Reddit for marketing

A quick blurb on Reddit

Reddit is a great community of people but they do not welcome direct marketing. Reddit is where people come together to talk about products, life stories, funny stories and anything else. It is not a place for advertising, but it could be a place to talk about products, market demand, market needs and such. Here is a great article on starting out with Reddit (http://blog.kissmetrics.com/reddit-marketing-guide/). I read Reddit but don’t post. I agree with the article that you have to make yourself part of the community before you can try and make any in-roads into selling yourself. And be sure, you are selling yourself, not your product. If you remember that, you might be able to drum up some business from Reddit. I have not tried using Reddit for my blog yet but I will definitely post when I do and let you know how it goes. 

Advertising experiment - Month one

My first attempt at spending $10 a month on marketing

Since I started this experiment half way through the month so I only spent $5. I spent it on Fiverr.com. I paid $5 to have a short (Twitter size) sentence with link. It was sent out on Facebook and twitter, reportedly to thousands of people. The seller does give links to confirm that the job was done. It was done on time and as promised in the ad. I had zero response. I don't blame the seller at all. I think I figured out where I went wrong. The target audience of the seller was more of an age group then people related based on anything else. If I try Fivver.com again, I will look for a more targeted audience that would be more likely to read my blog.

Check out the whole story: http://napalmgraphics.blogspot.com/p/10-day.html

AdSense... part two

My experience with AdSense

So I applied for Adsense about two days after starting my blog. I very quickly got a form email back stating that I didn’t have enough content. They need content in order to decide what, if any, ads were pertinent to my blog. That sounded reasonable. I waited two weeks or so and then re-applied. I wasn’t hopeful but I wanted to see what would happen. I got the same form letter back. Again, I understand. I am not even remotely established. I am still growing and finding my feet. So I waited a few more weeks and applied again. Then I got something I did not expect.

I got an email back a day or two later. It stated, essentially, that Google AdSense was too big to deal with the little guy. Ok, that’s how it felt at least. What it really said was that AdSense was not able to contract with me because they have to be selective in who they choose to advertise with.

I will accept that I am naive when it comes to these things.  I have only been at this for a little over a month. I have done a lot of research though. I also roam other peoples blogs and YouTube pages. Google Adsense is seen on a lot of different websites and YouTube streams. Based on this roaming, I assumed that anyone with an active blog or YouTube stream qualified for Adsense. I was wrong.  It is my guess that AdSense has grown too large to pay attention to the little guy now.  I will look around and see what other options are available and report back. 

HootSuite - Review

Don't let Twitter overwhelm you

If you are like me, you started blogging and used twitter to draw in to your blog page. For me, it was a great way to start getting my name out there. I had never used Twitter before so it took me awhile to get the hang of it. As time went on and I started using Twitter more frequently it became apparent that I needed to change the way I was doing things. That’s when I found HootSuite.

HootSuite is a great website that helps you manage your Twitter feed(s) and Facebook posts. You can set up streams of content depending on what you want to view. There are also plug-ins for it for other things like Reddit and Linkedin.

The best part of HootSuite, to me at least, is the Publish feature. This allows me to schedule my Tweets. I try to schedule three days out. I have heard that people with a more established blog/community schedule a week out. I don't have enough to say to do that.

The website is really simple to use and they have a good tutorial to walk you through how to use it if needed. To sweeten the deal, there is a mobile app. I am running it on my android phone. It doesn't slow my phone down or interact with other apps, like general twitter apps do. I like that because I work hard to keep my private life separate from my blogging one.

To top everything off, it is free. They have a professional version that does cost cash but for a small time or new blogger/twitterer (I don’t know if that is a word) the basic version is perfect. The professional version is an reasonable price also, if you need the upgrade.

So check out Hootsuite.com. 

The $10 marketing experiment

The beginning

To make a long story short, I have started a new blogging experiment. Every month I am going to spend $10 on advertising. That's it, just 10 bucks. It is looking to be a lot harder than I though, but I guess that is what makes it interesting. I am dedicating a page to this experiment. So check out the experiment on astutely named "$10 marketing experiment" page. 

Twitter for marketing...part 2

Some good etiquette to follow.

I definitely suggest using Twitter to drive more people to your website or blog. It is a great way to reach new people and keep your followers up to date on what you are doing. Start by following people and companies that are similar to what you are doing. I follow Google, android, a programming company, and some other bloggers. Tweet as often as you can but make sure you are writing about things that are relevant or interesting. Don't send a lot of spam tweets out or no one will want to follow you. I started out doing two tweets a day, then adding more as I got rolling. According to Hubspot, 15-25 tweets a day is the “sweet spot.” I find it difficult to have that much relevant or interesting information on a daily basis. But do what is comfortable and works for you.

 Follow people that are following you. Send them a private message thanking them for following you. Ask them to check out your blog or like your Facebook page. You can send them a private message, or what twitter calls a direct message by using the gear icon at the top right of the screen. 

Make sure to tweet every time you put a blog post up. Tweet with a link back to the post to drive more traffic your way. Use a couple relevant hash tags to direct people to your tweets. Tweet a few times throughout the day to catch people who may be in different time zones or on different schedules.

Always check out the Trends screen. It is on the left side of your twitter home screen. This shows you what searches and topics are popular at the moment. If you see something relevant to your topic, tweet about it with the hash tag. It will draw a lot of extra traffic to your twitter feed and your website.