Internet Marker

Content is the key, but personalized content is even better. When you write about something it’s better to give personal examples, both struggles and successes. That’s the best way for people to learn. When you give a story behind your information, then you also write in a more impassioned or sincere manner that comes through in the content.

Other good elements to add to content include quotes from experts or famous individuals that support your content. Also, people love numbers, they tell the real story. I recently added an article about what soccer players earn, and noticed that I was getting a lot more visitors interested in what players were making–a range of search terms that encompassed ’salaries’.

Trends and popular books or movies that are coming out can be piggy backed, adding an article about a new movie that’s coming out might enable you to get your page/site listed in the search engines for terms that the movie company is spending money on marketing for, more people go to the search engines to search and see not only the movies’ site but the timely article you wrote about the movie.

Often, it takes a reaching out to get a response.  Everyone loves to receive a letter from someone they care about (now days a letter is most likely an email–but any form of communicating really is representative of a letter).  You’ve got to write a letter to receive a letter.  But I’m amazed at the power of reaching out.  If you want something then you first have to give.  If you want money then give money away.  The effect is moving.  It leads to a tumbling down or up of giving–reverberates.  There’s a commercial where strangers see others help people out and then they help someone out when they have the chance–let the car ahead of them go or lift a bag for someone.  Did you hear about the man who jumped down in the tracks of the subway station and saved a man who was having a seizure?

‘Wesley Autrey faced a harrowing choice, as he tried to rescue a teenager who had fallen off a platform onto a subway track in front of an approaching train: Struggle to hoist him back up to the platform in time, or take a chance on finding safety under the train.’

I think an example is the best teacher.  I think receiving something from someone makes us want to give.  Or, when you receive the thanks from giving you want to give more.  Even more so, when someone is reached out to, they want to reach out to others.  Sharing becomes epidemic.

Like Bill Murry in the hilarious movie Groundhogs Day.  At first he’s set on doing thing that are more selfish.  Things that impress others or knowing things to win the girl.  Later, as the day drags on he starts to help others, since he knows what will take place and learns from each day.

I’m a big fan of David Foster Wallace’s writing.  He writes about a topic down to its finest detail, all in the hopes of explaining something with precision and passion, from all the angles let’s say.  Here he does tennis and Federer for the NY Times.  I believe Wallace was a great tennis player growing up and nearly made it to the professional level if I’m not mistaken.

‘Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be termed Federer Moments. These are times, as you watch the young Swiss play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re O.K.

The Moments are more intense if you’ve played enough tennis to understand the impossibility of what you just saw him do. We’ve all got our examples. ‘  Read more….

Compete.com has another interesting post on the rise of traffic to MLS.com after it was announced Beckham will be joining the LA Galaxy. Here’s a good indication of what effect he will have: The winter months are the off-season for the MLS and are annually the low point in traffic to its official site; yet once the breaking news was released on January 12th, traffic to mlsnet.com increased by 200%. More striking was the jump in traffic to the Galaxy’s team page - 2000%

Yeah, it will be interesting to see what the Beckham affect is on the MLS. I think a soccer league just needs to grow over time, with quality youth players becoming the stars, and teams forming devout and passionate fans since they’ve grown up watching the team.

The MLS also needs soccer specific stadiums, where 30K to 45K can sit very close to the field and enjoy the game, not be backed away because of a track, but a stadium designed for soccer. But, Beckham will come when he can still play, not as an old man. A cab driver told me Beckham is not a play maker, he’s no Maradona or Pele, but I said he’s a special player who does things in sublime fashion none the less. Watch this free kick…

Some interesting information from this posting from Compete.com

‘Time is a limited resource.. As much as we hate to admit it, we each only have 24 hours on any given day to ‘do things’. In December 2006, we had 44,640 minutes to do whatever our hearts desired — be it sleep, eat, watch TV, jump rope, or spend time online.’

# Only 20 domains capture a whopping 39% of all our time spent online.
# Only 2.1% of our time is spent on Google.com (includes all sub-domains). This surprised me somewhat, given how much I think I use Google everyday. I still think I use Google quite a bit, but now realize I don’t spend much time on the site itself. Google is NOT a portal with loads of content. Gmail and Google News are the only services that I spend considerable time on. Search, Maps, etc are quick look-up utilities, as they should be.
# Even if one adds time spent on Google’s YouTube.com (#12) to Google.com’s (#5) tally — it still only adds up to 2.7%, and is well below time spent on Ebay.com (NasdaqGS: EBAY) (#4).
# MySpace (NYSE: NWS - News) (#1) is miles ahead of Yahoo! (#2), however Yahoo! impresses. Yahoo holds a significant lead over Google+YouTube.com, Microsoft’s (NasdaqGS: MSFT) MSN+Live.com and AOL+AIM.com. Yahoo simply needs to merge with MSN to take #1 (hint hint)
# The presence of Adultfriendfinder.com on this list is surprising, but hey, everyone needs a friend, or two!

See the list and read more here….

While newspapers are fading it seems in their hard copy format, I think their traffic online will only grow as they adapt to the Internet world. Offermatica has a great piece on what people are really looking for and what editors choose to show. It’s always interesting how, why, what, where, and when a particular story is displayed on or in a newspaper. The buried story versus the front page photo. Is it hunger, war, crime, human interest, politics, or science that’s featured. I’m always going right to the most emailed articles to see what the most interesting story is at the NY Times.

‘Now compare the “Most Searched” list to the “Times Topics” (the list of People, Subjects, Organizations and Places that Times editors put together for easy searching by their readers). Interestingly, you’ll find that the two lists barely overlap.

Not only that, but some of the keywords that people were searching for, such as “China,” don’t easily fit into one of the Times Topics categories: would you find China under the Places heading? Or would it make more sense to search for it under Subject?

In other words, it would seem - from looking at the Most Searched page and the Times Topics page - as though people are searching the Times in different ways than the way the Times editors assumed they would.’ Read more….

The world moves fast. When are we going to have a faster train that zips from SF to LA? For now we have to settle for the speed at which a product comes to market and you can buy it. I saw The Shins perform on Letterman and was moved by their song Phantom Limb–the band was having a good time performing and that was infectious. So I check to see if I could buy their album on iTunes, sure could. But I also went to their site and listened the song and then found them on MySpace, with all of their songs for free (not sure how long this will last), but I wanted it for my iPod, to be mobile, go running and to the gym and be able to listen to songs. It almost feels a bit too much, do I really need this album? I can listen to it for free at MySpace? But it’s art and worth the $10, much cheaper I’m guessing than at a record store. The amazing thing to me was the speed at which I could hear something and then buy it. The iTunes store is almost too easy to buy things.

This was a brillant movie so I wanted to write a quick post about as it as it’s most likely coming out on DVD soon. Half Nelson is an intense story about the inability to communicate pain.  In this case, a white teacher is trying to connect.  He can connect with his students but not in a relationship or with his parents. He eases his pain with drugs and at the same time tries to help a young student not get into selling drugs. If you have a chance check out this film…this trailer doesn’t do a great job of giving you a view of what the movie is like, but an idea. The movie is much more powerful.  I think the film is about finding your role or place.  An arena where you are wanted and can make changes in people.  But often we fail to see the changes we need to make in our selves or can’t make on our own, alone. Watch it..

Here’s a list of the places you should submit a new site from a number of different sources including search engine watch and a hat tip to webuildpages.com. It’s a good idea to take a closer look at some of the sub directories Alexa rank to see how they’re doing or if there still in business, some times the paid ones are better since you know you’ll get a good one way link:

www.google.com
www.dmoz.com (key)
www.yahoo.com
http://www.buzzle.com/
http://search.looksmart.com/
http://www.exactseek.com/
http://www.canlinks.net/
http://www.wowdirectory.com/
http://www.jayde.com/
http://www.splatsearch.com/
http://www.walhello.com/
http://www.sootle.com/
http://www.gigablast.com/
http://www.linkopedia.com/
http://www.nationaldirectory.com/
http://www.qango.com/index.html
http://www.wisenut.com/
www.joeant.com
http://www.allthewebsites.org/
http://www.portalboost.com/
http://www.topicalbeach.com/
www.goguides.com
http://botw.org/
http://www.skaffe.com/
http://www.rubberstamped.org/
http://www.websavvy.cc/
http://www.infowebworld.com/
http://www.tygo.com/
http://www.sporge.com/
http://www.bluefind.org/
http://www.uncoverthenet.com/

I usually catch Charlie Rose before I go to sleep. He always has interesting guests: actors, scientists, authors, politicians, sports stars, to rock stars. But just after his show is Democracy Now, which is a curious show in it’s willingness to discuss and explore issues not on the general news channels. A show that talks about interesting ideas that affect people, like a speech by Bill Moyers.

Have you come back from a run or some form of exercise when your mind is clear and tried to watch TV? In that state, all the commercials seem even more in your face and the sitcoms unfunny and mean–the pace too fast. It’s re-freshing to watch a show that has the people’s concerns at heart–at times shows like these come across as too righteous and demanding, but this speech was inspiring.  Be passionate about whatever you believe in.

Democracy Now is fresh and has no agenda other than trying to tell the truth (Could Amy Goodman maybe wear a touch of makeup though?  At times, she seems so worn out and tired…I guess I’m used to the sexy CNN anchors sending me news, can I write that). 

What caught my attention was this speech by Bill Moyers at the National Conference of Media Reform in Memphis on Martin Luther King’s birthday. It was moving and powerful and passionate, unique in it’s authenticity (you could tell he was very passionate about what he was saying). Sadly, we just don’t see that much. Speeches are made to satisfy a poll or steer a bill or a war–but not really from the heart and mind.  Speech’s are filled with language geared towards marketing a message, referencing polls rather than poetry.  Speeches with phrases like, ‘war on terror’ or ‘global climate change’ or ‘death tax’ or ’surge’.  Language manipulated: inverted and flipped to sway opinion.  Language that removes the policy makers from the equation, as though it’s not their problem or they have no blame in the creation of the problem in the first place. 

What is moving about the speech is the way he spoke about individuals acting on their own to make change–to tell the story. Watch Moyers Speech in Memphis….

Democracy Now also has the full transcript. A speech like this should be seen by more people, how do we get quality speeches, stories, and articles displayed on a national or global level?  I think it’s a battle but does start with each individual taking small steps to talk about what they care about.