Promoting an internet portal

[Tolya]

Alright, here goes. I am, together with my business partner and friend, launching an internet portal about cars. Our aim is to have really high quality content (both written, photographed and filmed - and don't ask me how we got an army of professional operators and photographers to do their work for free in the first stages), because that is something that will make us truly unique in the polish web. I hate making such references, but we would like to be polish internet Top Gear - that's what we are aiming at with quality and character.

The portal is in the production phase now. We have the layout and are finishing the graphics for each section. The programming phase starts in the middle of this month and the final launch of the finished product is scheduled for 1st September. Until that day we will be tinkering with the beta stage, adding content... and working out promotion.

And this is where I would like to ask for some help. We are planning a promotion campaign with a simple but quite a big catch - we don't really have money to spend. Using personal contacts, pulling favors or promising a share in the profitable future we were able to 'fix' stuff like business cards, professional photography sessions etc. But our resources are otherwise quite limited.

I have some ideas of my own, but I would really be grateful if anyone experienced in this could drop a few words and suggestions as to how to make this website 'tick'. The content will be unique and is quite popular, we have tested it on a blog we ran for a few months about half a year ago. Trick is to getting people interested in coming and staying on our site. I have little experience and Im catching up on all things like link exchange, banners, SEO's etc.

Thanks for any help.

[darthdavid]

1) Metadata, Metadata, Metadata:
Super simple way to boost relevant search hits. The metadata tag is your friend.

2) Link Exchange: This is fairly simple. What kind of sites do you think your target audience will be looking at? Find these sites and pop off a polite E-Mail asking to exchange links. Simple as that.

3) Banners: You want them simple, amusing and above all not annoying (taking into account that it will come up in rotation for the same people over and over again). If you add to the pollution of the internet with a flash banner that makes noise I will reach through my monitor and strangle you. I could probably make one for you if you have trouble finding someone else to do it, though if this is a Polish language site I won't be able to read any text that needs to go on it.

Anything else you'd like to know about?

[Ace Pace]

Metadata isn't that useful nowdays, Google practically ignores it.

For information visability, Google is practically a required resource, you want the [url=http://www.google.com/webmasters/]Webmasters[/center] for optimization tips. Not just for being visible and top ranked in searches, but also for a better web page experiance.

About pushing visability, besides working with the Google tools to make sure you're in their engine, work on getting bloggers and other relevent internet people to mention your web site. I imagine you're quite aware of how importent is making your name "recognised" so pushing that could help.

[Ariphaos]

1) Youtube promotion. Don't forget to include your link on the right. Have videos worth watching and it will work. Don't neglect other video sites, either - the mantra is "Youtube and everything else", but "Everything else" is still half the video market. It's easier to be more visible on a smaller community
2) "Content is king" was the mantra I was told, twelve years ago, as a teenager. This has not changed. Have content worth linking to and people will link to it.
3) Linkbait is usually something that goes hand in hand with a community, or some level of intermember interaction. Have a reason for people to come back.
4) Establish a presence on related communities. Auto communities especially are suffering lately, so you can go a ways by building a reputation on them.
5) Target 3-4 word keyword sets, and vary them. Use deep linking to your own content in signatures and blog links and so on. Your goal to get noticed in Google is to master a three word result or two fairly quickly, and build from there to two-word queries.

It's hard to get more specific, honestly, without knowing more.

[darthdavid]

Metadata isn't that useful nowdays, Google practically ignores it.

For information visability, Google is practically a required resource, you want the [url=http://www.google.com/webmasters/]Webmasters[/center] for optimization tips. Not just for being visible and top ranked in searches, but also for a better web page experiance.

About pushing visability, besides working with the Google tools to make sure you're in their engine, work on getting bloggers and other relevent internet people to mention your web site. I imagine you're quite aware of how importent is making your name "recognised" so pushing that could help.

I'll agree that meta-data isn't near as useful as it once was but every little bit helps and it's so easy to add...

[Tolya]

Thanks guys, I have an additional question about linking content. How to encourage it? Should I display permalinks at each page, so it can easily be linked to?

[Ariphaos]

Thanks guys, I have an additional question about linking content. How to encourage it? Should I display permalinks at each page, so it can easily be linked to?

Give people a reason to hand the link out. A prize, an addictive game, an article that simply can't be ignored, whatever.

[Archaic`]

Question. Are you intending to develop an online community, or an online destination? If a community, what software packages are you using? Are you simply going for popular off the shelf items like vBulletin, or something coded in-house?

[darthdavid]

Thanks guys, I have an additional question about linking content. How to encourage it? Should I display permalinks at each page, so it can easily be linked to?

You should add one of those little share bars to each article, the kind that lets you post stuff to Myspace, Facebook, Digg etc...

This makes it very easy for people to share stuff from your site via their preferred social networking or content aggregation site.

[Tolya]

Question. Are you intending to develop an online community, or an online destination? If a community, what software packages are you using? Are you simply going for popular off the shelf items like vBulletin, or something coded in-house?

Not yet decided. It is definitely not going to be based off Wordpress. But the specific decision will be made by the programmer in charge. My guess it is going to be based on a customised open source CMS, but the decision is still to be made.

About the online community - this is not going to be a social network. As much as I would like it to be, we currently don't have the resources for that kind of stuff - and while I have an idea for a social network, it is going on a shelf for now. Maybe in the future.

Also, the portal will be in polish language and targeted for polish users. With that in mind, does it make sense to provide tools for sharing content with english based social networks? Is there any way to check how many polish language users are, for example, on digg?

[Archaic`]

Question. Are you intending to develop an online community, or an online destination? If a community, what software packages are you using? Are you simply going for popular off the shelf items like vBulletin, or something coded in-house?

Not yet decided. It is definitely not going to be based off Wordpress. But the specific decision will be made by the programmer in charge. My guess it is going to be based on a customised open source CMS, but the decision is still to be made.

So something like Drupal then, I'm guessing?

About the online community - this is not going to be a social network. As much as I would like it to be, we currently don't have the resources for that kind of stuff - and while I have an idea for a social network, it is going on a shelf for now. Maybe in the future.

Don't be so sure. You can have an online community simply by use of forums (and there's plenty of good free open source forum software out there, such as the phpBB that SD.net uses here), and you'd be amazed at how few resources they consume even at a mid-sized level.

Also, the portal will be in polish language and targeted for polish users. With that in mind, does it make sense to provide tools for sharing content with english based social networks? Is there any way to check how many polish language users are, for example, on digg?

Depends how many of your users are likely to be able to communicate in English as well. The English sites are likely to already be very well established and developed, you don't want to end up with a significant portion of your potential userbase simply migrating there. I don't know of any way to data mine that kind of information I'm afraid, but in my experience, I have found Polish users to be highly responsive to things where they can contribute content to a community, such as with wiki's, more so than any other continental European group other than German users.