Date: July 1st 2009

IN THIS ISSUE:

WEBWARRIORS: FIREWORKS AND TEA: ONCE AGAIN, IT'S TIME FOR A TEA PARTY!

This Saturday’s the Day! We’re celebrating Independence this year, not just from Great Britain, but from our own government legislators that seem to have no problem with mortgaging our great-grandchildren’s future to promote their strange little social experiments (aka “progressivism”). So, find a tea party near you - go, and let your voice be heard. As usual, the parties are mostly being organized online. The Twitter hashtag is #teaparty.

Here are some other resources:

 

 

IS THE 'GENERATION GAP WIDENING?

Bobby Eberle has an op-ed piece on GOPUSA’s The Loft today called The Crazy World of LOL, BRB, and :-) :

I had an interesting conversation with my daughter on the way to one of her softball games this past weekend. We were talking about technology and all the new inventions and devices that have sprung up during my lifetime. From VCRs and CDs to cell phones and DVDs, the list goes on and on.

Technology is no longer something foreign to younger people. It is part of their lives. Where older folks may run and hide if they are asked to use a computer, the younger generation embraces technology. They also embrace a mindset that is increasingly different from older Americans. At least that is what one study is indicating. Let’s check it out…Continue reading on The Loft >>

 

 

WEB SITE STORY...?

This is priceless. The kids at College Humor have put portrayed our e-Lives in showtunes. Enjoy. (H/T TechCrunch)

 

 

WHERE DO YOU GOOGLE? (BING, YAHOO, ASK...)

There’s an old joke in the south that goes something like this:

A guy walks up to the counter and asks for a Coke. The kid behind the counter says, “Sure, Mister. What kind of Coke would you like? We have Dr. Pepper, Sprite, Pepsi…”

Just like “Coke” has become a household name synonymous with “soda,” or “cola,” so has the name “Google” become a synonym for “online search,” as is satirically illustrated in this College Humor Video, Googling with Bing: The easiest way to Google since Yahoo!

So, why am I bringing this up now? Well, Bing.com is the new search engine that wants to eclipse Google. It’s run by Microsoft. So far, we’re getting almost 10% of our our search engine traffic from Bing.com right now (compared to just a little over 10% from Yahoo, and nearly 80% from Google). That’s pretty good for a search engine that is so new. Naturally, there are a lot of questions - Ian Paul, of PC World addresses a few in his post from May, 5 Things I Want to Know about Bing (So far the answers to the questions are “yes” to the first four, and “?” to the 5th).

For now, if you want to compare Bing with Google, try Bingle, a nifty little site that shows a side-by-side comparison of the search results on both sites. Example below. (Note, the web address is not what you’d expect: http://bingle.pwnij.com).

 

Click to Enlarge Photo
bingle-ft-hard-knox-thumb

 

WHY YOU NEED TO INCLUIDE KEYWORDS IN YOUR BLOG POST TITLES

Keywords, according to DefineThat:

Keyword is the term used for words included in a web page that would match words used by web surfers in finding that web page (via a search engine). Keywords can simply be words included in the body text of the document, or added to the header using meta tags to increase the number of keywords. Selecting keywords, that match your target audiences’ use of the web is a critical marketing tactic.

Blogging is a natural transition from print media to the world wide web for many traditional writers of all stripes. While there are some writing skills that transition well, some do not. One of those is choosing titles for your posts is one technique that has changed dramatically.

Back in the old days (circa 2005), writers of all strips (creative writers, journalists, op-ed writers, etc.) would title their pieces very much the way music artists and movie producers choose their titles. The title would be something “catchy,” but the reader would have to read the piece before knowing how it related to the story.

You see, there is a difference between print media and online media. In print media, the reader has already made somewhat of a committment to read an article, story, book, or chapter by purchasing the book, magazine or newspaper, and opening it. Online media, and especially blogging, doesn’t work that way. A handful of your readers will be regulars to your blog, but most will find you through their networks and through the search engines. A few of your readers are going to find your post via referrals from their friends on social networks. Some may have even visited your blog before and liked it enough to add your feed to their feed reader. But most of your blog readers are going to be people who don’t know or care who you are - they just found your post on a search engine like Google, Bing, Yahoo!, or Ask.

Except for your fans (your regular blog readers), the majority of your potential audience will decide whether or not to even click on your post solely by the title that is displayed on the social network, feed, or search engine results page (SERP). Most of hundreds, or even thousands of blog titles to skim on a weekly basis, and they only have time to click on a few of those posts. Your title needs to tell them exactly what your post is about, so if that’s the information they’re looking for, they’ll click on it, (hopefully) read it, and (even more hopefully) forward it to others in their network.

Also, the search engines seem to be increasingly giving more page-rank weight to titles of posts, as opposed to tags, categories and text. SEOWizz.net has a posted some early research on this, entitled Bing SEO – How Does it Differ To Google? (Do you see what I did there? I took a blog post that had a great “title tag” because it had the keywords in the title, and then I helped SEOWizz.net with its page rank by making hyperlinking to that post using the same keywords.)

Here at Ft. Hard Knox, we’ve been noticing this trend for a while - posts which contain the terms most likely to be searched on the search engine in the title consistently get higher traffic than posts with “clever” titles that do not reveal the subject matter of the post.

So, give it a try: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to start including your keywords in your post titles, and let us know if you see any changes in your traffic sources. Good luck!

 

 

LET'S TWEET THE @WHITEHOUSE ABOUT HEALTHCARE!

Just got this from David All - I think it’s such a great idea, I just did it:

Send a Tweet to the @WhiteHouse about health care and use the hashtag #handsoff

As you may know, President Barack Obama has been doing some extraordinary things online to better communicate his message. And, yes, I say that as a proud Republican.
 
Along with 126 Members of Congress and U.S. Senators, President Obama has started Tweeting (@WhiteHouse). In fact, with a mere 247 updates, the account has already grown rapidly to 550,253 Followers.
 
One of the issues the @WhiteHouse is Tweeting about is health care reform so we thought we’d have a little bit of fun with it and propose an experiment in online activism for an upcoming release of the next Twitter @101Guide.
 
 

tweet-the-whitehouse1

 
So here’s the plan:

 

  1. It is clear that a White House communications staffer is serving as a SpokesTwitterer and will read and perhaps even reply to our Tweets.
  2. We are going to track and record all uses of the hashtag #handsoff for this experiment and report back our findings to you.
  3. As long as you’re logged in to Twitter and using a web browser, just click here to load a draft Tweet and click “Update.” See below for more examples — please feel free to amend as you like.
  4. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of anyone orchestrating a coordinated Twitter advocacy strategy. You’re going to be a part of history and help redefine activism.

Thanks for helping us make a difference.

Revolution,

@DavidAll

DRAFT TWEETS (copy/paste/update)*:
 
@whitehouse a “public plan” would lead to a government takeover of health care #handsoff plz RT

@whitehouse a “public plan” would force millions of Americans to lose their good private health coverage #handsoff plz RT
 
@whitehouse a government-run health care plan would mean long, even deadly waiting time for patients #handsoff plz RT
 
@whitehouse a “public option” would lead to government rationing and lower quality of care for all Americans #handsoff plz RT
 
*These tweets are sourced here.

Buy/Transfer Domains to OODA Domains and support the Center Right Movement

Powered by Dada Mail 3.0.0
Copyright © 1999-2008, Simoni Creative.

<< Previous: WebWarriors of Ft. Hard Knox Weekly Newsletter

| Archive Index |

Next: WebWarriors of Ft. Hard Knox Weekly Newsletter >>

this list's archives:

Powered by Dada Mail 3.0.0
Copyright © 1999-2008, Simoni Creative.