Good tutorials on non-spammy PR/Marketing
Adaptive: General comments. As a preface, I established several online marketing teams at a multinational ad agency, back when things were new enough that they didn't have anything in place. I am super skeptical of most claims about online marketing.Fundamentally, whatever you do, marketing has to be based on three things:* Honesty (no b.s. about your products, don't mislead)* Integrity (play hard but play fair)* Respect (always treat your customers with the golden rule)Never, ever sacrifice those values. Always gauge all marketing against those values. Seems obvious but many marketers (both client side and agency side) don't do this basic check.Ok, onwards.----------------------------------------1. Make sure your site is as search engine friendly as possible. This is your foundation and without it any future promotion, marketing, word of mouth will fall flat.2. Make sure your site reflects the impression you want to leave your customers/prospects minds. Be brutal in your evaluation. Do not skimp on this. First impressions on the web occur in a matter of seconds.3. Measure measure measure. Get a baseline on traffic to your site. Use Google Analytics to track progress through the site. This is just like being a store owner and seeing who comes in, what merchandise they like and how long they stay.3. Identify your targets. How do they communicate? Are they emailers? Twitterers? Where do they hang out online? Draw up a profile of your prospective customers. This is the beginning of an online media strategy.3.5 Figure out what you want to tell these customers. If you have some existing customers talk with them. Craft your message. You may have multiple messages for different prospective customers.4. Start slow, small and free. Drop honest, open non-spammy comments into forums that you are already a part of (no sock puppets). In other words: this should be dealt with much like you are dealing with any product you believe in. Be honest that it's your product, welcome feedback, but don't be shy about saying why it's good and why you feel it would be interesting to the people you're talking to.5. Always approach any marketing as, fundamentally, a conversation. Never talk at people. Even print advertising should be one side of an ongoing dialogue with customers.6. As you start to get the word out, watch traffic. See what works. Stagger your efforts so that you can track results easily. This is poor-man's media planning. Plot it out in a spreadsheet or proj.management app or calendar so you know when you'll start to communicate certain messages in certain channels.I could go on about this. Not sure if this is the feedback you're looking for. Happy to write more.----------------------------------------(edit: formatting)