Having trouble balancing promotion vs. content...

Jazzy · #1 (**permalink**) 03-04-2008, 07:22 PM

I've been working on promoting my site and sending out monthly newsletters, but have been neglecting to add new content. My site is 4 months old. I am averaging around 175 visitors per day and I have around 85 pages. My goal for the one year mark is 2000 visitors.

I'm torn as to where to spend my time because I need to promote, yet my site is in a competitive niche and I need at least 100 additional pages in order to compete with my top competitors who have been around for 5-6 years.

Right now I am trying to build inpointing links and also promoting on forums and yahoo answers and through my blog. The forums and yahoo answers are very time consuming.

What do you think? Should I stick to promotion at this point? Go back to building content? How do I balance the two?

I am homeschooling my oldest 2 and I also have a 1 year old, so time is in short supply.

lisa · #2 (**permalink**) 03-04-2008, 07:57 PM

Have you done any one on one partnerships with other sites? Meaning you contact them and discuss a possible link exchange? And I'm not talking about the ones where you just place a link to them on a page on your site full of other links and vice versa. Those are worthless.

I'm talking about actually looking through someone' site (with a related theme of course) and finding a good place to recommend your site on their page and in return you recommend them on your site in return.

For example say you have a section/page on math help and you find a really good site that helps teach kids math. Contact that Webmaster and show them your page and mention how their site is a good fit for the article. And in return you find a good place on their site where your site would fit.

I've only done about 7 or 8 of these but if you can get a few more permanent links from some related web sites that will also help you out.

Have you joined SBI's Value Exchange yet?

I can't remember if we talked about this before, but I've been driving quite a bit of traffic lately commenting on blogs. And when I say comment I don't mean "Hey, nice post." I carefully craft my comments and try to comment on something specific the article mentions. Or even if you disagree with the author, that's a great way to get some attention to your comment.

I use Forums and Yahoo Answers too but in addition I do/use the following quite regularly...

1) Blog Commenting
2) BlogRush (blog promotion service)
3) Technorati (blog promotion service)
4) Blogging more frequently... at least 3 times per week (Google LOVES this!)
5) Creating YouTube videos (credibility booster!)
6) Digg.com
7) StumbleUpon.com (been driving some decent traffic here lately)
8) Adding new site content
9) Facebook Groups (somewhat)
10) MySpace (somewhat)
11) The list goes on...

Whew! Yeah it's a lot of work but that's really how you have to work it out here and it pays off over time.

Also are you getting any feedback from your visitors yet? One great way to improve your content and connect with your audience is to listen to what others need. About 30% of my content on 2create has come from people asking me how to do various things via email. So when I get a lot of emails on one topic I just create a page. Then I email the person if I felt the idea was a good one. People appreciate that and often turn into regular visitors.

Another thing is do you feel involved with your niche? What I mean by that is when you go to the forums are you developing any e-relationships with the visitors or are you just posting and then leaving?

Now of course I don't mean giving out your phone number and setting up lunch dates, etc.

but so much about success these days is networking. When I was in Vegas at the Affiliate Summit last week the people making 7 figures online all said that they did one thing very well... NETWORK.

And I have to admit I need to get better at this myself.

They subscribe to all the top blogs and websites in their niche, comment on them frequently, and get involved with others who have similar sites. And with all the stay at home mom sites there has got to be some great groups out there for people with homeschooling sites, etc.

You could become a guest contributor for a blog. I'm actually thinking of opening this up on my blog now that the traffic is growing. If you can write and be featured on another stay-at-home mom's blog then you get in front of an entirely new audience.

These are all a bunch of little things. But they add up over time. Building traffic takes months and for some even a year or two (of course it varies from site to site).

Jazzy · #3 (**permalink**) 03-05-2008, 01:40 PM

Thank you for the ideas!

I do feel very well integrated in my niche. I am active on about 10 forums - meaning I am recognized there and getting great feedback. I am blogging again and posting on blogs.

I guess I am wondering if I just continue pouring all of my energy into this instead of building new content. I chose a broad niche, and to completely cover it I need quite a bit more content.

ssmorgan · #4 (**permalink**) 03-05-2008, 01:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jazzy

What do you think? Should I stick to promotion at this point? Go back to building content? How do I balance the two?

It sounds like you're doing quite a bit of promoting. If I were you, I would try to balance the two. So I would spend some time adding new content.

In your posts, you mentioned that your topic is broad and that you need to add another 100 pages of content. If you produce only 1-2 new pages a week, you will 100 new additional pages of content by a year to 1.5 years from now.

It's great that you are actively engaged in promoting your site via forums and blogs. In the meantime, figure out approximately how much time it would take you to produce 1 new page, look at your schedule, and go from there.

Hope this helps.

Sherif

Jazzy · #5 (**permalink**) 03-05-2008, 03:55 PM

That does help, Sherif. I think that's what I'll do. 1-2 pages per week is dooable so it will probably be less overwhelming for me to work in it that way and spend the rest of the time promoting.

I'm going to work on a plan of the most important pages I need to add tonight.

Thank you!

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