Help Drive Traffic with no money

February 26, 2006 3:23 AM

Guerilla Marketing - I created a website as a lark that has become quite popular. All this early last week. I'm looking to compile a list of tools and techniques to push the popularity (without spending any money of course). What would you suggest?

So, the site is in my profile if you're interested. It's focused on a performer in a type of 'reality' show.

So far I've signed up with Technorati, Flickr, MySpace (which remains a weird mystery to me). I submitted to Google but can't seem to get them to crawl my site yet. I posted the sites existence on a few dedicated message boards. What else can I do to draw traffic simply by picking and implementing the correct tools?

posted by dhacker to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Best answer: i actually run a guerilla marketing company and am promoting a blog for a client right now, so I can probably help you on this one ;) You're off to a good start with the Technorati tags and other items you're up to. Definitely tag as much as possible so that active readers can easily find your posts.

Other than that I would suggest the following to create additional opportunities for readers to stumble across your site:

#1 - Reference articles on other blogs that use TrackBacks as much as is possible (and realistic for your editorial content).

#2 - If you have a budget for advertising (even a small one), I would seriously considering running some graphical or text blog ads. Visit an aggregator like AdBrite and target your ads as much as possible. Also, if you're running text ads or RSS feed ads, make your headings about specific posts and (of course) make them interesting.

#3 - Run ads w/ Google AdWords and Overture. Its not terribly expensive and can provide you with a ton of traffic.

#4 - If you have the time, do some PR work. Reach out to competitive blogs and submit your posts for consideration. Also do some traditional PR and reach out for interviews, features, etc. Might not be a bad idea to put out a press release over PRNewsire or the like.

#5 - Add a blog roll. Trading links helps traffic.

$6 - Lastly, write really interesting and provocative posts. If they're good people will send them to friends and the whole site will become viral. Content is King, after all.

Hope this helps... best of luck with the site. I dig it.

~j.
posted by tundro at 4:44 AM on February 26, 2006

I admit with embarrassment an AI addiction and a crush on Taylor. I'd suggest Google Ads, I know someone who had a David Beckham-related site and did really well from Google Ads on it.
posted by essexjan at 6:51 AM on February 26, 2006

Good old fashioned individually-asked link exchanges work well too, as a supplement to the other stuff. a politely worded request to big AI sites never hurts, and can get you a whole blog post some times.
posted by By The Grace of God at 6:55 AM on February 26, 2006

Post about it on AskMe?
posted by TonyRobots at 8:54 AM on February 26, 2006

I don't mean to derail, but since when is a fansite/blog guerilla marketing?
posted by necessitas at 9:41 AM on February 26, 2006

tundro, you don't seem to have any contact information listed. Please e-mail me (e-mail is in profile) if you would like a new potential customer. :-)
posted by arrhn at 10:58 AM on February 26, 2006

Response by poster: The blog is not guerilla marketing, driving traffic to it (or attempting to) at little to no cost is.

And yes TonyRobots, you've seen through my transparent attempt to generate almost 30 clickthroughs - profits await!
posted by dhacker at 11:04 AM on February 26, 2006