Now that we have BigStartups.com live and are getting ready to start really promoting it, I've been rehashing a lot of strategies that have worked (or not worked) for me in the past.  When I refer to promotion, I'm talking about generating an initial buzz or awareness in the community to get things started.  You still have to be able to translate that initial buzz into recurring traffic, signups, sales, etc.  Without a great product, and a long term strategy to build on the initial promotional campaign, your efforts will just be wasted.  

Press releases great, press release distribution services worthless

I'll just cover this one first because it's the first thing most people think of when they think of promoting a new company, not because it's the most effective.

Press releases can be fairly powerful tools, the problem is a lot of people either don't understand their purpose or how to use them.  A press release is rarely going to generate traffic or customers, the purpose is to tell a story that will help other people to write about your startup or product.  Forget the marketing crap, get straight to the point tell your audience (writers) what your are doing, why it's valuable and also create a vision that makes them interested in writing about you.

As a startup with a small budget, there's no need to pay thousands of dollars to have one professionally written.  Even if you don't consider yourself a great writer, it's one skill as an entrepreneur you should practice and get used to doing.  Look through lots press releases of companies who you feel do a good job of PR and emulate what they do.  Get people you respect to read over and give you feedback, and spend some time polishing it.  

Don't bother paying money for those expensive online press release distribution services, either.  I've probably done a dozen press releases over the years, and NEVER once have they resulted in a write up.  Neither have I seen any significant amount of direct traffic generated.  Fifty unique visitors for a several hundred dollar distribution is not good ROI.

Get your press release directly into the hands of the people you want to write about you.  Email the releases yourself to key bloggers or relevant journalists.  Don't spam them, take the time to personally address them and tell them why they should pay attention to you, kinda like submitting a resume with a cover letter.  If it's a multi-author blog or news source, approach the jr. writers, they will be more receptive, get one tenth the people contacting them, and often do the majority of the writing. The easier you make the process of them writing about you, the more likely they are to do it.

Leveraging your personal network

You may know 100 people, but between you and your friends you may know 5,000 people.  Look through your list of friends in your email contacts list or on social networks and you'll be surprise how many people you know that have useful connections.  Your friends are often more than happy to help you promote your latest venture, and want to see you succeed.

Also spend a lot of time networking to increase the size of your personal network.  Attend as many relevant conferences and networking events and possible to meet people.  

Tapping existing communities, online and offline

No matter what your product or service there are probably relevant communities both and offline.  Do some Google searches, I'm sure you'll have no problem finding plenty of them, no matter how targeted your audience may be.  Involve yourself in these communities, join the discussions, answer questions, make yourself a valuable and respected community member.  If you do that, almost no one will complain about your taking the opportunity every once and a while to work in a pitch about what you are doing.  Another bonus is the people that participate in these communities are often the most likely ones to talk about you, so they are valuable sneezer's to reach.  

Spamming communities or being excessively self promotional is one sure fire way to generate backlash and piss people off.  Just don't do it, no matter how tempting it maybe, it simply doesn't work.

Blogging strategies

For many online startups I know, blogging is THE KEY component of their promotional strategy.  A lot of people view blogging as simply a distraction that takes up time, rather than serving a business purpose.  Why should I spend an hour a day writing a blog post when I could spend that doing something else in my business?  The reason is given some time and persistence, it may become your primary marketing tool.

But what to write about?  You are blogging to generate awareness of your product but at the same time simply blogging about your product is usually not going to generate interest.  Find relevant things to write about that people will find interesting, want to read, share and link to.  Then find ways to work in subtle promotion of your startup or product into these posts.  A few ideas:

    * Promote yourself by promoting others.  If you write about other people or companies they will often return the favor without you asking.  For example interviewing key people in your industry is a great way to generate goodwill.
    * Writing about current industry news.
    * Advice and help articles on relevant topics
    * "Top 10" lists, these tend to be some of the most linked to and shared blog posts.  
    * Syndicate yourself as much as possible.  Your trying to reach an audience so get your content on places that already have an audience.
    * Don't worry about being opinionated or sometimes a little controversial.  Obviously there's a line you probably don't want to cross, but just because your blogging with a business purpose doesn't mean you can't spice things up a bit.
    * Promote your posts, link them on social networking sites, tell your friends about them, share them.  If you have interesting content, it's really not hard to get some traffic to it.

Other social media strategies

Utilizing social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn can work wonders but like blogging a lot of people have no idea how to utilize them effectively.  There's a lot of startups, that get most of their new customers through these social networks.  Simply creating a profile and letting it sit there is not going to do anything for you.  Use these networks to find and engage your target audience.

As Paul Chaney says, “Social media is not direct response marketing, but relationship marketing. It takes time to build a relationship and gain trust. It's not the quick road but it is the high road.”  I’d definitely recommend checking out his book, The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media if your wondering how to use social media to promote your business.

A few useful places to submit

There's a few useful sites free sites to submit your new startup that I've seen generate a fair amount of traffic or other benefit.  The vast, vast majority of directory sites are just a waste of time, they won't get you traffic and have next to no SEO value either.

http://killerstartups.com   (currently the largest source of new visitors for BigStartups)

http://feedmyapp.com

http://crunchbase.com

Oh and of course add it to http://bigstartups.com

Obviously this isn't meant to be an exhaustive list of strategies.  I'd like to know your feedback and strategies you may have employed with or without success.

Follow up post: Strategies to Build Sustainable Web Traffic to Your Startup