How do we promote our site?

Question

This essential question wasn't asked yet, so here we go.

This is rapidly becoming a hot issue across the entire network: how to promote your site and how to reach out to the experts and pundits in your industry. We can come up with budgets and promotions but — more than any other issue raised here — the means and ideas about how to reach your target audience HAS TO come from you and your community. Has to. Has to, has to, has to! We simply are not experts in your field. We don’t have the the connections nor the experience you bring to the table. You are both our evangelist and our ambassador.

One suggestion per answer I guess?

[edit] I'm bumping this up to the top because we're working on this here at SE Global Domination HQ, but I want to know what our users -- the people who are really using our site -- think and feel about this. I've got some blogs and twitter accounts being followed, but who are you following, where are you following these people, and why are they interesting/important/influential? Don't worry about Community Wiki; I want the community vote-up aspect live in this discussion.

And I didn't want to make a duplicate post, to be honest. --Aarthi Ψ, CHAOS Team

Answer 1

This might be a long shot, but maybe we could work a co-op deal with some of the major chain hardware stores. Ad space in exchange for posting notices in the stores???

Home Depot, Lowes, McCoys, Ace Hardware, etc.

Answer 2

Bloggers

Add notable bloggers in the field here, we can find out how we can attract them later

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Answer 3

Google AdWords? Credits can be donated..

Answer 4

Professional sites with limited discussion areas

Some magazines or individual authors have sites with very informative articles but only a little interaction. You have to send an e-mail and hope your question gets chosen and answered. Our site has excellent interaction options. Would they be interested in replacing their own "letters" section with a link to our site, and then answering the questions here? Maybe if they could (via the API) integrate their work automatically in their own site?

Examples

• The Natural Handyman
• Ask the builder
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Answer 5

Local user groups or training centers and schools

I don't know how this is in other places, but where I live you can learn a lot of what is discussed here in evening schools. If we could attract some teachers to use this site to stay in contact with their students, this would benefit everyone.

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Answer 6

Usenet newsgroups

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Answer 7

Instructables has a sponsored by Ace Hardware section

Answer 8

Add a Blog

This idea came up in chat a lot today, and I think it's an awesome idea. Anything to bring in more traffic to the site.

That said, we need more people to answer this question signalling their intent to commit to the blog. When we have enough, we'll get this site a blog and be able to share our DIY/Home Improvement projects.

Until then, I had an idea:

Once-a-Week Project Updates

I was thinking about this: one of the ways we can demonstrate our commitment to a blog is to, well, start a blog in chat. I was thinking we could start a room dedicated to Project Updates (Photography.SE has multiple chat rooms, as do a number of other SE sites) and have a day -- say, Thursday! -- where people come in all day and post pictures, horror stories, success stories, and others can ask questions.

Why a Chat?

Two reasons. First, it was pointed out in the lead-up to the chat that our site lacks some of the "chatter" of other forums, like DIYchatroom. Chat is where such chatter (pardon the redundancy) is supposed to go. However, as consistently evidenced by our main chatroom for the last few weeks, we are not a very talkative bunch much of the time. That's fine and totally cool...except it also means we're losing out on keeping people around who want something we actually can offer! A once-a-week event would require promotion on our part for a few weeks until it was an established event that could have a life of its own. This will also (hopefully) encourage more users to swing by into our main DIY chat. We're cool people, I swear!

Second, if this once-a-week chat were to turn into a large, consistent thing, we as a community could point to it as reason enough for us to get a blog. If it's active -- lots of participants, lots of people asking questions for tips and then the community moving those questions into the main site -- it could really be a valuable resource to us.

Answer 9

Partnership with JLC or Fine Homebuilding (note: both of which have their own forums, but they aren't typically very useful) -- possibly give away subscriptions to users who ask the best questions?