I am having a hard time generating traffic and sign ups for my new social network. It's been live for almost a month and only has 17 members. I have purchased ppc ads, am currently running a contest on gleam and facebook, have linked it to a twitter, tumblr, and facebook profile, shared it on stumbleupon, reddit, and digg, submited it to several directories, placed it on many beta lists, and have contacted all of the technology and social media bloggers.
About my social network:
Otakujam is a new social network aimed at helping geeks connect with other geeks both online and off. It has entered open beta on 5/27/14 and is seeking testers to help suggest new features and test existing features.
It offers many familiar social networking features such as an activity stream where users can post updates, share photos and videos, and share and comment on other users' activities.
You can friend other users, or choose to follow them instead - the difference being that a follow does not require a confirmation from the other user. Users have complete control over their privacy levels and can choose which profile fields to make public, hide completely, or show to friends only.
The site's main feature is "Otaku Match" which is a matchmaking script that allows users to search for other geeks based on the information included in their profiles. All of the profile fields and data are customized to be of high relevancy to geek culture and include things such as a user's favorite anime, or what books they are reading, or their favorite board games. Users' profile text is automatically converted into hyper links which when clicked, will take you to a page which displays other users who share these interests.
Users can also join and create groups or participate in chat rooms or forums with other members. There's also an events section where users can post and search for offline real world events which allows users to search as close as 5 miles or up to 100 miles from any given location.
Users can easily update their OtakuJam profiles by connecting to any of their social media accounts such as importing their instagram or flickr updates into Otakujam, or being able to use twitter to tweet out their OtakuJam status updates. Status updates can include hashtags and mentions which work similar to twitter in that they alert the person mentioned or help index content based on topic tags.
New features are being added constantly and a few upcoming features include the ability to watch streaming anime content and a steam api integration to display your games and achievements. Best of all, the site is completely free. There are no premium subscriptions and all users have full access to all of these features on the site.
What else would you recommend I try for promotion?