Rebecca Witek of Buffalo Grove, Illinois writes:
I created a website for young designers that focuses on the soon-to-be or newly graduated. I was in their shoes not too long ago, and I’ve realized as a graphic designer that it’s important to understand and learn skills that compliment their creative talents such as marketing, networking, public relations and business.
I post articles monthly, but I need to build up awareness and hopefully get input from other experts. I would really like to see it grow. Any ideas?
First, if you want old folks like me (over 40) to read your copy, you’ll need to make it bigger and switch to a san serif typeface. It’s just too hard to read all that little squiggly type!
I’d also make the web page fit in one window so people don’t have to scroll down. Your website doesn’t seem very targeted; you are trying to be an “everything” website for young designers. This seems like WAY too big a market.
And now onto your question…
You should invite others to send you useful articles, receive your email newsletter, and become “experts” on your site. Target a few such experts and ask them personally to do this. Also post your request on various blogs to drive traffic (and articles!) to your site.
Lois Carter Fay
Marketing Idea Shop
http://www.marketingideashop.com
Here are a few ideas for you:
– Don’t ask for e-mail, first name, last name and how people have heard about you to subscribe to your newsletter. The more you ask, the fewer people will subscribe.
Ask for an email address and first name at most.
– Post your newsletter subscription box on top of every page of the web site. This way you will get more subscribers.
– Optimize each page of the web site for search engines so that you can get more search engine traffic.
– Write your own articles and submit them to article directories with links back to your web site.
– Find social networking sites where your target market networks, join in and participate to create awareness for your web site.
Contribute articles, join forums, find specific network groups, etc. at design-related and career-related (for college grads) Web sites and social network sites.
Hold a graphics design contest or something creative and email or post the info on sites, communities, and blogs like Digital-web.com, web-graphics.com, smashingmagazine.com. lissaexplains.com (targets kids — but they may not be far from college) and sitepoint.com. Perhaps, you can find a sponsor for a cool prize to improve people’s interest.
Obvious, but can be overlooked — set up a MySpace and Facebook profile to connect with the site.
Contact FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) and
Parsons School of Design, both in Manhattan.
One of the fastest, easiest ways: a bylined article. Draft a “Top 5 Things Every Design Grad Needs to Know” and list your Web site as the source of the article. Then send it to the student newspaper (attn: editor) at every specialty college with a design/ga focus (e.g. SCAD, etc.) With one article you can generate a lot of awareness directly with your target audience.
I haven’t been to your site–but a great service would be a portfolio section where young designers could post their best pieces and contact information. You could either charge for this or make it free, sort by type of project, and eventually become the destination site for people looking to hire young graphic artists.
This should be worthy of significant press, especially in trade journals and student/alumni magazines.
You might find my book Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First useful to stimulate thinking about other creative partnerships: http://www.principledprofit.com
Go directly to your target audience: the students.
Visit university student blogs and find students that are interested or that are majoring in graphic design. Comment on one of their entries and share your site link.
Go to social networking sites such as Facebook.com Squidoo.com and create a page for yourself about your site. Join applicable groups and invite others to join your groups.
Make sure that you’ve got an RSS feed for your site so that those interested in reading updates can subscribe.
Whilst students might spend most of their time on the computer these days, the old fashioned notice board still exists in universities and colleges and is used a lot by students searching for all sorts of info from entertainment to accommodation. So I suggest making up some flyers and send them to all the design faculties at the various colleges to pin up on the notice boards.
When I did my design degree most of our lecturers were from the industry, so you may also get industry experts interested through these flyers as well.
Recruit a senior student (soon to graduate) and host his/her blog on your site, chronicling the countdown to their finals, thesis; their portfolio development and job hunting experiences.
Sponsor an award of some sort, and put entries on your site; maybe invite visitors to vote on them.
Once you start getting in touch with students, pay particular attention to a)what they’re struggling with right now b)how they want to keep in touch.
You have a great idea in wanting to help, but even if it’s only been a short time since you’ve been in their shoes, things may have changed a bit.
One way to collect this info is to do what Biana says above, and then once you have an email list, send a survey using something like Surveymonkey or similar service.
Once you have a good idea as to what your market wants within your topic areas, it’s easier to contact experts like Joan for interviews, teleseminars, info products, or articles.
Also, network through your local chamber of commerce and possibly find other professionals to partner with for campus career presentations.
Hi Rebecca,
To tag on to the great posts by all my suggestions would be:
1. Fix the typos in the beginning paragraph of the site i.e. make complete sentence.
2. Reword the first paragraph/headline to make it more personal. Speak directly to your audience, tell them you were in their shoes before and HOW your site will help them with their problems.
3. Give them an incentive to sign up for that newsletter (seems like you have plenty of great articles already). Pick one suitable to a ‘newbie’ graduate and share it with them when as an expression of your thanks when they register for the newsletter.
4. See if you can get some real life success stories or interviews from young emerging designers
5. Spend some time on student design related forums and social networking sites like linkedin or facebook.
Great suggestions by all.
Best wishes with your site.
Warmly,
Shonika
Hi Rebecca,
One last thing, it was a little difficult to find the ‘focus’ on your page.
1. I couldn’t tell where your ‘navigation’ bar was to get to the other site. The second time I scanned your site I realized that it was the red words in the box near the top of the page.
2. You have a lot of articles on the first page but I am not quite sure why they are there. It just seems a little out of place to me.
Maybe you can work on the layout a little to get similar things together with nice bold headlines that say what is what.
Take Care.
Shonika
I noticed two major problems at this site:
–Remove the “YDG Login” on the right side of the screen. I was able to access all the information at the site without logging in. But if visitors think they have to log in first, they might leave the site.
–The title bar at the top of the screen says *****Yound Designer’s Guide******. That’s the first place the search engine spiders look for keywords, and using all those stars will confuse the spiders. Remove them. Instead, place three keywords or keyword phrases in that title bar that people are likely to type into the search engines if they’re looking for the kind of information you offer.
Contact Career Counselors Consortium (www.careercc.org) and wite to president at CCCBettina@aol.com, about having the professional career coaches contribute to your site.
Correction:
“write to president”