One of the most important things I think more and more "marketing gurus" are starting to miss is the simple fact that creating something, calling it viral, then slapping it on the web doesn't actually make it viral.
The minute you take control and steer something to work a certain way, and to produce certain numbers it's not a viral campaign. It's just another campaign, and I wished people would stop trying to force their way into social marketing.
Does HN ever ban sites? I know some other site would do that, if the same domain got flagged too many times all submissions to it would just get banned
What's wrong with this site? Seems to have a couple valuable bits on SEO, which is the bread and butter for a lot of companies. Getting inbound links is a huge deal for smaller websites, and viral distribution is a great way to get that.
What about a site that sells products, like a retail store?
If you're trying to advertise your website, and your primary market isn't your local area, then it's really hard because as far as I know you're limited to:
1) Getting into the Google index and building yourself up there
2) Running a blog and writing material that'll get indexed and hopefully linked (This is very very hard for a product blog)
3) Buying Google adwords for your products that bring people to your site (with a specific landing page of course)
Just curious what is available for sites like that, because it's all I can think of.
Everything is "available". It's just a question of how you think about it.
The big picture philosophy of trying to build "linkbait" (for SEO) is to take the site's niche, and then start exploring anything on the fringe that is slightly related to it.
Think outrageous, and think outside the box.. it doesn't have to be directly about your niche/topic, as long as it is tangentially related..
Of course, it always helps if your site is interesting enough that people feel compelled to share it for what it is.. good linkbait bridges the cap when it is not. :)
The minute you take control and steer something to work a certain way, and to produce certain numbers it's not a viral campaign. It's just another campaign, and I wished people would stop trying to force their way into social marketing.