We hope you've been enjoying the re-design of Software Marketing Resource (SMR), and have been taking a look at some of the new features that we've created on the site. Today I wanted to talk a little about the Resources section of the site, and explain how you can use it to easily promote your software and speed up your software marketing efforts.

The SMR Resources section contains hundreds of links to websites that should be an integral part of your software marketing efforts. We've categorized them by page and category to make things easy, so lets have a look at the most useful ones.



Software Sites

By far the biggest list is the Software Sites list. Here's why you can submit your software to a huge list of download sites and get featured on a wide variety of popular download websites. Many of these websites are marked as "PAD Enabled", meaning that you can submit your software using a PAD file, which is an XML file that describes everything about your software. If you need to create a PAD file, or want to learn more then check out PAD Gen, a free application that will help do this.

Press Releases

Second stop on your list should be the Press Releases listing. This list has a wealth of sites that allow you to submit your press release and have it distributed all through the web. Some of these services are free, some are not, but even the free ones will help get your name out there.

User Groups

Marketing is all about getting to the users, and something that's often overlooked in doing this is User Groups. Our listing has links to groups that may want to give out free copies of your software and spread the word about new releases and great tools. The old adage of "Think global, act local" can apply to software too.

Distributors

If you're looking for Distributors then we have a listing for that too, so if you're looking to get your software on the shelves then that's a perfect place to start.

There's many more pages to our Resources section, but these are probably the best palces to start, especially for new developers.

Nav Bar

When you click on a resource link you'll see a top navigation bar pop up, looking something like this (click for a bigger image):



The nav-bar has has three dropdowns, allowing you to easily navigate through the resources. So, for example, if you're submitting to Software Sites you can click through each one without ever having to return to the main page, which we hope will really speed up the process.

Star Ratings

In the nav-bar you'll also see a star rating for each resource. Once you're logged in you can rate each resource, giving it as many stars as you see fit. Your rating is shown in green, and the community's rating is shown in blue, so that way you can see exactly what's good and what's not according to you and your peers.

Submit a Resource

The Resources section is also open for your submissions, so you can easily add in a URL of any site that's appropriate or that isn't on the list. Be sure to select the correct page and category otherwise it won't pass our moderation.

We're going to be adding new features to the resources section over the next few weeks and months, the next feature should be comments, but if you can think of anything else please let us know in the Site Suggestions section of our forum.