing Articles:
Writing articles that may be freely published with your bylines is one of the best promotional methods online. Your article may be published in hundreds of ezines, on websites or even in magazines. To learn more about writing articles for publication, read the article entitled, "Write For Publicity." (http://www.web-source.net/art13.htm)
To organize your monthly promotions, place the names and hyperlinked web addresses for each of your promotional resources within your monthly promotions section.
Article Announcement Lists:
Article Announce
Subscribe: mailto:article_announce-subscribe@egroups.com (http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm)
PublishInYours
Subscribe: mailto:PublishInYours-subscribe@egroups.com (http://www.egroups.com/group/PublishInYours)
Articles Archive
Subscribe: mailto:articles_archives-subscribe@egroups.com (http://www.egroups.com/group/articles_archives)
Free Content
Subscribe: mailto:Free-Content-subscribe@egroups.com (http://www.egroups.com/group/Free-Content)
Article Submission Sites:
ideaMarketers - (http://www.ideamarketers.com/)
Free Content - (http://www.certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml)
Ezine Articles - (http://www.ezinearticles.com/add_url.htm)
Search Engines:
Yahoo - (http://www.yahoo.com/)
AltaVista - (http://www.altavista.com/av/content/addurl.htm/)
Hotbot - (http://www.hotbot.com/addurl.asp/)
Lycos - (http://www.lycos.com/addasite.html/)
Excite - (http://www.excite.com/info/add_url/)
InfoSeek - (http://infoseek.go.com/AddUrl?pg=SubmitUrl.html/)
WebCrawler - (http://www.webcrawler.com/info/add_url/)
NorthernLight - (http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurl_help.html/)
Promotional Exchanges:
To set up some promotional exchanges with similar websites, visit a Search Engine and type in a keyword that best describes your website. Visit some websites that are similar to yours, but not in competition. Contact the webmaster to discuss your promotional exchange. This may be a link exchange, joint venture, or whatever you both decide.
Your miscellaneous promotions will include; running a press release, joining traffic generating programs, buying promotional products and advertising in newspapers, magazines, etc.
Press Release:
CanadaOne provides a free interactive press release builder. (http://www.canadaone.com/promote/pressrelease.html)
Gebbie Press provides over 10,000 links to print and electronic media on the Internet. (http://www.gebbieinc.com/)
Dr. Kevin Nunley will write your press release and send it to 5,000 media. (http://coldfusion.affiliateshop.com/Link3.cfm?AID=004436)
Gap Enterprises will enable you to send your press release to over 7,600 media. You write your press release or they'll write it for you.
(http://www.gapent.com/pr/)
Traffic Generating Programs:
Join some traffic generating programs to build a network of websites all linking to your website. (http://www.web-source.net/web/Mega_Traffic_Generators/)
Promotional Products:
IDit Plates - Put your web address on your vehicle. IDit Plates are a great way to continuously promote your web site. They look like chrome and blend in well with your vehicle. (http://www.iditplates.net/new/2711/index.html)
Magnetic Signs - Full size magnetic signs for your vehicle. Get a customized sign that magnetically adheres to each side of your vehicle, advertising your website. (http://www.magneticsigns.com/)
iPrint - Professional printing over the Internet. (http://www.iprint.com/cgi-shl/index.cgi?shop=5072)
PromoCity - Add your logo to any of over 500 promotional items. (http://www.promocity.com/)
Offline Promotions:
Place ads in newspapers, magazines, on the radio, TV, etc., Visit these links for complete listings:
NewsDirectory Newspapers (http://www.ecola.com/news/press/)
Newspapers Online
(http://www.newspapers.com/)
Commercial Magazine Publishers (http://www.writelinks.com/resources/pub/Pubs-mags.htm)
Once you've created your promotional webpage, open it up in your browser and add it to your favorite places or bookmark it for easy daily access. Set up a specific day for your weekly and monthly promotions and perform your miscellaneous promotions as needed.
Once you've implemented your promotional strategy and continuously work it each day, you'll be amazed with the results of your efforts. Consistency will be the key to driving massive traffic to your site.
About the Author
Shelley Lowery is the moderator of Article Announce Writer and Publisher Exchange - An article announcement list providing free content to hundreds of ezines, newsletters, magazines and web sites. Writers announce your articles free. Subscribe: mailto:article_announce-subscribe@egroups.com (http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm)
