It’s clear that the whole purpose of running a blog and investing time on it revolves around the fact you want to share your opinion with other people. That’s pretty straight forward.
Regardless of your niche and writing style, every blog is opinionated. Simply because two people can blog about the same exact topic yet approach it in two quite contrasting ways. So, taking that into consideration let’s take in a general assumption ”all blogs are opinionated” for sake of my point;
That makes you wonder… what good is an opinion that doesn’t receive criticism?
As a blogger, you should give your opinion the opportunity to be critiqued and the only way you can do that is by exposing it to the public-eye. Without this exposure, the bitter results lay in the daunting loneliness of those hundreds of thousands of Blogger/Wordpress blogs that seem barely maintained, let alone thriving as a community.
Well, following up on my earlier post, on 45 ways to build back-links — which covered ways of spreading the world online, I want to share with you 11 ways in which you can spread the word in the offline world.
1) Get a T-Shirt
The most saturated method of promoting your blog in the offline world is to get custom designed T-Shirts and get people to wear them. Whenever I think about this method of promotion, ShoeMoney is the first thing that follows that thought. In fact, his dedicated section called “Friends and Fans” explains it all.
2) It’s Not Just Only T-Shirts
Don’t get disheartened if you can’t get yourself a bunch of T-Shirts. Other promotional items can include cups, mugs, pens, paper weights, freely distributed calendars, magnets, and even car bumper stickers which I’ve explained in more detail below.
3) Print Posters, Pin Posters
If you belong to any communities or societal groups, it is more than likely for them to have “bulletin boards” where members can advertise/share information — depending on the appropriateness of your site and the organization. A well designed eye-catching poster can definitely grab some attention, but don’t forget that you aren’t limited just to bulletin boards!
4) Sponsor a Charity
I’ve repeated this technique over several of my earlier posts too, but the significance of sponsoring a charity can never be over-appreciated. Especially, because blogging is all about connecting to people, so helping out others and being naturally courteous is one way of making connections.
5) Get a Car Bumper Sticker
I’m hoping to get one of these for Blogussion within the month, and just stick it on the family car. Personally, I think it’s a great for promoting your site on a local level but you have to be very creative, because you only have matter of seconds and its unlikely people will have pen & paper with them, whilst driving. Make sure it’s clear, simple and unforgettable!
6) Video Killed the Radio Star?
Who says radio advertising still doesn’t pay off? I know this method can be quite costly, but try to seek out channels that are offering advertising within your budget. Just make sure that the radio channel is appropriately matched to your site; mentioning your SEO Blog on a 1930s audio-‘films’ probably won’t do you much good.
7) Business Cards and Letter Heads
This technique is pretty selective in its effectiveness, because not many people carry around business cards and letter heads with them. Just in case you do run into an acquaintance and want to exchange details, head over to VistaPrint and order your free batch of contact cards!
Your Voicemail
I actually picked this up a few years ago from one of ProBlogger’s post, where he advices you to include your site details on your voicemail. It seems like a great idea, just to throw in that URL link but be careful that your attempt to make notice of your site doesn’t overshadow the primary source of a voicemail.
9) Promotion Flyers
If you can design a small (preferably half an A4, if not smaller) and print out a few hundred copies — then just get on a bike and go around to your neighbors post boxes and start filling them in. It’ll give you a taste of what it might feel like to be a Postman, so it’s a win-win situation. I’m eagerly awaiting my school holidays, so I can do the same with Blogussion — but first I need to make sure I can legally do that… better check with your local council first!
10) Newspaper/ Yellow Pages Advertising
There are many companies (mostly offline) that advertise their services on local newspapers and the Yellow Pages — there’s absolutely nothing that says you can’t do the same. I’m not sure about pricing, but some local newspapers can even get you featured if you talk to the right people — in the right way.
11) Word of Mouth
Lastly, you can just tell your friends and family to help you raise “[Your Site] awareness”. This can be a very strong technique to get your site noticed, and especially if you speak to the right people — it can snowball into a viral market.
Fin.
Those are just some of the ways you can promote your site offline, but I’m sure there are many more.
Perhaps you have an idea that I haven’t mentioned above? If so, leave us a comment!
26 Discussions
I like the idea of t-shirts … especially on my gran. She’d love it and it would be a great promo. Nice one!
Chris’s last blog post..How to get a hot date: Part 3
No worries, I’m glad I could spark your imagination
Perhaps you can distributed it within your community too?
I have been looking into producing my own T-Shirts, BUT I really don’t have the capitol to print up a batch. Any ideas on how to do T-Shirts on the super-cheap?
Maybe you could possibly buy some plain t-shirts, white, blue, yellow, whatever color your decide. Then you could use marker, glitter, or colored tape to put your site onto the t-shirt, it just needs to stick out and be clear. This probably could be cheaper than ordering premade t-shirts. Hope it helps!
Nothing adds a touch of personality than making them yourself! but like I said before, you can’t be sure about the quality if you wanted say 100 T-Shirts..unless you really take the time with it.
It really depends on how much you want it, if moneys an issue – you can always run some sort of fund-raiser!
This is one of the biggest let downs in offline marketing, because unlike marketing online there’s alot of costs involved and rarely are there any ways around it.
You could try what Evan suggested, but the assurance of quality can be quite dull.. I don’t know, cause personally – I’m not good at such things!
You can pick up a few custom T-Shirts for a fairly reasonable price over at; CustomINK. I haven’t used them before, but they look alright.
Even better, your best bet is to contact your local “sewing person” – there’s always a couple in the community.
Can’t go wrong with the mail-technique
Also I would like to add another suggestion if possible. For those teen bloggers there’s always the possibility that you could ask for your blog to be on the school announcements. For example, at my school every second period announcements come on and one of the administrators lists events that are happening in school and around the community. This may not be a good idea, but it could work. Just thought of this because my newly inspired blog that I have already written several articles for surprisingly will be about teens, broad topic but I’m sure if I asked my school to advertise my blog on announcements they probably would because it has to do with a relevent subject.
This is just an idea. You could always ask to post flyers around school and hand them out also at lunch, after school, etc.
Anyways haha, thanks for the ideas!
Ahh, that’s a great but as long as your school allows it!
Unfortunately, students can’t interfere with the announcements..
The only kind of advertising we can do is pin “appropriate” messages on the community bulletin boards, that not many people look at
Speaking of radio advertising, their is a radio ad over here promoting radio advertising which mentions that something like 85% of listeners have visited a website after hearing about it on the radio. That doesn’t mean you are going to get an 85% conversion rate on every radio ad or anything but it does show that the majority of listeners are tech savvy enough so that if you’re ad is good, it will be beneficial!
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Ahh, that’s a very interesting statement! I’m just wondering as to who actually said that?
If it was the radio company itself.. makes you the probability of it been extremely biased
Thanks for sharing! Excellent tips, I’ve been thinking about getting a shirt made up.
-Mig
Miguel’s last blog post..22 Word Challenge: Ignite Your Blogging
No worries, I’m glad you found them useful Miguel
If you do find a good way of producing these T-shirts, It’d be great if you could share it with us ~ I’m looking for at the moment, only to find dead leads to affiliate marketing!
So far, only CustomINK has looked trusthworthy..
Good ideas.
I’m starting up a football team and I hit upon the idea of putting the url of my blog on the shirt. Our pictures will be in many local newspapers as well as online non-league web sites.
Dean Saliba’s last blog post..Increasing Approval Rating For GPT Sites
That’s a great idea Dean, hope it works out for you!
Advertising your blog as a sponsor, will help raise more awareness – but following on what Oriono has stated below, it’s a bit hard to really start something..
An offline-campaign about “Keyword Research” will hardly get a second look, let alone rustle up any commotion.
Mate but I do believe that this kind of advertisements will work for those website which have public interest. Like celebrity or sports or shares market. How many people know about SEO and opting this one as a career. This is very negligible percentage (thanks god).
So if you have celebrity or entertainment niche than I am sure your this kind of technique will surely help.
That’s very true, Oriono – so true it’s quite sad
Many people run small time websites and such, but aren’t really aware of the SEO and other technical aspects of “making it successful”
If you do run SEO blogs and other web-savvy blogs, you can associate perhaps a contest so you can indirectly connect with the offline community? For me that seems an appropriate way of getting around the “savvy-barrier”
My apologies. My first visit here (now an email subscriber
) may be a bit of a downer for some.
Actually you can go wrong with the mail thing…way wrong. It’s illegal for anyone who’s not a USPS employee. A rather large fine too if I recall correctly; it’s been a while since I checked.
You also need to be real careful not to “litter” fliers…car windshields for example are a bad idea.
I’ve heard t-shirts work real well though, so I may try it.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Top Commenter Contests – Officially Speaking…
Your right, I think Janith may have mentioned in this post when he was talking about a local council.
However, it may all depend on what state you live in. Currently I think the law in NY state, where I live, you CAN distribute flyers in mailboxes. However, the residents have the ability to fight the unwanted flyers, in which case a fine is issued. I may be wrong on this but this seems to be the case. One of my neighbors recently distributed flyers around my block for his snowplow/shoveling service, and no harm was done. Then again, it was just houses on my block, that was my thought on the idea.
Glad you brought up the littering part too. It probably will spell trouble when there are tons of flyers rolling around the street with your blog’s url on it!
Indeed. Many people have been called to come back and clean up. Fined too if the powers that be feel like it.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Top Commenter Contests – Officially Speaking…
Firstly, let me say a humble Thank You for subscribing Dennis,
We are glad to have you in our community, partaking in our discussions
I didn’t know about the mailing-legal issues that you’ve raised. Quite frankly, I just assumed it to be ‘acceptable’ because everyday there would be a bunch of junk-mail (even from the local hairdressers) in our post box. I doubt that they are part of the USPS.
Other big-company advertisers like Pizza Hut and retail shops, send out junk email on a daily basis – where as by they are more believable to be doing it legally. However, the local hairdressers and butcher – very unlikely.
This junk mail – was delivered by the individual or the mailman (woman)? Unless things have drastically changed in the last few years, it is a federal law covering the country.
Any individual that got away with it got lucky in two aspects – the recipient didn’t complain and the postman didn’t see it in there.
Thanks for the warm welcome.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Top Commenter Contests – Officially Speaking…
Umm, I’m not sure ~ because whenever we would check, there would be some junk mail.
It’s not a concerning problem, that I stalked my own mail box – haha, because I would just junk all of it away.
It’s an enigmatic problem, that we don’t seem to complain about.
Maybe it was the post-man promoting his own secret business, who knows
I love some of these ideas Janith, I am thinking about the bumper sticker, flyers and tshirt design ideas.
A great thing about promoting offline is just how creative you can be to a large audience.
Although unless people are interested in what you promote, it is perhaps a little harder to dominate offline. Something that people need and can be sent out on flyers could easily work well though!
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The audience can be huge in the offline world. which is a bit of a double edged sword because even though you are reaching to a lot of people directly, it’s hard to “please everyone.”
But hey, it’s all a part of moving forward
Thanks for dropping by Dan – appreciate it!
Hey, cool, we have one more item to this:
Put the name of your blog in your wifi router, yes, this a tips that work, we have the agency in a loft’s condo, and have a lot of companies (leads) when we put our link in the ssid name of the router, we have increment nexts days. Ok this is a minor audience, but work in the large path to obtain brand positioning.
Santiago’s last blog post..The Wordpress 2.7.1 version
I think this is an awesome idea. Its about getting exposure everywhere by saturating the net.
Seth´s last blog ..The Secrets to More Effective Blogging
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