Publicity Hound Kare Anderson writes:
“I am co-founder of a new business that’s going public in January, called SavvyHer. It’s the only online community for women age 45 and older to contribute tips for making their lives easier and more joyful. They can even be recognized and rewarded with gifts from sponsors each month, when the community votes their tips Most Popular.
“Members’ tips may include photos or video. All contributions are moderated to keep the network free from porn, spam or other content not in keeping with the spirit of SavvyHer.
“Membership and eNewsletter subscription is free for this sponsor-supported network where there is a firewall between our content and our sponsors. It includes a tagged Directory of Tips and Members, weekly e-newsletter, monthly poll, and annual Best of SavvyHer book.
“This is a great showplace for people to demonstrate their expertise or highlight their book, cause or other interest.
“We need ideas on how to promote this website.”
Register a second domain name and have it forward to your current domain. Some looking at your website may mistake the 2 v’s for a W. By registering sawyher.com and forwarding traffic to the real domain, you will still get visits from those who may misread.
Your target audience may be online but still is a dedicated user of traditional media – print and broadcast – and you need to include those outlets in your publicity/promotion plan. When I represented a businesswomen’s website the spike they got in inquiries came from an AP story and a big article in the Boston Globe. And where are you sending your e-newsletter? That’s another opportunity. Polls can be interesting but unless they have really quirky questions (that’s why the AP picked up the one I designed) or are statistically sound, the media will not use them.
My biggest tip would be to offer more content on your website that does not require registering… I for one was frustrated trying to figure out specifically what kind of content I would get for registering.
Just a thought–I am a 22 year old woman, and I think your site is very interesting for a younger demographic as well. You could almost pitch to a younger crowd (especially that freshly on their own and looking for how-to’s that don’t come from their parents age) as an advice page. You might consider pitching a 100 best tips received through saavyher.com to a magazine like Redbook or Good Housekeeping.
Kare, here are some of my best ideas:
–Find ezines that are published for women and pitch an item about your new website to the publishers. Start your research at http://new-list.com/
–Pitch women bloggers who target the same audience you do. See “How to Pitch the Best Bloggers & Create a Publicity Explosion” at http://tinyurl.com/m7ymr
–Post items about your website to Craigslist. “How to Use Craigslist as a Global Publicity Tool” shows you how to get around Craiglist rules that prohibit duplicate postings. Read more about it at http://tinyurl.com/geog2
–Write and distribute online press releases focusing on specific topics on which your target audience is interested. Distribute through a service like PRWeb at http://snipurl.com/PRWebDistribution or http://snipurl.com/ExpertClick
Good luck!
Here’s another idea. Read all the helpful comments that my Hounds posted to last week’s query from Lois Carter Fay about how to promote her new blog for Boomer women. Many of them apply to you.
See http://tinyurl.com/y3qzd7
You should think about optimising your site for search engines. At the moment your homepage doesn’t include any keywords that someone might use to try to find a site like yours, with the possible exception of ‘women’. Work keywords into the copy(including community, advice, tips, and any that are specific to the advice – time management etc).
Also, you don’t have enough content outside the registration at the moment. There’s very little for search engines to find and spider. You should put at least the favourite tips outside, so people can get a flavour for whether it’s really worth registering or not and search engines can have some real copy to work with. I don’t think the site provides enough incentive to register at the moment – there needs to be more to whet the appetite before people have to do all the hard work of registering.