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Any Success Using Social Media to Advertise Your Hosting?
Offshore_Solutions
Member
I seek your advice please on successful ways to advertise hosting related websites on social media.
I've created 4 Twitter accounts but never gained traction or followers that would turn into click-throughs. Have you successfully used Twitter to advertise your site?
I created a Facebook hosting community which proved to be a big empty fail with only 3-4 people ever joining! I've had success with Facebook Guitar communities, but never hosting.
One year ago, I tried to create a Reddit hosting community but it also failed so far with only 16 posts & few members:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Web_Host/comments/y13t0l/the_largest_webhosting_community_in_the_world/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
What is your experience using social media & how did you successfully use it to promote your hosting related services?
Comments
You can't gain followers on social media without paid promotions.
Promote your page on Facebook, it takes time, but eventually, you will earn few customers.
Marketing is very important for a business
Yes you can.
Very hard to convert hosting clients from social media.
Well, yes.
You can if you are a model
If you are a hosting provider, it's very hard(near impossible) to gain followers without paid promotions
Is there any other way?
Depends on what followers you want. Honestly, since hosting for most is a set-it-and-forget-it, followers is irrelevant. Especially at a start.
Depends on what kind of hosting clietele you're looking for.
For managed hosting, for example, find entreprenours, make 1-2 love your services, word will spread.
You should try making shorts on YouTube/insta. For example racknerd have channel on YouTube and their shorts gets hundreds of views daily even though their content is kinda pathetic
That is a great idea. Which host is best at YouTube to learn from their example?
Don't know about best but i have been recommended hostinger and GoDaddys shorts on video while browsing
Appreciate you recognizing our efforts and we sincerely appreciate the feedback.
I do recommend that providers invest in their social media content; it's worked well for us, reach wise, as we feel that our content can help many, from the technical to the less technical and our social media presence continues to grow.
I will put it out there, that we're always open to creating content people are interested in. If you have any ideas, we're open ears
I've only watched one RackNerd video, when I was first reading up on wireguard. I didn't use the script you recommended, and whizzed through the video at 2x speed, but I thought the video was well done and probably a good solution for people who didn't especially want to know how it worked but just wanted to set up their own VPN with the minimum of hassle.
become a purple daddy and success with come
I've never done this, but I guess I need to learn how for when I eventually have my app ready to market. But my initial thoughts are:
Not sure if you posted the wrong link, but that goes to an article from 5 hours ago that sounds like a very clumsily written advert for LET. It just sounds like marketing spam, and if I somehow came across that, I would definitely not click on the link! But, also you mention "your own forum" in that and don't even provide a link to that, but you do to LET which you say is a competitor. That just makes it look even less professional and more like an advert for LET.
Hi @ralf -- appreciate the feedback and am happy to see that you've found our efforts as a solution. Our goal is to continue providing content, and a variety of it in hopes it helps
We understand that the industry lacks video content, so we've chosen to do our part. Our goal is to help both the technical and less technical, including content as simple as expanding on industry terms so that people learn + gain interest in our industry. We then distribute this content on Linkedin, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc.
We understand that providing continuous content in our industry can either be plenty to choose from, and or reach a point where you slow down as ideas run thin. So our advice to those interested in creating content, do it, and create content on what you're most passionate about - whether the content be in a blog, or perhaps video. It'll certainly help someone as well as ignite your fire to continue with content creation.
For those interested in taking the leap with content creation, we recommend (if available to you) that you pay your staff extra to help, if they're interested, as each of us are passionate, and have a unique interest.
Thank you Sir, here's the link to my attempt at a Reddit hosting community:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Web_Host
Thanks @Ralf, I 100% agree with creating your own forum & that was my starting point, my own forum:
https://HostBoards.com
To be honest with you, a forum needs its own Social Media presence to populate it as the risk is they can appear dead even with 3 million members.
...domain was registered in 2011 and your forum didn't start until 2021..?
4 Name changes since this forum's creation in 2004.
Do an Archive.org lookup of our 1st name "DevDreams.com" as you can see here from April 2004:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040410015247/http://www.devdreams.com/
I bought this forum in 2006 & changed it's name to "WebmasterPost.com." I kept the creator's tutorials on the front page (just as he had done) of this vBulletin forum until many years later. You can see my initial changes here from 2006 in Archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060809211724/http://www.webmasterpost.com/
This is explained in our forum "Rules" page:
"We are known as the "many name" forum because we've had 4 names since our start in April 2004:
DevDreams.com,
WebmasterPost.com,
WebhostingForums.com
---- & now ----
HostBoards.com
Registered but don't recognize us? - You likely signed up under one of our 3 previous names since 2004 when we were using vBulletin.
Your posts are missing? In 2018, we were hacked which destroyed several years of posts. Thus we're resurrected on Vanilla Forums."
Source: https://hostboards.com/discussion/4331/rules
If you offer simple hosting plans, I run a pro group with 400k members on a Linkedin.
With a nice promo, there might be something to do...
I have sponsors for the next 3 weeks, that leaves time to turn around, prepare something nice for Black Friday for example ...
I know it works, simply because the advertisers are loyal, some for 8 years.
Social Media User : Shit that cat looks ridiculous, wanna follow this guy.
LET User: Shit this VPS plan looks ridiculous, asshole provider ban forever.
@dustinc, do you have a dedicated Social Media Staff & which platform do you tell then to focus on?
I noticed you tweet everyday with a very respectable 2,731 followers. Probably among the most followers I've seen for a Host:
https://twitter.com/racknerd
After YouTube, what's the 2nd best Social Media for gaining customers?
You need to create something unique to gain some social media attention. Especially for Reddit, there is already a very popular sub r/webhosting so if you create something like r/web_host, none will take it seriously.
Hello @Offshore_Solutions -- we find that all platforms do well for us, though YouTube is the best if I personally had to pick one, as we're able to show potential and existing customers tutorials. Including capturing business through the process.
Other platforms such as Instagram usually lead to the "TikTok" approach, that being shorts. Of course, we still distribute shorts on Instagram including sharing a photo with a brief description leading them to the link in our bio.
Speaking of which, TikTok is one of our latest social media efforts, the channel is quickly growing and one that many providers today aren't even present on. I encourage providers to consider it, as I feel opportunity exists.
In terms of having dedicated staff handling social media/marketing, I would say instead of that, it's a team effort so we're all contributing. This has proven to be the best for us, and keeps the content unique and flowing. We're all interested in creating helpful content and distributing it throughout all of our channels.
Here's a link where you can find the platforms we're on: https://linktr.ee/racknerd
yes, you can use social media platforms to promote your hosting. there are so many SMO executives that can help you to gain followers in organic ways.
Speaking from the customer's point of view; you need a bit more than the product itself, you need some pzazz in order to really be successful on social media.
You only need to take Elon Musk as an example. He markets various products by disguising it as trolling, and strangely enough: it works.
Would it work as well if he were to just buy legitimate and honest adverts for his product? And just wait to see results?
Unlikely.. a server from RackNerd is going to be just as decent as the one from FranTech, and so on... their support will likely be of similar quality as well, and their AUP and billing methods will be similar as well.
So where is the actual difference? At least for the user?
You could argue that there is none, but if you give the customer something more, then you may have a better chance in winning them over, both personally and professionally.
You could stand up for certain causes or injustices in the world, etc.. but other than that, I'm not seeing how you're going to gain legit followers that will also be your customers.
There was an old Ukrainian datacenter (ColoCall, perhaps) that featured pictures of topless girls working on racks on their website. Some could say that that was stupid, but you could also argue that it's ingenious. It creates buzz. It. just. works.
By the way @Offshore_Solutions your website offshoresolutions.com doesn’t resolve https://dns.google/resolve?name=offshoresolutions.com&type=A
i will go to a forum with lots of traffic and spam my forum url.
and my forum i will plagiarize content from elsewhere and post it as though my own.
Exactly! The Purple Daddy markets better than Fran and I hope to learn from his methods. Not saying Fran doesn't do well, his business is solid. But Dustin has that magic of creating a buzz & it seems that even when it's bad publicity, he still sells servers.
I'd like to hear suggestions of good SMO Executives. I've only met kids that have an Instagram account but failed at being an "Influencer" so they feel they're good enough to pretend to be "Social Media Consultants."
Aren't forums social media as well?