Promoting CrazyEngineers - Serious Discussion

[The_Big_K]

Okay, don't get frightened by the title

I've been scratching my head since past two weeks & nothing seems to pop up in my brain. The best thing to do, I thought, is to put up this question to our talented, creative & crazy engineers!

Statistics show that we've been growing at a good rate. We took only 54 days to grow from 3k members to 4k members. Note that we did not spend even a single buck on advertising or promoting. The growth is a result of mouth to mouth publicity & referrals. That's impressive. Yet, I think we can do wonders if a team of craziest engineers from all around the world come up with a strategy to promote CE.

The aim is to come up with a plan in which everyone can participate & promote CE. Some suggested that we start communities on social networking sites. Some suggested that we make CE as a permanent link in our email signatures/scraps. What else can we do? Rather, what can you do to promote CE?

I'll not talk more. Post your ideas & how to go about implementing those ideas.

-The Big K-

[LORD_EC]

@admin

1)See the most important thing is "Search Engine Optimization"
Ranking of pages should be good.You are wrong at one point.80% of people join because of their random search on Google.
If we can have better ranking,trust me 1000 members will join in a week.

2)Publicity on Internet: we can have our communities on orkut and other social networking sites.We can have a team that will send invitation to join people from different communities.

3)Content: Im satisfied with it.But if i tell you from general public perspective then a lot of work is needed.We can have very good articles and the number shud be large.

The main problem is that people dont prefer to discuss things instead they will prefer to scrap a random friend on orkut.These social networking websites are ruining a whole generation of youth.To add more,MTV has awarded orkut as Youth Icon.
Now can anyone explain what is the meaning of youth icon ? I think it is what inspires youth.
Now the question is .
Does orkut really inspires you ? and if it does, then for what ?

[The_Big_K]

Good points.

I agree that we haven't done much work on the SEO front. People do visit our site through search engines, but the statistics show that the number is not as big as it should be

We aren't in competition with social networking sites. People would join orkut to find their old friends and just to say 'hi' to each other. There are communities on Orkut which have very good discussions. We, at CE, want to make a difference.

Let's keep the topic confined to ideas related to promoting CE.

-The Big K-

[Elisa]

SEO is a must for any website. This site will grow if users continue to find value. Getting good content is not one person's responsibility. Its a joint effort. I'm very happy with the quality of content we have on crazy engineers.

I had mentioned about CE to the CTO of the company I used to work for. Promoting CE is a responsibility shared by all of us. As a personal effort to help this website, I am planning to circulate an email about CE in my office. Hope that will help.

Moreover, it would help if CE gets mentioned in popular magazines or even, local newspapers.

[kidakaka]

A question first, have we setup a system to collect the data (analytics of sorts) on this site? I am guessing yes, if so, can it be shared? Might be of use ... how many site referrals are we getting?

I agree that CE should not compete with the likes of Orkut, but there still is a social networking aspect to CE. So lets not ignore those.

How about CE widgets for your blog, that should get some hits. A very basic widget like the (what kind of an engineer are you quiz) could be put in an iframe form on a blog. I am sure we can come up with a pagelet of some sorts.

[kidakaka]

Originally Posted by Elisa

Moreover, it would help if CE gets mentioned in popular magazines or even, local newspapers.

Have to agree with Elisa there, that a mention (or two) in a local newspaper would help. Although for that we would need to know whats the geographical spread of hits coming to CE. Would need analytics and data for that.

[Rocker]

Originally Posted by kidakaka

Have to agree with Elisa there, that a mention (or two) in a local newspaper would help. Although for that we would need to know whats the geographical spread of hits coming to CE. Would need analytics and data for that.

Dear Mr. Admin, only you can reply to above post

[The_Big_K]

Originally Posted by kidakaka

A question first, have we setup a system to collect the data (analytics of sorts) on this site? I am guessing yes, if so, can it be shared? Might be of use ... how many site referrals are we getting?

I agree that CE should not compete with the likes of Orkut, but there still is a social networking aspect to CE. So lets not ignore those.

How about CE widgets for your blog, that should get some hits. A very basic widget like the (what kind of an engineer are you quiz) could be put in an iframe form on a blog. I am sure we can come up with a pagelet of some sorts.

Yes, we use Google Analytics to track the traffic. About 7% of the total traffic comes from site referrals. We got to do something about it, seriously!

CE Widgets? Good idea. Well, yeh, in fact, I was thinking about implementing a Quiz system on CE, what say? I guess, we can attract the crazy brains by hosting the toughest engineering quiz . Could you please tell us more about CE Widgets for blogs? What's the idea?

Originally Posted by kidakaka

Have to agree with Elisa there, that a mention (or two) in a local newspaper would help. Although for that we would need to know whats the geographical spread of hits coming to CE. Would need analytics and data for that.

Yeps, I personally think CE is too small to attract media attention . What do you think? Let me share some interesting data with you. Following is the list of countries in the descending order of users of CE -

1. India
2. United States
3. United Kingdom
4. Malaysia
5. Egypt
6. Canada
7. Australia
8. Pakistan
9. Phillipines
10. Iran
11+ Others

Originally Posted by Rocker

Dear Mr. Admin, only you can reply to above post

Yeh Just did it!

[kidakaka]

CE Widgets
Well, a lot of bloggers (myself included) like to have small playthings on their blog (which is up again btw!). At the same time, if I am on someone else's blog, I wont spend much time on a widget (although, I will think, Hey cool! I am gonna get me one of these!!)

What I essentially mean by a widget is a small script which can be included in the template of the blog and is very flexible in terms of configuration + can be plugged in anywhere. So a blogger does not have to be a genius in HTML to put that in their blogs. Nowadays, blogging engines like Wordpress, et al have made it even easier for bloggers to integrate more and more playthings on their blog.

A quiz system is a good idea, but it should not be too long, and the user who is giving the quiz should be able to quit whenever he wants (not the normal - you are done when you answer 20 Questions, but something more innovative ...hmmm... how about, a correct answer count on the widget?)... so the blogger who has the widget on his blog can show how well informed his readers are?

Plus, the widget can be Ajax based, so the user doesnt have to keep on submitting the entire content. Do we have any photoshoppers around here? So chic buttons + code and we are ready to go

[ash]

Nice ideas being mentioned here! By the way Big K, how many Malaysians are there in CE?