I’d hate to be running for office in the age of YouTube. First, there was John McCain taking a snooze during President Bush’s State of the Union address last week. Now, it appears that Hillary Clinton’s singing voice was caught on tape during the national anthem during a recent appearance. This is nothing new, of course. Howard Dean had his fair share of difficulties a few years ago for the same kind of thing. One could argue that his scream did irreparable damage to his political career.
Politicians need to think defense at all times when it comes to what they say and do. Putting out a hundred press releases (i.e. offense) doesn’t get you a fraction of the impact that one of these does.
As the YouTube effect continues to proliferate, corporations will need to do more and more to follow suit.
Archive for January, 2007
Playing Defense
Monday, January 29th, 2007Keyword Research & Search Engine Marketing
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007Many of the marketers and business owners that I speak with are highly interested in being highly ranked in search engines–especially Google. Many have gone to the trouble of performing some surface level research on the basics of search engine success: things like meta tags, title tags, and incorporating keywords and phrases into the site’s text.
But one of the key issues that is surprising to people involves keyword selection. I have found that those keywords and phrases that you assume will be successful are often not. Using software tools, we often explore the real data reflecting the words/phrases that searchers are using and how often they are being used.
I’m usually surprised when I look at the search volume of various terms (which I assume to be popular) in contrast to those phrases which are similar in nature. For example, I once saw that ‘personal injury law’ didn’t have close to the level of search volume as ‘auto accident attorney.’ Humans search differently than that of the marketer’s perception. Keyword research is essential to search engine success.
Brian Clark has a great piece on his blog describing the art of keyword research and why it is important.
Google Image Search
Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007Most businesses are very interested in being at or near the top of the list when a user searches for an associated or relevant term on Google. Many users often use the ‘Images’ search within Google to look for various images, logos, or photos. Chris Pearson has an interesting post about the trends he is seeing regarding this delineation. Marketers should be aware of the increasing popularity of image search. Designers and developers should take note of the importance of using specific terms within the ALT field of image tags; the more descriptive, the better.
The Web is a Serial Killer
Monday, January 22nd, 2007Laurence Haughton points us to an article from The Economist in which the Web’s industry changing nature is very candidly characterized:
“The web takes its victims one at a time. First, in the mid-1990s, print media started to feel the terrifying effect of losing their monopoly on publication…in the early 2000s, the same thing happened to music…Now it’s television’s turn. In 2007 TV will have its first “music moment”—the realisation that a core audience (the 18-34-year-old male) has moved online, possibly for good.”