Poetry + Advertising = Are You Kidding?

Using Your Own Poetry to Advertise – Friday, August 27, 2004

Have you ever written a poem for somebody before?

Have you ever written a catchy saying on someone’s birthday or anniversary card?

Have you ever written a love letter to someone?

Simple, catchy poems or sayings are very easy to create and an even better way to promote a website. Poetry websites or web rings are plentiful and give you a way to publish your poems and sayings, most of the time for free.

Within signing up for the rights to upload and publish your work, you can give contact information that serves as a type of media that draws attention toward your email or website URL. Most of the time this information is placed with your poem or saying so that people who view the work will learn something about the author, you the website owner. On a poetry website, you are stuck with the hopes that someone will accidentally find your poem, read your biography, and then go to your website.

This works periodically, but periodically is not what webmasters are after; webmasters want instant traffic from whatever effort is put out. If you post advertisements, you want a reaction from it—some do not care if the reaction is bad or good, they want any kind of reaction from the work. This is what is commonly known as branding your product or service.

An easier way to brand your website is to join a poetry web ring that has a lot of members because when you post your poem or saying, usually, your entry is sent in email to a majority of the people inside the ring. It is like sending a mini-email campaign because at the end of every poem or saying you can put the vital information of your web site. I like to put my website’s whole address for a person to cut-and-paste into an address bar in case the address is not an active hyper-link.

A few things to keep in mind before you try this is to only post one poem or saying a day because people in the ring might consider you as trying to spam all of the members and the moderator may reject your work or even kick you out of the ring, so be careful. Another good fact to know is that most of the poetry sites do not want poems or sayings longer than 20 lines; therefore, you can format all of your work into this limited number of lines and know exactly the amount of text you should have. Having a 20 line limit is also good for the writer because you can learn to focus your intended message in a short format.

Everyone seems to write poetry about love or lost love, so I suggest trying to write more upbeat, motivational poems and sayings to show you and your website are trying to be a positive influence on the people reading your poem or saying. An example of a short poem is below, as well as the free places that it is posted. Good Luck!

I opened up a Smile today,
for no known reason
but just for fun!

Can you imagine, if it was ‘YOUR’ Day?!
Everything goes right,
even the wrong ones
end up that way!

One-by-one,
all in a row.
The most eloquent stanza,
the most spectacular show!

The perfect beginning,
the perfect end.
Never fouled up for a moment,
and now, it seems, it set a trend.

Words alone, CAN describe
this feeling I share with you.
To get up every morning, and let the bright-side
shine right through.

Now, let me describe just how easy it can be.
Take a breath, hold it in, and open up your eyes;
and, if you remember reading this
then surely you haven't died.

So, go on from this point, and that point
with My Smile on Your face,
and pass it on to everyone
don't let it go to waste.

Have a Nice Day :) e b s

This poem was posted at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/poetrypeople/ - 546 members
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/poetrypeople2/?yguid=183322749 - 18 members
http://groups.msn.com/THEPOETRYROOM - 1695 members

As you can see, posting to web rings can lead you to a few thousands targeted potential customers if you do not offend the hospitality of the ring’s moderator and members.

A few poetry websites that take uploads of your work are:

http://www.ilovepoetry.com
http://www.thepoetsroadhouse.com
http://www.poetry.com

Written by eRix © 2004-08-26 permission to reproduce