Underground Writers Network Forum How to get interest in online ..

jordys	How to get interest in online journal up? 9 Years Ago Hi! I help my friend with an online magazine - TrystLitMag.com - And we get a good bit of traffic these days. The bulk of our submissions are flash fiction but we really want to add some more poetry and short stories for diversity. One day we wish to have real compensation for publication other than bragging rights, so apart from that, I'm reaching out to a couple of groups for opinions on the best ways to increase website traffic and reign in more submissions. We maintain a Twitter handle but that's kind of it so far. My online research on the matter mostly talks about mailing lists and getting people to sign up for alerts. We don't want to "spam" people or anything like that, so that method is undesirable for us. What are some of your suggestions? Thanks!
jjwilbourne	Re: How to get interest in online journal up? 9 Years Ago Mailing lists are a big thing. A mailing list can be the single best thing you do for your site. You can maintain a mailing list without spamming. No one signs up for a mailing list and doesn't expect to receive anything. If they do, they may not be too bright. If it turns out that they don't want to be on the list, they can unsubscribe and that's okay. You don't want someone on the list that doesn't want to be there. Be clear about what the mailing list is for. Highlight why they might want to be apart of it. This way, those who do sign up won't view your newsletter as spam as long as you stick within the guidelines that you set. A monthly update isn't overdoing it if you provide an abundant amount of content. Still not sure if you're doing it right? Sign up to some mailing lists yourself and look at how other magazines are handling it. The big reason why a mailing list is important is because at the end of the day, it's the only thing you really own (besides your products and content). Twitter can change the rules at any point. Twitter can also disappear tomorrow and you'd be left with nothing but those who have your site at the forefront of their mind. (This happened to me when MySpace.com fell and I didn't convert to Facebook fast enough. Remember MySpace?). The same applies for any social network. I don't mean to imply that you shouldn't use social networks. I do mean to imply that it should not be the very foundation of your strategic outreach. Hop on Facebook. Though twitter is a good social network, Facebook has A LOT of people too. Be sure that many of your posts have images. Images get a lot more engagement than a text post. The more engagement you generate, the more people you see your posts. Refine your Twitter strategy. Twitter is very fast paced, but posts with images get 18% more clicks on twitter. 80% of people on Twitter are in the Eastern and Central time zones. Click rates tend to spike around Noon and 6pm Eastern. Not much tends to happen between 3am-7am Eastern. While you're there, you may as well hop on Google+. You're not going to get as much traffic from Google+, but the good thing is that you can pretty much just duplicate your posts from Facebook to Google+ until you find a specific strategy. Google+ helps with your Google Search rankings, so it pays to not completely ignore it. Other Stuff - It appears that you have a focused niche already. This is good. Be sure to know who your audience is. Make a few character sketches for the kind of person you think is the ideal person for your site. How old are they? What do they do for a living? What do they do in their free time when they're not reading? Are they married? etc. It sounds silly, but once you make a few of them, you can start focusing your content and website to fit the needs of that person who most likely actually exists. When you gain traction, start modifying your approach to fit your real audience. - Try to get people who have influence to read your blog/story/poetry posts before you post them. Get their input. If you do, they're more likely to tell their followers about it after it's posted. When it is posted, let them know about it. This one can be tricky (and may not work for your platform). - This is specific to your site: It's really hard to read. It looks cool and the design is clean. But Dark background against light text is really hard on the eyes. Dark text on a light background is far easier on the eyes. I hope some of this helps! Good luck!
jordys	Re: How to get interest in online journal up? 9 Years Ago Awesome! Your suggestions are amazing and I will definitely discuss them with the team! Thank you so much for your input, it helps put a lot into perspective for us.