Their site is now live - Best of luck guys. A quick search of links shows none incoming, even the one from this blog, so it must not be an accurate count. No meta data on the incoming page… they could at least throw a description and some keywords in there.

You know what… I’m going to turn these Blastspot updates into an ongoing thing. It will be interesting watching a very Web 2.0 site try and make it. From birth to success? Or from birth to death? They have a great looking site… its time to market it heavily.

Current searches per day according to Wordtracker:
Myspace 207,003
Facebook 20,167
Blackboard 359
Blastspot 0

If I was promoting Blastspot, I would first start a flyer campaign around college campuses that would have a contest involved. I used flyers to find content writers and it worked really well. They should create a flyer with their orange logo with tabs along the sides or bottoms. Yes, sides. I had to go to campus today and was seeing how some flyers I put up a week ago were doing and saw the side tab design that was very eye-catching and unique. Okay, so why should people sign up for Blastspot? Is it because because they have a cool logo - nope, its not that easy. There needs to be an incentive for people to take action (in this case become a member), there is no compelling content that is being offered or an awesome deal. In this case a contest is needed, and what for the prize (lets say a $1000 budget)?

1.
Cash
$500 - 1st Prize
$300 - 2nd Prize
$100 - 3rd Prize

2.
100 - $10 Amazon.com Gift Certificates

3.
Go kitsch - funny memes that would attract a laugh and discussion
Britney Spears Hair - a little sad, I wouldn’t go there
The Jesus Toast - might offend some of the religious types
The boston toy bomb thing - a little bulky as a prize, too much negativity
Famous peoples chewing gum, etc..
A combination of the 3 - Have flyers focusing on different things - One version focuses on the money aspect. One on the kitsch aspect.

More on tabs.. when putting up flyers tare off one tab. It makes people more confident in what you have to offer. No one was doing this on all of the boards I put flyers on except for a “Summer Job” scheme - probably some door to door sales thing. Their flyers were terrible. They were large(taking up lots of space on a small board) with little information about the offering. Even the torn tab trick was done wrong. Two tabs side by side were torn off of every one of their flyers giving the impression that they did it themselves….. blah.

Now you gotta get people to put up flyers … Use that big network of investors to get out there and put ‘em up. It will make for a good excuse to get your team behind a common cause. They have got money riding on this thing.. get them out there to help this idea succeed. For campuses without people in your network use Craigslist to hire someone to flyer a campus. Make sure they are a student and have been in town for a while so they know where to go. $50 is a fair price for a couple hours worth of putting flyers up. $50 * 100 campuses = $5000 bucks to target the top 100 campuses in America.

The early adopters have signed up, and those people that really want to the Jesus toast signed up for the contest are now part of the network. How are you going to get their friends? Just like everything else, with cold hard cash. Offer a buck for every friend that is referred. Have a spot in the sign up form for the email address of the referrer. You could also set up a CPA affiliate campaign that yields $1/action. It’s a good way to build a marketing team (affiliates) without having the cost of on board employees.

That’s it for now….