Creating Your Website's Promotional Strategy
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
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