How can we reach out to other SE sites to bring users here?

Question

Some questions here could potentially be on-topic for multiple Stack Exchange sites. That's okay, there's no reason we can't duplicate as long as the questions have a different slant on different sites.

For example:

• This recent question on reference documentation, for example, would work well on Stack Overflow, but would get substantially different answers, since that's a community of programmers, not writers.

• Thesis questions could work equally well on Academia.

• ESL questions like this one would probably be welcomed at English Language Learners

• Grammar questions are discouraged here unless they relate to writing directly, but some questions straddle the line between Writers and the English Language and Usage site.

My question is: How can we reach out to other sites, making them aware that Writers exists as a resource? I don't want to be overly pushy or spammy, or try to get lots of questions migrated here (particularly at the expense of other small beta sites) but we can probably help out with any writing-oriented problems that are posted elsewhere.

Is this even a good idea? Maybe we should we focus on publicizing the site outside of the network?

Answer 1

IMHO, existing SE users aren't a huge target audience for us. Yes, there's a little bit of overlap, but I don't feel like we're "missing out" on a significant number of questions that would work well for us. And I suspect many SE users aware of the beta site system can find us quite easily if they have any interest in writing. In other words, SE users are the most likely to find us with the least promotion effort on our part.

Commenting when appropriate is obviously fine, but I don't see any need to start promoting Writers.SE to other SE sites. Our site definition is tricky, and apt to be misunderstood by casual SE'ers. I'd really like to minimize our overlap with ELU and with ELL, since historically, most questions I've seen migrated (or attempted) from there have been poor for our site - mostly a widespread assumption that we're a resource for proofreading, line-editing, phrasing advice, and general feedback on any bunch of sentences somebody has written.

The audience we want to attract is writers, of all types and stripes, particularly the ones who aren't familiar with Stack Exchange already.

Answer 2

I have been adding comments around the other sites on questions where it seems appropriate. Where I am familiar with moderators I let them know, and we can (though I havent) provide an informational post on the other sites' meta site