The query: when social networking isn't enough, what's next?
Okay, so here's a link to my awesome web site that you should visit and tell all of your friends about immediately:
http://www.honestgamers.com/
See how awesome it is?
HonestGamers is on Twitter now (with over 160 beloved followers) and there have been some efforts on my part to implement Facebook integration. The site also features RSS feeds and those have been submitted to aggregators and now my site is listed in some key search directories. Not only that, but it passes plenty of tests for search engine optimization with what you might call flying colors and a number of other sites within the industry link inward to it. Those sites like me. I like them. All of that is very good.
The problem, in my opinion, is that all of those steps that I've taken are also extremely obvious. Every semi-competent webmaster is taking those same steps or hiring someone to take them on his or her behalf, so the obvious potential that those steps once had will be limited as a result. I'm greedy, though. I want to expand my audience in ways that those current methods won't quickly allow and I don't want to resort to dirty tricks that will keep me up at night or that will compel Google and other search engines to de-list my site or penalize it.
Aside from paying an expensive marketing professional who will tell me to set up Twitter and Facebook pages for my site (or forging a dubious business relationship with one of the folks that keeps e-mailing me and promising to get my site listed on Google's first page of results for any term I choose), what's the next step for a greedy and cash-strapped webmaster like me who runs a site full of great content and just wants more people to realize that it exists?
I figure that there's no harm in asking the world at large. Maybe the world at large has some good ideas!