It's better to discuss this now than later. So basically, here's what I'm thinking. This site has a lot of potential, but people are only going to come here if they know where to find it. Long story short, we should all do our part in promoting the site. I'm not necessarily saying we should shamelessly plug the site everywhere on the internet, but we should at least try to spread the word.

Why?
1) Because I said so.
2) Because the more people come here, the more people will see YOUR writing.
3) Because there are writers out there who are looking for a site like this.

So now the only question is: How should we promote the site? That's what this thread is for. Your ideas. If you have an idea for getting the word out there, post it here!

But first, some advice: The first step in being taken seriously is to advertise to the people who care, rather than spamming all over the place. You could start by telling any of your real-life friends who happen to like writing. On the internet, you just have to find people who might be interested. For example, if someone on another forum starts a thread about writing, it shouldn't be hard to work Papertank into the conversation.

Or, you could do what I do: Be simultaneously selfish and helpful by linking to your own articles from other sites. This is a community-driven website, so you can help Papertank by helping yourself. Advertise your own stories on Facebook or Myspace or whatever by linking to the one hosted on Papertank. I'm linking to all of my Papertank submissions from my own website. The first story I submitted used to be hosted on my website as well, but when I posted it here, I took the other copy down, so that people have to come here if they want to read it.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Ideas?

Make poster and pop them up alll over the streets or we could introduce them into other forums like newgrounds.

That's a good idea. The Writer's Club on NG has a crapload of members, including myself.

If you feel up to the task, you could take a shot at whippin' up a cool looking papertank signature and post it here. Other people could use it on their favorite forums. That really help gets the name out. My favorite way to spread the word is to go on my rooftop and scream "GO TO PAPERTANK.COM!" all night.

Get the mic and giant speakers.

Good idea. I'm not sure if my other PC has photoshop installed on it at the moment, but if it does, I'll see what I can do. Keep in mind that I'm not a very good photoshopper, though. Anything I throw together will probably just be an attempt to make the site name and logo look cool using filters. Maybe I'll throw a cool slogan on there, too.

Speaking of slogans, do we have one? Someone think of an epic slogan and post it here.

I had one rambling around in my head, but it's a little too long for a slogan.

"Paper beats rock. Papertank beats everything."

I'm going to be using it for a little advertising campaign I'm working on.

Maybe using social bookmarking such as digg, reddit and such would potentially attract some lots of views, and could provide you with a wider audience.

Indeed it would. I'm not sure if anybody has noticed, but I've added a feature on the article page that allows users to submit articles to many social bookmarking sites automatically.

I suppose it's just a matter of getting people to submit them to those sites.

I think a great way to promote the site is just by simply adding the site to our forum signatures in all of the forums that we've posted in on other sites. Although it may not bring in a lot of traffic, I've read somewhere that it will greatly increase something called the Google PageRank, which is an algorithm that determines where a site will come up on Google's, as well as other search engines, search results.

It basically works like this: the more links there are to a site, the greater the PageRank is, and if there are forums where some of us may have around 1,000 posts (I know that I do), so that means there are 1,000 different links coming in, which will cause the PageRank of the site to increase significantly.

And all you have to do, is simply put a link in your signature saying "Papertank: The Ultimate Source For Writers" or something of the like.

Just a thought, what do you guys think?