My previous post

Since my post, I have received several pieces of mail from marketers that
were excited about my success in posting to newsgroups (16,000 html pages
requested by posting to three newsgroups). There was considerable interest
in finding out what newsgroups these were. Let me say, that that is
definitely not the point. This illustrates something that Internet
professionals like Mary, Glenn, Joe, Daniel, myself, and a host of others
have harped on. Posting to appropriate newsgroups is the way to go. The
three newsgroups we posted to were:
comp.sys.mac.games
alt.games.marathon
alt.mac.games.marathon

These are not groups anyone selling any product should post to.

We informed them that we were maintaining the "Official Marathon World Wide
Web Site" and became very active in the group. Several hundred posts a day
come to these groups, and we help answer them, often with replies of,
"Check the web site". If people don't know what the web is, we invite them
to send e-mail to marathon@cccc.com for more information.

IMHO, this is the way to advertise on the web. We are providing content,
and it is made possible by the sponsors who each have something interesting
on their site that makes it worth the visit from the web site.

To further demonstrate the value of the flexibility and immediacy of the
Internet: Bungie, the company that wrote Marathon, gave us sixteen hours
advance warning before they made the grand announcement when Marathon was
shipping. (They told us last night that they were announcing this morning
that they are shipping it today.) Because this is far and away the most
frequently discussed/rumored/squabbled over topic on the newsgroups, we
immediately wrote a brief press release, put it up on the web site, and
sent posts to the newsgroups letting them know that the official release
date for Marathon was being exclusively announced on the Official Marathon
Web Site. Way to cause a stir. We generated more than 800 accesses (by
this I mean HTML pages) by 7:30 this morning. By 11:30 we were crossing
the 1800 mark.

We are combining high content, involvement in discussions and news groups,
a visually pleasing and interesting web site, and the immediacy of the
Internet to create a successful site on the Internet. Basically, that is a
good thing to do.

OTHER NEWS: I put up a Christmas card exclusively for the pleasure of the
members of this mailing list. Check it out at
http://www.netweb.com/cortex/holiday.html

Have a nice day everyone.

Brent Halliburton

Brent Halliburton
Director of Business Operations, Group Cortex Philadelphia Design Building
Professional Internet Services 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 230
Brent@cccc.com Philadelphia, PA 19104
http://Www.NetWeb.Com/cortex/ Voice: (215) 854-0646 Fax: (215) 854-066