One of my sites is targeted to a local audience, local news, stories, forum, etc. Last night a favorite bar/grill here in town caught on fire and my son went to take some photos for the website. While there he started talking with a TV news crew and showed them his photos. They were so impressed with them they were used on the 10:00 news last night with my son and the website address credited as the source.
I fully expected to see people flocking to the site, but barley any increase at all. For 10 years I ran this site as a sub-domain, a few months back I finally got a .com for it, but have not had much time to promote the site or even keep it current. I've learned that even a site targeted to a local rural area needs to be promoted as much or even more than a site targeted national or world-wide.
That's a shame, I'm no expert but you could look into some offline ads, like in newspapers or place posters.
I have done that off and on over the years. Like any site, you gotta work like heck on it. The thrifty nickle type papers are good deals for ads. The local newspaper has over the years become a competitor so ads there are not really an option. They are not interested.
Excellent news, did he post them on his site too? Then digg them should get even more traffic! There are many unusual ways to get traffic, this is one to add though.
Apparently, this TV station is always looking for news stories and sometimes just nice photos. I plan to have my son start submitting some of his better photos to them off and on, as well as getting him out more often photographing various events.
that's a fantastic story (except for the bar owners)! and what a way to generate natural traffic - it's this sort of stuff that webmaster should be seeking more of. maybe not so dramatic, but things that give exposure to larger audiences.
Excellent, very unique way of promotion! This way you can also build link, use offline method, like newspaper, recomend your websites to friends, in seminar etc. Once your website is caught by the media then absolutely your website would be up as your website is known by the media then people started visiting your website. But if you are providing stuffs on your websites like forum, social integration, free ads etc then try to keep moderating your website well, and always think from social point of view, give some thing to the society,
Yes it was. This was a nice place too, a neighborhood type bar and grill, 4 or 5 different draught beers (my favorite) served in English style pint glasses, and excellent food. The smallest burger there was 1/3 of a pound, great fish and chicken. I hope they are able to rebuild.