Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with promotion and blogs

How to promote companies product with zero dollars online?

UMDirector — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 11:14:35 -0800

Having trouble getting promotional traction for new webservice, despite being an avid blog reader, possibly because of split audiences. Any suggestions? So we have a new site that combines AI with actual advice from experts to help people make decisions, especially on product purchases. I am having a very difficult problem driving much traffic as we have almost no promotional budget. I think this may be related to having to promote two websites.

1) Our corporate website is for business clients and partners. We would love for them to use our tech on their website to promote their product or create a new advertising platform for themselves.

2) Our actual guides such as our HDTV Buying Guide for actual end users.

The problem is it seems if we promote one it is at the expense of the other especially with our no budget advertising. You can get to the guides via the home page, but it is not as easy as posting just the guide link. My guess is this could also hurt our SEO.

Problem number 2 is that I can't seem to get any traction. Our product is truly far better than a normal filter as it helps people find what they actually need, not just what they think they want. As someone told me," Most other websites would be as if you went to the doctor as told him what medication you want whereas your guides are like going to the doctor telling him your symptoms and he, as a professional, telling you what to take". So we offer people a good thing. We also offer businesses a good thing as a new advertising platform for a portal or increased sales and brand interaction for manufacturers or online retailers. Yet I can't get any traction.

Most people I email simply ignore me. I am trying not to be that annoying Press Release PR guy and actually contact these people as a human but they ignore me. Even blogs I read religiously like Gizmodo, don't seem to be doing much. Sometimes they email me back but when I send more info I tend to not hear back. I would love to contact TechCrunch and the like but now worry I may waste my one shot.

We do have a sales guy, but he is only dealing with larger companies while I am trying to drive traffic to the website and guides themselves.

So questions:

1) What else should I try? We have a twitter feed and a facebook page.

2) Can anyone suggest any other blogs I should target? Less obvious ones than TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Engadget, etc?

3) What are your thoughts on the balance of human conversation versus a press release or story pitch?

4) Any other recommended resources?

Thanks!

Spasm and spam only differ by one letter

anarchivist — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:54:59 -0800

What is a good source of online etiquette for cross-medium self-promotion? I'm thinking someone might be going over the line, but I want something to back me up so it doesn't seem like I'm just overreacting. A member of an e-mail list I subscribe to posts about her/his blogs over frequently, to the point of always posting whenever there is a new entry up. I'm through ignoring it, and more than one person has suggested to him on list that if people wanted to read her/his blog that they'd do it. I'm not sure she/he is getting it. However, I can't really find any good sources for this sort of netiquette - I'm finding things only related to blogs or to e-mail lists, not both. I'd like something to point to if I (or others) choose to reach out to her/him.

Website Promotion

cjorgensen — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:27:17 -0800

What is your one best ethical suggestion for promoting a blog/website? I've been googling the crap out of this for the last week or so, and have found a lot of, well, crap out there.

Not enough of it has been helpful. A lot of it seems shifty or stupid or likely to backfire.

I figure if people limit their answer to one suggestion, this would be helpful.

I'm banging away on social media type site, listing directories, search engines, etc. And traffic is going up, but obviously, I'd like to see even more. Ideas (idea!)?

Thanks.

Help me find great science, environment, and food blogs (please!)

soulbarn — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 11:18:52 -0800

I have a book (non-fiction) coming out that combines environmental history with science and food culture. (The book is about bananas; I don't know if I'm allowed to post a link to my Web site, so I'll refrain.) I've been reading about "blog book tours," where authors work with bloggers to provide interviews, excerpts. or just about anything else relevant to a specific blog's audience. So...I'm asking for people's favorite science (specifically natural science), environmental, and food (food culture and eclectic stuff) blogs. Thanks.