I’ve been thinking of many different ways to market my blogs. Sure I’ve been following the trrends of throwing contests. I have three going on this month alone. I’ve gone and signed up for many blog directories and I frequent many blogs on a daily basis. But you know what. That is exactly what every other person does. So how can I stand out?

I’ve got a pretty good content hook on this blog with my Photo-A-Day project. That makes sure that I have fresh and original content every day. I even made a little widget to get my photos out on a bunch of other blogs. Would that widget creation be considered viral marketing? I can visit everyone who hosts my Photo-A-Day widget and see that it is prominently displayed unobtrusively on each blog. I seem to get some decent traffic from it.

But to enjoy the success of a great marketing campaign I need to be innovative and different. I had a friend who used to work for a bank. He stood in a supermarket in a giant coffee can costume and handed out flyers. I bet I could come up with a character, make a costume and do a series of meet ups so people can come, hang out with the character, get their photos taken, see the blogs I author, be on a podcast and tell their friends. I think I may need to take the marketing for my online stuff offline and get more people to visit, people who aren’t doing the same thing as everyone else. Then the videos and pictures of my character and the people that come to meet him would be seen by many more people.

I’d like to do a roving photography podcast, hand out BenSpark swag like T-Shirts and stickers, take a bunch of photos, interview people and get the word out offline. Maybe the costumed character isn’t needed, maybe instead I could get a stuffed animal made up. I received a stuffed animal from Utterz and it sits on my desk at work, people ask about it and I tell them all about the site, they go to it and start using it. That is viral. That is what I need The BenSpark and my other blogs to start doing. Now I’m wondering what sort of stuffed animal it should be.

I’ve been approached by people to write posts about their companies in return for a T-Shirt. I bet people would write about The BenSpark if I gave away products and swag in return for a link or a post. I’ll look further into this.

These ideas still feel really mild. If I worked for a marketing company like Terralever my ideas wouldn’t be seen as very innovative. I need to come up with something that bloggers and web designers would use on a daily basis. I know that I visit tons of blogs each day, I use a feed reader, I use twitter, utterz and a bunch of other things. Messages are coming in from all over. If there was a way to synthesize everything into one great widget that people would be proud to display on their blogs I think I would be on to something. It is the implementation and ideas to create it that are escaping me.

Of course I could just take Eva with me to hand out my blog business cards. Who wouldn’t take one of these from such a cutie.

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