Well, last Sunday we launched the site live to the public. We did it kind of quietly because we still weren’t ready to handle large amounts of traffic. On average we’ve gotten 3 new members per day since Sunday. That doesn’t sound like much but it is, considering we haven’t really promoted it. We did, however, take advantage of the $100 in free clicks from the new MSN Ad Network. Actually, I had a coupon code for $200 worth of clicks but, apparently, it was only good for the first 2000 people. Either way, unless you have a really large budget, don’t expect to see much return from PPC (pay per click) advertising. We’ll keep experimenting with key words to see what works. Maybe, we can find a diamond in the rough. Beyond PPC advertising we’ve chatted with a few bloggers, did a Costa Rica Craigslist announcement, and participated in a few Yahoo group discussions. There is no magic button to push to get people to visit and join yourville.com. Online marketing is all about persistence, doing many things, and doing them routinely well. Additionally, we decided to not try and reach all Expats but, instead, focus only on one Expat community and then expand from there. I have experience with Costa Rica and aspire to move there in the near future, so that was the natural place to start. So, moving forward, here are a few things that we plan on doing:
- Develop relationships with Costa Rica expat bloggers.
- Contribute information relative to discussions at existing Exapt community sites.
- Personally engage every new yourville member. Inform them of all the great features of yourville and encourage them to participate.
- Encourage members to invite existing friends and family to yourville. Maybe come up with some sort of incentive program.
- Do everything we can to make sure we have fresh content on the site daily.
- Execute a PR campaign with the anticipation of getting local and national media to do a story on Yourville.
- Evangelize yourville in every way possible.
- Continue blogging and discussing business topics here.
- Continue to explore other no/low cost methods for spreading the word about yourvile.com
- Listen to our members and, continually, modify/change the site to fit the needs of the community.
The following are some great sources for online marketing tips, ideas and advice:
- Snap.com did a launch contest that encouraged people to submit their marketing ideas. It’s worth it to take a look at all of the ideas.
- Wickedfire.com is an Internet Marketing forum.
- Seomoz.org is a great source for all kinds of traffic-building content.
- Searchengineguide.com has some good resources on all aspects of Internet marketing.
- Threadwatch.org -Another good resource for all things internet marketing.
If anyone has additional ideas for us on how to reach more people, please let us know.
Technorati Tags: marketing, SEM, SEO, socialnetwork, community, expat
