When all else fails; talk to your visitors

Newsgroups and Online forums are a great forum for creating net community and the exchange of ideas, but it is also free and popular means to promote your website. 
 
Newsgroups
Whatever the subject matter of your website, there's at least one and maybe dozens of newsgroups or online forums which are appropriate for a brief announcement.

You can get a list of newgroups that may interest you from your newsreader software or your Internet provider.  You can also go to Deja (http://www.deja.com). and search through all current newsgroup items for content that may be similar or related to materials on your website.  You can also read the items themselves at Dejavu.com, familiarizing yourself with the style and culture.   And even if you don't have access to newsgroups through your Internet service provider, you can post to newsgroups through Deja.

Listed below are other possible resources to locate the perfect newsgroup for you:

• Another source on the Web, which also has useful how-to and netiquette explanations is at the University of Indiana -- 
  http://scwww.ucs.indiana.edu/NetRsc/usenet.html

• If you site is non-commercial and related to education, you might want to try some of the following: k12.ed.soc-studies (social studies), k12.chat.teacher (teachers), k12.library (school librarians), alt.education.alternative , or alt.education.distance

• The group for general announcements of new web sites is:    comp.infosystems.www.announce

Remember, before your first posting at a newsgroup, always read samples to make sure your message is appropriate and tailor  your message to the audience accordingly.  

Online Forums
Many of the same topics discussed in newsgroups and in mail lists are also covered in public forums (AKA bulletin boards or notes files).  The software typically allows you to post a comment as a new topic or as a reply to a previous one, so over time a "thread" of discussion grows.  You'll want to participate in the most active and promising discussions directly related to the content at your site, subtly and politely letting the people there know who you are and what they would find at your site.  Once you are established, you may want to start a forum of your own and perhaps scheduled chat sessions to interact with your audience and let them interact with one another.

For a searchable list of over 200,000 such forums, check ForumOne http://www.forumone.com.

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