Promoting a social website?

Hi Everone,

I am new to this board. I was wondering if you could tell me how to promote a social favorite sharing and shorten url website like http://www.i89.us

All ideas are welcome. I was thinking to promote this in three ways

1. All those people who want a short URL for their websites or profiles
2. To all the people who want to share their bookmark
3. People who want to promote their websites...

I mean searching using tags is really helpful.

Is there any specific place i can advertise to get more traffic?

Fore these types of sites, I believe that word of mouth is the best advertising.

Of course to get word of mouth advertising, your site must be very proffesional. Yours is proffesional so don't worry about that.

The other one I think as a promotion method for your site, is some kind of contest. I can't think of something in particular, but I am sure it can work.

Also you could promote it to myspace. I think that you can get some traffic from there.

Thanks for your quick reply. I have started promoting at myspace and launched a 100 USD dollar contest, lets see how it goes.

Current contest is for referrals. Member with max registeration win it on 25th.

Anyway, I am trying so lets see what happens.

Another thing is that the site is not so clear for me.

I mean I got there, sign up, but I didn't understand well how things work there.

I am not sure why is that, but you should consider that.

BTW did you code it your self?

I hired professional programmers to code it. When you sign up, like furl.net you can add a "Post to i89.us" button to your browser. WHen you like a website, you can just click on it to add to i89.us. The site is more advanced then furl.net as

It automatically, picks tags for you. Therefore, if the page has tags, they get inserted and you can change them according to your comfort. It also allows you to create your own sub-domain for that particular url.

For e.g. I have created my sub domain for techcrunch that is http://mytech.i89.us

You can import and export your favorite links. You can manually add your favorite link by clicking on Add to favorite link section under account menu.

You can connect to your friends and share favorites using the friend connection links or by inviting them.

Actually, I have kind of made it quiet easy to use, but your feedback will definetely improve it.

If there is something you think is confusing you, please tell me so I can go ahead and improve it.

Cool. It seems that you've done a good work.

Hope it will bring you the desired results :)

I saw your forum list in i89.us. Now, if many user add your forum to their favorites ( like del.icio.us), you become popular.

Nikolas, is there any part of your forum where people talk and mention their contest.

You can post it to the 'Advertise your services' forum.

Is there any way to promote this? I mean that I have a web site, that I've added to my bookmarks. How can I tell to other to add it too? Is there something that lets people share with each other their links?

Actually, if some other person find your website and adds to their favorite, it will automatically become famous. It is like digg....

Someone can either do it by manually adding it or using post to i89 button or find it in search result and adding to their favorite...

For e.g. this is link to your favorite that can be found in search..

http://www.i89.us/viewuser.php?uname=Nikolas

Now if someone like your site, they can add to their favorites from here making it more popular.

There are more better functionality coming in next few weeks.

I have told 3 of my friends to add your site to favorite, so by tommorow it will go up in numbering.

I see, and thanks for telling your friends about our forum.

Now about your promotion strategy, I would advice you to focus on the webmaster's view of your site.

I mean that you must make your site work for them (the webmasters) and make them link back to you somehow.

I think that this could enstablish your site, and I think that's how digg and other social bookmark sites got big.

I just got an idea for your site. Maybe it can help.

Imagine that you have a link for each bookmark like 'blog it', 'share it' or whatever. Let's say that the member A is a webmaster.

He/she gets this link to put it on his/her site, and when someone who is a user click it (from the site of your member's) it automatically adds this site on his/her bookmark. If the person who clicks is not a member, then he/she registers as an affiliate of member A and automatically adds the site to the bookmark.

I think this can really jump off your site, as many webmasters would like to send you traffic with these terms. That's all, hope it helps :)

Well thats a really good idea. Basically we can give webmaster a link or a image that will add to i89. It will have webmaster referral link as well, so when you click on it, it will bookmark the page where that link is displayed + webmaster will get one referral if the user is not the member.

We can do that for a specific link also, so it doesn;t matter from which page you bookmark it.

Currently, on i89 we call sharing as "Add to favorites". But soon there is a new functionality where you can vouch for a link. So if the link is shared by a lot of people, then it is popular... but if it is vouched by many, then it is recommended to check...

Many more networking functionalities are about to be introduced.

The best way to promote it is to use it. When people see you use it they will check it out too.  When you need to post a link on a forum replace it with that url instead.

My issue with those favorites bookmarking sites is it is way too tedious to get your 'favorites' list onto them...  I dont want to type in a whole bunch of crap just to get them to remember my bookmark.  I want them to assume the link is the titles name for all I care, and just take my 3000 links in IE and Mozilla's favorites and shoot them to the social bookmarking site.  Don't hassle me with choosing categories or topics or titles... Would take way too long for 3000 links!  You got me?

EDIT : Don't spam the forum

I think brion has a point here :)

Hi,

Well, thats why we are working on import facility. While you are saving your favorites choosing category takes one sec. Category and tags only allow you to easily search for them.

Anyway, we working on so many other functionalities that will simplify.

Well, every suggestion will be appreciated

Offtopic :

Tom if you have problem with the import thing, I have an associate who works with the Office automation libraries (visual basic) Maybe he could help you. Let me know if you are interested

Nice idea but initially and I have heard of others having the same problem, your site is somewhat difficult to navigate initially?

I found it kind of hard to work out how to add a link? Maybe make that more easier for the user?

Can you tell me please how it can be improved? I guess people are confused with how to add i89 link to their browser. May be as soon as they sign up we provide them step by stepy guide of configuring

Hrmm maybe just have a link on the initial page simply stating "to add your site click here" or something?