What marketing/branding services can you recommend to get more awareness of my site?

[BrickPicker]

I am a programmer, not a marketing or social media genius.  It also takes A LOT of time to market your website properly.  Are there services that people can recommend that can help get my site out there and known to people more.  I am always working on the SEO part and that takes time to improve.  Just looking for suggestions.

Thank you!

[SamuelScott]

Even before the Internet, the key to success has always been to build and promote a strong brand. Today, Google favors companies that have built strong brands online. (See the articles here, here, here, and here as examples.)

Remember this quote from Google: "Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool. Brand affinity is clearly hard wired. It is so fundamental to human existence that it's not going away. It must have a genetic component."

They key to creating a strong brand has been, is, and always will be through public relations and related publicity methods. What is called social-media outreach, content marketing, influencer marketing, and more today is just traditional public relations by other names. For an introduction to the topic, I'd suggest taking a look at my Moz post on the topic. I address:

1. Goal identification
2. Target marketing identification

3. Messaging and positioning

4. Media list creation

5. Press release development and pitching

Doing PR is crucial to generating interest, traffic, mentions (with or without links), backlinks, likes, shares, +1s, tweets, and a lot more that all combine to create strong brand signals. PR is how a business and website generates these things organically and indirectly. In one context, it is earning links and not building them. This process is not easy (or cheap, if you outsource to a PR agency), but it is the best way to get such awareness and results for the long term.

Good luck!