Promotion

One of the big aspects of a Wiki is getting other people involved, which implies a need for promotion.

First off, the big rule is, do not spam!

Let's say that again:

NO SPAMMING

Spamming typically doesn't help promote anything... unless by "promote" you mean "foster hatred for". And we don't. We want to provide a cool service, and irritating everyone doesn't provide a service and it sure isn't cool.

So, now that we know what NOT to do (If you haven't been paying attention: What Not To Do is Spamming), the question becomes, well, what DO you do? That's where you come in! We'll put the best ideas on this page -- to suggest ideas, check out The Discussion Page and make some suggestions, and after thrashing them out a bit, we can put them over here!

For the time being, here's ideas that we've come up with that will be good:
 * Feel free to link reviews you've written in posts and blogs -- but make sure to do it ORGANICALLY. Only link it if it's pertaining to a conversation that's going on.  Don't just barge in with "HEY I GOT A NEW REVIEW OVER HERE!!!" -- if they're talking about a particular artist or album, and you've got something over here (or if there's a review you like here by another person), we'd LOVE it if you just popped in and said "Hey, this review is pretty cool!".
 * If you're into the mixtape thing, you might want to mirror your mix's tracklisting over at Art of the Mix, a wonderful site that's a big database of mixtape tracklistings. It's real easy to enter them, and in the "about" line, you can enter a line like "Complete song-by-song liner notes available here, hosted by Your Subculture Soundtrack".  That way, it's unobtrusive, and leaves it up to the viewer -- if they're interested in what you've got to say about the songs, they'll click over and read the notes.  And they may or may not explore the rest of the site, and that's cool.  But, who knows, they might keep us in mind for a future mix they'll do, and put in their notes, and do the same thing!  And they might dig the other parts of the wiki!  But the key here is that it's unobtrusive and posted somewhere where it might be up people's alleys.
 * Post a link on your own blog! Show off what you've written!  If you've got a LJ or Blog or any of that fun stuff, link us over, and encourage your friends to help out, too!  And if you write any pages that you're particularly proud of (the sidebar articles can be especially good for this!), direct link those from your blog/journal -- be proud of your work, eh?
 * Use the wiki format to its fullest! One of the great things with Wikis is the interconnected-ness of them -- which makes them great for Newbie Guides To Artists!  Haven't you ever gotten interested in an artist who has a billion records out, and you'd like to know where to start, but it's a little intimidating?  If there's any artists that you're into that are like this, why not help people out, and write an album-by-album guide to them?  (This can take a while, but it can really pay off.)  The great thing is that you can talk about albums or other artists, and easily link to them, so the reader can just glide right over.  Right now, The Residents is our only guide, but feel free to use that as a template!  And once you've written a guide (and don't be afraid to ask admins for help!), you might mention it in fan communities, to get a few different points of view on a record -- perhaps your least favorite David Bowie record, say, is the same record that got someone else INTO David Bowie!  Different points of view are always good.

And of course, there's many other good ideas I'm forgetting -- so feel free to make more suggestions! Of course, the best promotion is to have a Quality Site -- it doesn't matter how many people we get to look at it if it sucks! So, help out to make this wiki the best it can be! I think we're pretty awesome as is, but there's always room for improvement... and with a wiki, it's real easy to improve!