A website is like a small shop hidden in a residential suburb. An access controlled suburb at that. In other words, when you first put up your website, only you and a couple of your neighbours know that it is actually there. “If you build it they will come” does not apply to the web. People seem to think that now that they have their website, everyone is going to flock to it and their business will increase a thousand fold. Alas the web, as with real life, does not work that way. You’ve got to work at getting people to notice you.
Luckily there are lots of ways to help you get your site noticed, some cost money, some don’t. But all of them require some degree of effort on the part of the site owner (or the people he pays to do so).
One of the best free methods of engaging any community is to become actively part of it. This means using things like blogs, forums and social networking sites to raise awareness of yourself and through association, your site. This means more than just promoting yourself at every opportunity. It means contributing interesting information that other members of your community are going to be really interested in. Otherwise you just being that dreadful self-centred bore at the cocktail party that eventually everyone tries to avoid (sometimes even by feigning death ;-)).
So, step out into the 2.0 web and try to be that cool guy (or gal) that everyone wants to hang out with. It will do wonders for your website, believe me.