Topic awaiting preservation: Promoting website - how and what do we do?

Hi guys - need some help here - to start with well we've been working on a user centric website for people related to aviation. It has a contact directory plus events gallery as well as a classifieds section. The idea is that people sign up post their contact details - their details get included in the contacts directory - its clearly mentioned that whatever details they wish to display would be publicly available. Once signed up users have a nice little profile and can post advertisements as well as events listings and also simple blog posts which would display on their profile page.

The issue we're facing is twofold.

1. To get users on the website or actually the aim is that we're targeting profesionnals in the aviation industry to come forward and post their details and in due course populate the directory. The thing is that how do we target these people - currently we have a huge database of users we would like to see join our website. The thing is that initially well there aren't very many users on the website to begin with so when people do come to visit theres well no one home literally. We were thinking on prepopulating the profiles ourselves and then sending mass emails to all the contacts telling them that 'Hey we have your details and created for you a nice profile on this website - click here to login and take ownership of your profile' but wonder if theres any legal issue involved. So instead we used a back door approach and started bulk emailing all the contacts...well it worked but only with a success ratio of 0.01 percent as in we succeeded to get like 80 peopel to sign up after emailing to around 120 000 contacts. Need help on site promotion.

2. Money making - the thing is that how do we set up our website to be a money making entity. Like what should we do and how do we do it. I mean we initially built a similar site with subscription fees - the result was well...we ended up with zero users paying...didn't work too well at all...

What do we do here - I'm kinda stuck. Our website isn't actually a social networking website in that sense of the word but at the same time its supposed to be a self filling website as in the users are the resource.. get my drift... what do we do!!?!??!

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paritycheck said:

how do we set up our website to be a money making entity

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Sell something people want.

lol gotta love reisio's quick and to the point replies.

Later,

C:\

Ahem okay you made a point but I'm more concerned with getting people to sign up on our website. We have a loooong list of individuals who we'd like to get to signup on our website - the thing is that whats a viable strategy to do so. So far we've been mass emailing with well very low rate of success...

A different take : give love to people.

As (simple and stupid) as it might seem, Google "wanted to make the finest possible search tool so people could get closer to each other and reach what they desire". And put a whole lot of love into it, and into making the result shine.

Same thing for Facebook, meant, first and foremost, to get people closer to each other. It's quirky, full of viruses, but everyone and their moms sign up : whatever is done with true passion and a true emphasis towards making people "richer" creates attraction.

If anything :

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concerned with getting people to sign up on our website.

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This is self-defeating. Why? Because we go towards what we are looking at. You're looking at "people not signing up" here.
So ask yourself which service/product could make people so happy that they will want more.

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argo_navis said:

This is self-defeating. Why? Because we go towards what we are looking at. You're looking at "people not signing up" here.
So ask yourself which service/product could make people so happy that they will want more.

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Great point.

Ask yourself what kind of content these people will really find value in, write this content, and keep writing. There's no magic recipe here, if you want to get people interested, provide them with value.

Concretely, how do you do this?

1. Go round blogs and websites about your topic, read magazines, and find out what people want. In a word, do your homework.

2. Then you'll be able to find out what information is lacking in your domain; this is terribly important.

3. Start writing content with this material, and make sure you create one page for every one of these topics.

4. implement the pages with good titling and structure *

5. Watch and see it happening...

If you think they can get what's on your website anywhere else and for free, I'm afraid you've already lost your battle...

* If you want more info, I'm happy to help

Greetings


[edit] If you do all this you'll hardly need any promotion ? depending on how competitive your niche is, of course ? and it will cost you far less money in the long run [/edit]

(Edited by kimson on 01-26-2010 11:55)

I first signed up on facebook because I was in college and it offered tools to easily contact other students in my classes for assignments or notes. Offer something useful (that isn't already available on, say, facebook!).

As for the sign-up process, make it painless. Allow browsing of the site before creating a profile, so that people can see its usefulness. Make profile creation require nothing but a username and password. Don't ask for an email address until they want to do something that requires verification (like sending a message to another user). Allow them to fill out other profile content at their leisure.

Finally, try to find a small number of people that you can actually contact through *normal* means (like a friend of a friend), and ask them to try out the site. Ideally, watch them try it out to see what they don't like. If it's a useful site, hopefully they'll recommend it to people they work with.

On the topic of registration and login, I suggest you to read Michael Mahemoff's post on The New Registration and Login Grammars.

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So far we've been mass emailing with well very low rate of success...

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I wonder why that is

*warm smile*, and the thread demonstrates all it discusses perfectly (giving value, creating value - with detailed steps). Sound advice all the way.