Dear [first_name],

I hope you enjoy this month's topics. This is your newsletter, so if you like or don't like something about it, please email us at newsletter@bullmoosemarketing.com and we will adapt. Like everything in politics and everything on the Web, we too at Bull Moose Marketing need to be flexible...

Thanks for reading,
Nick Ellinger
CEO, Bull Moose Marketing, LLC.


In this issue...

Case Study: The Buying of the Governor?

In an age where 30% of all Americans rely on late-night talk shows for political news, humor can be a valuable tool in illustrating political points. From The Onion to GWBush.com (which had more pointed satire during the 2000 campaign), these types of sites have criticized many across the political spectrum. Now, there is one that is a part of a legitimate (and heated) political campaign--e-gray.com. The interest is this particular site is that it is actually connected to the campaign and it simultaneously parodies a campaign and a real business. It takes risks usually not taken, even in parody sites. Cheap Plug

Last month's newsletter described "carnival" or the breaking of established norms as a form of political action as a major feature of the Web. Click here to read the article or click here to get innovative political ideas.


First, a bit of background. Bill Simon is the Republican nominee for governor of California. He was considered a long-shot candidate, having no previous political experience (he is a businessman and former assistant US attorney) and having to face a White House-backed candidate in the primary. Now, he still trails, but the Political Oddsmaker puts current Governor Gray Davis's odds at only nine to seven. Governor Davis is attempting to paint Simon as too conservative for California; Simon is attempting to paint Davis as beholden to special interest groups.

In order to accent the latter, Simon's team created www.e-gray.com, a parody of the popular online auction site www.ebay.com. The page lists a number of incidences in which Gov. Davis took campaign contributions from a group on or around the time that that group had issues before the state. For example, one item says "Get Out of Jail Free Card -- get the Department of Consumer Affairs off your back!", with a current bid of $10,000. Clicking on this item brings up a product page very similar to eBay's that has details from the Orange County Register; apparently Caliber Collision Centers donated $10,000 to Gray Davis on March 5, 2002 and the Department of Consumer Affairs approved a settlement agreement with the company three weeks later to avoid state sanctions.

Some interesting features of the site:
  • If you click on "Bribe online... with BribePal", you go to the Davis campaign's Web site contribution section. This may be the first Web site (we don't know for certain) that actually linked to its opponent's contribution section (if not, it is rare). This seemingly little touch means that the Simon team was focused on getting their point across as well as they could and didn't worry that they could, at least theoretically, help their opponent get some contributions.
  • Another nice touch--each bid counts down to election day. As of this writing, it was 41 days, 3 hours, 0 minutes, and 16 seconds until the "bid" closed.
  • The site is eerily like eBay. Even the format for the top navigation is similar in look and feel. The one downside to this is there are a lot of claims in the top navigation ("shakedown", "bribe", "intimidate", and "extort") that can't be clicked on and thus can't provide warrants for those claims.
In fact, the site may be too much like eBay. eBay is considering legal action against the site as a violation of its intellectual property. While this is unlikely to resolve before the election, the allegations could cause the site to backfire, especially given the unusually tight ties between eGray and the Simon campaign. In the future, sites might do well to take the advice of last month's article and distance their carnival actions from their mainstream sites. All in all, though, we predict this on-message site will help more than it hurts.

If you need help with your site, request a free consulting report from Bull Moose Marketing.

Sources:

Faler, Brian. "Bill Simon's Online Bid For Governor Backfires." The Washington Post; Sep 9, 2002.

www.e-gray.com as of Sept. 25, 2002.

www.gray-davis.com as of Sept. 25, 2002.

www.simonforgovernor.com as of Sept. 25, 2002.

Do you have any hints for our readers? Any questions, comments, or death threats? Please send them to newsletter@bullmoosemarketing.com.


Best Practices: Basic Search Engine Optimization

Last month, we talked about how to create a basic Web site. However, as we are fond of saying at BMM, if you create a Web site and no one is there to see it, it doesn't make an impact. Search engines are the most effective way of getting your message out on the Web, as more than 40% of people find a site for the first time through search engines.

First, select appropriate keywords. When you think of keywords, think specific words. For example, if you ran a copy shop, you would be less interested in "copying" or "business" than phrases like "FedEx drop site", "business card printing", or "four color banner processing". While the first two terms have more searches, usually only the first three pages of any search engine site are viewed by users. Getting on to these first few pages is the equivalent of hitting the lottery on searches like business that have tens of millions of pages.

Also, think like your customers, not your internal audiences. For example, many equipment manufacturers separate into OEM (original equipment manufacturers) and AM (aftermarket). Because a customer would rarely search for AM (or if they did, it would get mixed in with radio site), you should focus on how your customer would search. To get additional ideas, look at the source code of your competitors' pages, particularly those who are listed well on the search engines where you want to be. Don't copy directly, but use these for jumping off points.

Then, try to integrate those terms into important parts of your site. The most important part of your site to work in your keywords is the title. Use a slightly different title for each page of your site. Using the copy shop example, one page could be titled "Bob's Copies - Business Card Printing and More" and another could be "Bob's Copies - Copying for Business". Make sure that the title fits the page so that the searcher isn't disappointed. Titles should be a maximum of 50-70 characters long. Also, don't forgot plurals; some search engines are smart enough to search both and some aren't.

The text is another important part of your site. Make sure your phrases appear early and often (five times or less). Also, put important phrases in header tags, as this increases their priority. Finally, there are two types of tags about which you need to be considered: meta tags and alt tags. Meta tags are tags in your header line that help describe your site. These are excellent places for keywords. For example (you would want to put these in brackets:

META NAME="description" content="Our black and white and four color copies provide business solutions for copies, faxes, and documents.

META NAME="keywords" content="FedEx drop site, business card, printing, four-color banner processing...

The description should not exceed 250 characters and the keywords should not exceed 1023. Also, don't repeat the same word more than five times in the keywords. Alt tags are statements that show up if your pictures don't. Thus, they are good both for ease of navigation and for search engine listings. Try to accurately describe your picture using keywords from your list.

This covers optimizing your site. Next month, we will discuss how to submit your site to search engines and pay for placement. If you need help with your site, request a free consulting report from Bull Moose Marketing.

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While Bull Moose Marketing and its agents used their best efforts in collecting and preparing the information published herein, Bull Moose Marketing does not assume, and hereby disclaims, any liability for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions resulted from negligence, accident or other causes.

© 2002 Bull Moose Marketing, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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Source: 2002 Bull Moose Marketing; www.bullmoosemarketing.com/politics