Marketing techniques 13,000 new memebrs?

[Mark Flockhart]

So lets get down to brass tax.  You can make a great network but unless you have a steady flow of visitors it's worthless.  I'm not going to sugar coat this, plain and simple, how do you get thousands of visitors a day and how long does it take?  

 

I want members!! How about you?

 

There are lots of ways to get new members.  some take time, others take money and some trafficking ideas are worthless.  

 

Free stuff:

• New Facebook account to befriend people
• Forums
• Creating great content that Google will pick up in search engines
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Walk to to people and tell them to join your site
• Rob a bank and get on the news and tell people to join your site

 

Paid Marketing:

• Facebook ppc (Pay Per Click) or Impression ads
• Google Adwords
• Yahoo ads
• Ad on similar blog that is getting tons of traffic
• Local TV or Newspaper ads

 

I'm not going to cover these right now - lets see what everyone else has done and get some good feedback!

 

Please respond below to the following 4 questions (copy and paste and answer):

1) What methods do you use?

2) What results are you getting?

3) How much do you pay?

4) What's your numbers 1 method

 

Be specific/Direct

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[roeman d ridenour]

  I'm new at owning my own social site Mark.  But here's what I've been doing.  I've used local newspaper adds.  Some but very little value.  I started SMILES Mar. 4th.  I have only 55 members.  I have more than 4 times that on my fb page.  However on my fb page I'm not starting from scratch so to speak.  They're already there.  You know that.  I'm as surprised as you are.  It's difficult to get people, even friends, to just join.  I maintain and always will that people go where people are.  So our greatest disadvantage when starting out is we can't get anyone because we don't have anyone.  My best results seem to be coming from to "free" origins.  Here they are.  Friends that I give my business card to and invite.  Some of my fb friends that I just messaged and asked them to check out our site and join, free.  And fb aquaintences that consistently see our various posts, blogs, photos etc with our logo and link.  That's where we're at.  We don't have the capital to invest in massive add campaigns.  For those that do the same challenge exists.  They need people to attract people.  They need to have consistent and long term adds.  Here's my advice to all of us just starting out.  It's just what I believe you're thinking.  We need to help each other by joining one another's sites.  What if 200 creators joined one another's sites?  That would be a base of 200 more members for everyone.  Is that so difficult or dangerous?  No, I don't think so.  I think it's smart business.  I'm not going to try to steal your ideas or members.  Why do that?  We all have millions of available members.  We are not even touching this market.  We are all on the ground floor and we have Ning, the best vehichle there is for our enterprises. 

 

  Yes, I would be happy to join your network as a member.  Here's my safe link.  http://smilesisforeveryone.ning.com/?xgi=0wZaprk156G3Bl

Thank you and have a great day!  rdr

[Hector Feliciano]

I totally agree, I started letting people know about my site http://www.worldlibreto.net a who's Who for businesses, a place where business professionals can hang out, advertise a specific service or product free, and one of my members told me that there was a site just like mine!! to no avail, I checked it out and a Ning member creator copied the same color, theme, and layout!! Boy oh boy, what do I say to that.

I had to delete the member for posting links to his site that was identical to mine, needless to say, I lost the other member who told me about it. I agree becoming members of each others site, but there should be a code, I will not put links of my social network site up, if I know, it resembles in anyway shape or form your site, and vise versa!!

But yes if we stick together we can certainly have lots of members, I to date have only 50, and welcome anyone who who would like to join the Who's who for businesses. 

Hector

[Hector Feliciano]

And by the way we should not mention the ning network, if we want to keep it a secret about the inner makings of our networks.

[Casey Fritz]

Actually a good free way that i have used so far as my main way may seem strange but i use twitter.  I search keywords having to do with my site so I can find the right people then I send messages to each person on the keyword list.  I only get about 3 or 4 new people a day, but it's something lol

[solo]

@Casey i do the same with twitter

[Mark Flockhart]

I have recently added Twitter to my array of marketing tools.  I've already gotten good response within about 10 minutes of befriending people in my niche.

[Speed Racer]

if monetization is what you are after, page views are more valuable than someone signing up for the site. needs to be COMPLETELY public though.....public/only main page is not public by the way, that hurts if you are running an ad program like adsense.

[Mark Flockhart]

I couldn't agree more SR.  Page views are key.  My only thinking is if you can get members to come back again and again you can quadrupole(sp) your page views.