Most web surfers are sheep – 62 websites to herd them

Promotion is paramount to any blog’s success.

A simple statement, but one that will cause you nightmares. Do you buy links on other sites? Should you sell paid links on your site? What if I buy a plane to sky write my web address in the clouds? All of these questions will most likely run through your head as you are building your website or blog.

For the purposes of this post I’m going to concentrate mostly on blogs, but all the information and theory applies similarly to websites as well. If you have an online presence (and you want to make something of it) you will need to promote it. This whole theory of “Build it, and they will come” is an optimists wet dream. You can certainly build it, but more then likely “they” will not come.

Marketing has become laden with coined phrases like viral, social, 2.0 etc – all of which are just rehashings of past marketing ideas and practices. Viral is a term that has been around since marketing began, it just happened to get stuck with the name viral in the last couple of years.

The internet is so vast and filled with so much chaotic movement that finding any useful information has become an exercise in illusion management. A good marketing and promotion campaign will cut straight to the point for the end user and dangle a nice shiny object in front of them to reach out and click. Most web surfers are sheep.

Sheep you say?

Yes, sheep. Sheep tend to herd together and follow the easiest path laid out before them. Internet surfers on the whole want the easy path, if you’re promotional material is appealing and non threatening they will follow it. Consider the following list of web sites, all social bookmarking sites. Have a few profiles on different sites from this list that link to each other and to your website to create a network for free promotion for yourself. Multiple paths for sheep to follow directly to your blog or website.

31engine.com
backflip.com
bitacoras.net
blinkbits.com
blinklist.com
blogdigger.com
bloglines.com
blogmarks.net
blogmatcher.com
blgomemes.net
blogpeople.net
bloguniverse.com
bmaccess.net
cocolog-nifty.com
coreblog.com
del.icio.us
digg.com
dotnetkicks.com
favorites.live.com
feedburner.com
feedmelinks.com
foculook.com
folkd.com
freshpodcasts.com
furl.net
holycowdude.com
hoorahs.com
icerocket.com
indianpad.com
ipodder.org
jots.com
linkagogo.com
linkroll.com
looklater.com
markaboo.com
memigo.com
myjeeves.ask.com
myweb2.search.yahoo.com
newsgator.com
random-domains.com
rawsugar.com
reddit.com
scuttle.org
searchles.com
shadows.com
simpy.com
smarking.com
socialogs.com
spurl.net
stumbleupon.com
syndic8.com
technorati.com
topicexchange.com
twitter.com
veneblogs.com
wdclub.com
weblogalot.com
weblogs.com
webride.org
wink.com
wirefan.com