Halloween Blog Promotion Totally Flopped

I had a great idea to promote my blog and join in the Halloween spirit at the same time last Friday. What better timing, I thought, than to pass out candy with a little blog business card attached? So, Halloween morning I found some great deals on big bags of decent (Willy Wonka!) candy and some festive holiday sandwich bags with zip seals. Perfect.

I made a 4"x5" graphic postcard advertising my new city blog with MS Publisher software and printed about 50 on my personal printer. The cards looked professional and I used some phrases to peak interest. You can see an image of the promo card above.

I filled 50 bags with a generous handful of candy and one post card and waited for night to fall. There a very popular shopping and dining area called Belmont Shore in an affluent Long Beach neighborhood, which I stereotypically assumed would also be tech savvy and interested in a new city news source.

I set out around 6 p.m. and found the mile long street crowded with trick or treaters, their parents and plenty others who refused to join in the festivities walking in their civies. Most merchants stood at their entrances and passed out candy to the kids. I was targeting young and middle aged couples, single women and a few older couples who looked at me curiously.

There was a definite air of suspicion about me, which I wasn't prepared for. I'm a very normal looking, nonthreatening girl and I'm not sure what made people apprehensive about accepting my candy bags. Perhaps they thought I'd laced it with meth or something (C'mon! They're individually wrapped pieces). But, nearly half of the people I offered bags to turned them down. This after accepting candy from hundreds of strangers standing in shop doorways!

I think it may have been connected to my opening line, "Hi, here's a bag of candy from a new city website". The moment I said 'website' some eyeballs widened and others turned away. "No thanks," they'd say. Hhhmm. Curious. "There's nothing to buy! It's just free candy," I'd call after them. Not one came back. Drat.

These decliners made me walk up and down the street about an hour longer than I'd anticipated to give away all my candy bags, which I did. All 50 of them. I did get a fair share of "oohs" and "aaahs" from people who seemed a bit excited about my new blog. I thought they'd surely check it out later.

Wrong. Since Halloween night, I've gotten all of six direct hits to my local blog URL. How sad! Only 11% of my test group even bothered to visit the blog. How much you wanna bet 100% ate my candy! Oh well, Halloween candy promotion idea: $15; marketing lesson learned: priceless.

I don't think any promotion involving food from a stranger is going to prove very effective for me. My next campaign will be a more traditional approach. I'm going to purchase a text ad in a very large condominium complex's monthly newsletter. This complex has nearly 600 units and the newsletters are delivered to doorsteps by the home owners' association. More on that later this month.

Traffic Update: Still dismal, less than 10 hits per day. Subscribers fluctuate between 3 and 5.

Business Closure Post Getting Hits

My article on a local restaurant closure is getting Google hits! I have not found any coverage of the departure in other media outlets around here. Like I mentioned, the restaurant was an upscale grill and wine bar in a trendy shopping district. I wonder if the area's business association asked the local paper not to cover it. After all, closures are not usually things to promote.

Since publishing it two days ago, it's drawn seven hits. Most are IPs in Long Beach, with a couple from nearby cities. Maybe I've gotten a new subscriber out of the article. Stay tuned.

Photo Feature

Some of my favorite blogs have some kind of daily photo feature. Pictures are a good way to communicate with readers and also let them draw their own conclusions for interpreting the image. I know I enjoy photo posts, so I started a similar feature on my local blog.

The "Almost Daily Photo" is just that - a random photo I've taken of the Long Beach landscape, posted about three times a week. I wondered about posting the photo alone or typing a little info about it. I decided on a one-liner that puts it into context.

Always looking for monetization ideas, I'm thinking about compiling the daily photos into a calendar for sale in December. I'm no professional photographer, but I do have an eye for interesting shots. As I started posting the images, I realized how eclectic they are. The photos are starting to show how much there is to enjoy in Long Beach and maybe others will be drawn to the beauty, just like I am.

Another good thing about features is that readers come to expect that certain experience from your blog, making it unique from competitors in that respect. I have not gotten any feedback on the photo feature yet. I will post otherwise if I do.

One bit of good news is that the Google bot finally crawled The Long Beach Observer yesterday. I know I messed up the rhythm by the big gap in posts I had from when I first started this blog last Spring and finally jumped into it again recently. Glad to see Google's giving me another chance!

Traffic Update: Still dismal, under 5 hits a day. But 2 new subscribers gained this week! See total in sidebar.