Two bullets of cheap marketing

Instead of spending so much time thinking about these things, I should probably go out a buy a few books on marketing, since I’ll wager this has all been thunk through several times over.

Marketing a small blog like Flicker seems to boil down to two things:

Have something that makes people want to come back to the site

This has to be something that happens on a regular schedule, and it’s going to have to happen somewhat frequently. For some reason “regular content” doesn’t do the trick for acquiring new eyeballs. For people who already visit regularly, this is probably enough…what you need is a gimmick to get one-time visitors to check back a few times and realize there’s content worth looking at, and the site is worth bookmarking.

Do something that makes people want to share

I get e-mails from friends and family all the time that include links to something cool online. People share these things because they want to be a part of it - if I recommend a good book to you, then I get credit, even though I had nothing to do with writing the book. Do something on your site that’s so cool that people want to be part of it, and they’ll share it. (Also, duh: make it easy for people to share).