Whatever you
do in business, do it big! There’s no other arena in
which those words are truer than the internet. It’s
a competitive world wide web, and you do have to find
your niche. But once you find that niche, do it just
a little bit different than everybody else. Do it big.
People don’t often think in those terms. So if you are
able to put yourself in that mindset, then you’ll be
ahead of the pack.
You can struggle all you want trying to get your website
to the top of the search engines, but by the time you
get there, the rules for getting there will have changed.
You can spend countless hours trading links with other
websites, but you’ll find that many of those will soon
ditch their domain. You may consider any number of online
strategies for getting your website noticed, but the
bottom line is somebody on the other end always wants
to get paid.
This is when the idea of “do it big” comes into play.
Let me explain. I recently discovered a website owned
by a woman from the UK. Her product was original art.
Specifically, cartoon-like pencil sketches. Her intention
was to put her work on shirts, stationary, and greeting
cards and to sell it through her website. The problem
was she couldn’t get her site noticed. She had no visitors.
How many times have you lamented over the lack of visitors
to your site? I have, and I do. It doesn’t matter how
many visitors a site receives. It never seems to be
enough. We are insatiable. But you can struggle with
online strategies, or you can do something big offline.
Here’s what I suggested to the woman from the UK.
Start a campaign. Call it the “loan a shirt” campaign
or something of that nature. The idea would be to take
a shirt featuring the artwork, and send it around the
world. How? She or somebody else would wear it for a
day and then pass it on to another person who would
do the same. This would continue for any duration of
time. But the goal would be to send the shirt around
the world, and each person who wore the shirt for a
day could log on to the site if they choose and fill
out a quick location form so the shirt may be tracked.
It’s such a simple, low-cost idea, but it’s a creative
way to expose a website as the address would be listed
right there on the shirt. And people who wore the shirt
for a day would get to see and sample the product first
hand. It could even be an event for charity, and an
effective press release would be the only invitation
the media would need to get involved.
But what if somebody decided not to pass the shirt
on? What if somebody stole it? What if the shirt got
lost? What if “this”, and what if “that”?
Hey, what if it worked? What did it cost? Nothing.
It only required a little creative thinking. A person
could do anything they wanted with the idea in order
to eliminate every negative “what if”.
The point I’m trying to make is we don’t often think
of doing something big offline to promote ourselves
online. And it doesn’t have to be costly. It doesn’t
have to even follow what we believe to be the traditional
rules of advertising. Just think big, do it big, and
get noticed. After all, isn’t that the goal? Or is the
goal just to advertise?
Nick Famiano is a former radio broadcast personality
and copywriter who now helps websites get noticed and
profit through his Link Pushers and Million Link Club
web directories.
http://www.linkpushers.com/
http://www.millionlinkclub.com/
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