Why aren’t my videos getting more web traffic?

UPDATE 01/30/10: Also see Context is King: How Videos Are Found And Consumed Online on TechCrunch

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So, we’ve produced and posted some amazing videos online. We know they’re amazing, but unfortunately, no one else seems to know they’re amazing, because they aren’t watching them, right? What do to?

First, how do potential find our videos online? Usually either through the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo Search, etc.), or social networking/news/bookmarking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon, reddit, etc.). Most potential viewers either receive a link to your video from their friends on these sites, or they find your video by using search terms (keywords). Unless you’re famous, and have long lists of people just dying for your newest video release (in which case you’re probably not reading this post), you’re going to have to join the rest of us in learning how to use the right keywords, so that people can find your videos by content.

Search engines do not crawl the AUDIO or VIDEO portions of videos. For example, Google does not know what is happening in our videos. It isn’t watching our videos, or listening to them. The only way any of the search engines (or search features on the various social sites) are going to know what our video is about is if we tell them. How do we do that? By using keywords in our titles, tags, and the text portions of our posts.

Here are some suggestions on how to make your videos more search-engine friendly:
Read more

Merry Christmas!

(Updated for 2009)

Click HERE or on the photos to view our Christmas archive from this year and from previous years. In the archive, you’ll find both fun and serious resources including videos, music, funny stories, touching stories, and news about the attempt to “diversify” Christmas by the political left.

We at Ft. Hard Knox wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and a festive holiday season.

Snowman Humor

Updated for 2009

As global warming climate change is sweeping the nation, bringing with it bitterly cold temps, here’s a little seasonal humor found around the web (a big ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’ to Ron!)

 

Leader Of The World Barack H. Obama

Barack Hussein Obama is smiling this month. Despite minor setbacks he successfully pulled off his speech to the American school children and made some opponents look silly by a last minute change in the speech.

Next up is yet another “historic” speech teleprompter reading to the Nation about how his healthcare plan will save the Nation. It is a sure bet that once again he will lie and fail to explain that his plan will also bankrupt America.

Finally on September 24th, he steps back on to the world stage and chairs the UN Security Council. This is yet another opportunity for him to campaign as Leader of the World (“LOW”). This is his ultimate goal. He wants to lead the “people of the world”, who will then be known as “POW’s.”

Obama has shown in the past that he is willing to put the USA under the dominion of the UN, subjugating Americans to the whims of our enemies. One of the actual times Obama sponsored something during his short tenure as a senator, was when he sponsored the Global Poverty Act, (S. 2433, also HR 2639), which would have placed the sale and manufacture of all small arms and ammunition in the US under the auspices of the UN. It also would have also required the US pour even more money into the UN.

Obama’s actions on the international front have already emboldened our enemies to increase nuclear proliferation and dare us to do anything about it.  He has attempted to influence and punish the Honduran government for following their own constitution and ousting an attempt to create yet another Dictator for life. His choice of UN Ambassador (Susan Rice) specialized in the implications of global poverty.

The Security Council meeting will bring together the biggest egotists and megalomaniacs of this century and Obama will do anything to win the contest as the most congenial megalomaniac.

Also see:

• Obama to seal US-UN relationship
• Obama’s UN Gambit: King of the Universe and the Polls
• Obama-United Nations Scheme to Tax America
• Obama’s UN Gambit
• Obama bill: $845 billion more for global poverty
• Obama’s Global Tax Proposal Up for Senate Vote
• Previously on Ft. Hard Knox: Does Obama Think He’s Running for President of the U.S., or Ruler of the World?

 

Social Networking for Promotion: DIY vs. Free

“I don’t have TIME to learn how it works – I just want it done!”

That’s the sentiment that we, at Ft. Hard Knox often encounter in speaking with politically conservative professionals who are in the beginning stages of incorporating new media and online social networking into their marketing campaigns. What many of them have observed and concluded about social networking is:

1. The social networking sites are free to use – therefore they must not have much value.
2. There are instructions for how to do this, literally, all over the web (again, for free), so it can’t be that hard to learn.
3. The level of communication among adults on the front page of most of the social networking sites (like Digg.com, and reddit.com) is taking place at aproximately a third-grade level of maturity and reading – so, obviously, even any idiot can do it.
4. I’m a busy person. Social networking sounds like something I can hire clerical help off the street to do for me, so I don’t have to waste my time on it.

Several years ago, I knew a man who very much wanted to be self employed. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to employ himself to do – He didn’t have much education, and no real job skills. He just figured that as a self-employed person, he could be his own boss, get paid as much as he wanted to pay himself, and do as little as he wanted. At least, this was his perception. Eventually he learned, after numerous failed attempts at such a lifestyle, that self-employed people tend to work harder, longer, and often for less take-home pay than those who are working for others. He finally gave it up and got a job. Being self-employed sounded easy, but turned out to be a lot more complicated than it seemed.

Anyone who has taken on “DIY” (Do-It-Yourself) projects around the house now understands that in many cases it would have been cheaper to hire a professional. By the time they bought all of the necessary tools and instruction manuals, corrected mistakes, and factored in the cost of their time and labor – “DIY” work turned out to be costly. Of course, it might have been worth it. Maybe they did the work with a family member, and enjoyed the time spent, or maybe they learned valuable skills they’ll be able to re-use. Perhaps they just enjoyed the satifaction of being able to say to themselves and the world – look what I did – all by myself (a good feeling, indeed)! But it is rare for a DIY-er to brag about money saved, unless they are already basically a professional in the work they are doing.

Likewise, those of you who are reading this who are long-time conservative bloggers who have been promoting your own blogs to draw traffic and support causes that are important to you know that taking on the task of self-promotion is not easy. It’s a skill that constantly needs to be updated. While uisng social networking sites does not cost money, the activity takes a toll in time (LOTS of time), and in terms of the emotional wear and tear of doing battle with the “progressive” left. As in many other things in life (to address #3 above), just because there are plenty of idiots involved in social networking, doesn’t mean that any idiot can do it effectively.

While some aspects of traditional marketing also apply to social networking, social networking (effectively) is a separate skill. It is done on a much more personal level, and in order for someone to do it for you, that person must know you and your business very well, and must be authorized to speak publicly on behalf of you and your business at all levels. Social networking (again, effectively), requires first the development of a substantial (quality) network, then soft promotion of whatever goods or services one wants to offer.

To be successful in social networking, you’ll need to convince complete strangers to help you promote you for free. People need to know who you are, and they need to believe in you and like you before they’ll help promote your “stuff.” The “viral” phonomenon (where by a fluke, a person or idea suddenly becomes outrageously popular on the web, and no one is quite sure why) is rare, and most of us do not have the name recognition and fan base of a celebrity or national politician. Therefore, accomplishing effective social networking, for the majority of us requires personal interaction over a period of time, on a variety of topics with our potential peers, then clients. Hiring someone off the street or assigning the task to a clerical worker who has no real knowledge of you, your business, your industry, or online social networking will not be effective.

Self promotion using social networking is a “DIY” project. It’s not easy, and it’s not free. If you decide to hire a professional, be sure to hire someone who knows you and your industry. Also, be aware that the professional is working along side you as a consultant, but that this type of marketing is done on a very personal level, and that you will need to be personally involved in the entire process.

Not for you? No problem – there’s still paid online advertising.

 

UK PM Gordon Brown Mirrors Obama’s “Transparency” BullButter

Surely even a liberal should notice the we want you to be able to see what we are doing bullbutter being fed to the state media by da gub’ment, regurgitated for lowly serf consumption,  no?

The inventor of the world wide web has been asked by the prime minister to help open up access to government data.

“I think there’s a public demand for transparency. This is way beyond party politics and beyond global borders,” Sir Tim said.

He said taxpayers’ money paid for the data so it should be available to them.

Me thinks this is akin to asking a HuffPo webmaster to reveal how they always end up tops at Digg… and… Anyone else see the parallel between Brown and Obama’s “transparency” rhetoric?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-mc2DkF7U[/youtube]

Stop Shouting! (Digg Buries the Shout Feature)

The ongoing attempt by Digg.com to fake a user-content generated, “democratic” website while pleasing it’s proressively-minded investors continues. After “tweaking” it’s algorithm to make “Diggs” (votes for stories) generated from shouts worth almost nothing, the front page still was not reflecting Digg admin’s desired results, so they’ve simply done away with the feature. Here’s part of what the Digg Bloggers had to say:

…As some of you know, shouts have been a controversial feature since their inception and considering the ever-changing landscape of the social web, we’ve elected to remove them in favor of more popular options. We’ve added easier access to sharing via email, Facebook and Twitter. As always, we want to encourage sharing and communication within our community and will continue to look into features that address these needs…

So, if you want to alert your friends about your great stories on Digg, you’ll need to do it via e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter. But be prepared. If it hasn’t happened already, Digg will find a way to make “Diggs” from those sites worthless as well.

Ministry of “Truthiness” – thy name is Digg.com.

10e20 has some good perspective and more details about the changes here.

Hat-Tip, Dr. Bill of the ARRA News Service

I had a spare afternoon, so I called up the laughable National Security Hotline and ASIO.

Pictured are three of the gals I spoke to at the National Security Hotline and ASIO, and the P.A for the Attorney General. They’re in deep conference about who these mysterious “terrorists” could be. And getting their nails done. “Terrorists? Whatever! Like, der!”

Dear sports, no, really. I did call the whip crack smart super security portals and departments in charge of our er, security against our mortal enemy, [as yet un-named].

Dig my recent Fisk on the real life parody that is the National Security website. Enjoy your tax dollars and naive trust in our boob laden authorities at work. But then, they do allow hijab wearing Muslims to er, “man” the x-ray and security pantomime at our airports. I kid you not.

By “whip crack smart”, I mean a beyond belief parody of PC’ism, the disingenuous, the incompetent, the stupid and the skirting of treason by manipulating and omitting harsh facts that put Australia and its people at grave and serious risk. And oh yes, threatening the average citizen with bankrupt laws, if they dare to not play the game and point out the bleeding obvious to the overpaid and unreachable.

So oatmeal sharp really. In short, our major security services are apparently some kind of absurd and profoundly disturbing joke. A gravediggers joke. So keep laughing if you can, or call ASIO. Be polite and expect nothing, and you’ll never be dissappointed. The National Security Hotline is waiting for your call, unless it’s lunch. Ask for Sir Arthur Streebgreebling. No, not really but you may as well be asking for a pizza delivery or that great new melon peeler you saw advertised.

I said to the little dears that I had hoped that ASIO was better than their reputation, but my hopes were sadly crushed and without ceremony.

Now nowhere on the NS website do they mention who the terrorists are, either by name, profile, what drives them, where they are likely to be from, what their goals are and so on ad nauseum.

Now, they were nice enough people for what nice is worth, which ain’t much. Though they were well, snooty, rather unnatural and not straight speaking whatsoever and all but useless. And all but one hung up on me when I asked the utterly basic question “Can you tell me who these terrorists are?”

The Attorney Generals Personal Assistant[!] said and I quote as best I can remember, “I can’t do that”. Why not exactly? Then resign, dear boob.

Colonel Neville: “So you’re from National Security and you cannot tell me who these terrorists are but you expect the average citizen to identify them for you and let you know?”

PA: “I’m not prepared to continue this conversation…” [How convenient and ridiculous.]

Colonel Neville: “Then that makes you incompetent or dishonest”.

Sound of hung up phone. “Brrrrrrr”. Oooh, sooooo chilly!” Continue reading at Colonel Robert Neville Always Dresses For Dinner.

Beijing CCTV Fire vs WTC 7 fire

Lately, “truthers have been using the CCTV fire that occurred in Beijing at 8:27 pm, Tuesday, February 9^th to “prove” their assertion that the collapse of WTC 7 was controlled demolition.  Their “proof” is that the CCTV building, which was steel-framed, was comparable in size to WTC 7. While that statement is technically true, a little extra digging reveals that, as usual, the “truthers” left out a few details.

The first difference is that, as we see here, the fire in Beijing was fought.  In addition to being fought, that fire was eventually brought under control. Granted, it took six hours to do so, but that was only because Beijing doesn’t have the specialized firefighting equipment required to extinguish a high-rise fire without actually entering the building and no firefighting equipment had been installed inside the CCTV building- the fact remains, however, that that fire was brought under control, and, presumably, extinguished (source).

The fires in WTC 7 (and the twin towers, for that matter), were another story.  In point of fact, World Trade Center 7 had INTENSE, OUT OF CONTROL fires on MULTIPLE floors and those fires were NOT fought, as we see from this quote by Deputy fire Chief Pete Hayden when asked if there was heavy fire in WTC 7, found here:  “Hayden: No, not right away, and that’s probably why it stood for so long because it took a while for that fire to develop. It was a heavy body of fire in there and then we didn’t make any attempt to fight it.”

Before “truthers” seize on the very first sentence, notice that Hayden said there was not a heavy fire in WTC 7 RIGHT AWAY.   Those two words change the whole meaning.

The other difference is this: The CCTV tower in Beijing did NOT suffer SEVERE structural damage before catching fire.

WTC 7, on the other hand, did suffer significant structural damage before catching fire. As we see here, according to Captain Chris Boyle of the New York Fire Department- who was actually there on 9/11- WTC 7 had a TWENTY-STORY hole in the SOUTH side (reference). Hint:  A 20-story-hole in a 47-story building is NOT minor damage.

Clearly, members of the 9/11 “Truth” Movement have their tinfoil hats on a little too tight.

www.Wednesday: Help?! I’m social networking and I CAN’T STOP!!!!

Most of my posts on the topic of social networking are geared to encouraging political conservatives to try new techniques, visit new sites, join new groups – be bold, take a step out of their comfort zones, and just go for it.

Well, what happens if you’ve done that, and answered “yes” to every other invite you’ve received from your network of online fellow activists – and now find yourself awake in the wee hours of the morning trying to respond to all of your alerts, messages, diggs, seeds, superpokes, nudges, @replies, stumbles, friend requests, DM’s, group invites, shouts, retweets, and #feeds – not to mention your regular blog posts, cross-posts, comments, reciprocal link requests, and, of course, hundreds and hundreds of e-mails.

I knew I was in trouble a while back when I received a reply to an e-mail I had sent a state legislator at 3AM from my mobile phone…I’d gone to bed that night at about midnight. I vaguely remembered the e-mail, but thought I had dreamed about sending it. Seriously, you have to draw the line when you catch yourself sleep-e-mailing. Fortunately, I’d been “professional” in the e-mail, but it was truly a “wake-up” call in more ways than one.

So, what to do? If you find yourself in this situation, it’s time to set priorities, and cull the time-sinks. Following are some techniques I’ve used and/or that I’m working on. I hope you’ll add your own.

1. Unsubscribe from any newsletters you don’t read. Use the “unsubscribe” option provided on newsletters through professional news services, ask to be removed from the more informal lists, and if all else fails, start marking those particular e-mails as “spam,” so they’ll be filtered out of your regular in-box.
2. Consolidate groups. If you’re finding that you’re on 27 Ning Groups, for example, and you have pretty much the same friends on all of them – nix the smaller or inactive ones. (Note to all of my NING.com friends – I’ll be doing this in the next week.)
3. Change your settings. Most social networks give you an opportunity to choose if/how often you want to be e-mailed with alerts, friend requests, etc.. Take time to review these options so that you’re e-mailed only about things that are time-sensitive.
4. Differentiate “productive” v. “fun” v. “obsessive.” Take Twitter for example. For me, 10 minutes a couple of times a day adding new followers, responding to @replies, retweeting the best of the best, and posting a great link or two is “productive.” Taking a break from work a few times during the day to exchange sarcastic tweets is “fun.” Staring, mesmerized, at my home feed for hours and re-tweeting 1 out of every 10 tweets is “obsessive.” (I mean, I can imagine it would be…not that I would know from personal experience…ahem…I’m just sayin’…b-b-but, it’s “research,” right?)
5. Know the difference between “socializing,” and “networking.” If you’re in a group or network that started out being a link exchange and has deteriorated into a place to exchange numerous e-mails a day debating the finer points of who is the most “conservative,” amongst yourselves…you’re now socializing. There’s nothing wrong with socializing if you have time for it, but don’t kid yourself into believing that the several hours a day you’re spending there is necessary “networking.” It isn’t.

Bottom line: Time is valuable, and we need to spend it wisely. Likewise, our social networking time should be spent on activities that help us meet our goals. Sure, it can (and should) be fun. But there’s no need to let our social networking activities keep us from the other important things and people in our lives.

SEO Spot-Check: What Links Rank Highest on my Online Profile?

As promised last week, we’ve completed our study of news, indexes, and social networking sites rank highest on an individual’s Google profile.

A person’s “Google Profile” is the list of links on the “SERPs” (search engine results pages) resulting from “query,” or “search,” on Google for a person’s name. In online profile building, it is preferable that the first couple of pages worth of links (the first 20 links) provide accurate, positive information about that person. To build our profiles, therefore, it is helpful to know which links are likely to show up on those first couple of pages of a Google search.

To evaluate this, we chose thirty-six names of individuals, from various industries and various levels of name recognition, and tallied the types of websites that showed up on the first two pages of Google under their names. All of the people chosen are known by the public in some way – either as artists, entertainers, writers, educators, bloggers, politicians, etc.. To prevent the possibility of anyone trying to manipulate their profiles as a result of their names showing on this published study, we have chosen not to print the names we used. If a name received multiple links from the same category, that category was counted only once.

Following is the list of the top 12 link categories, and the number of times websites in the category appeared on the first two pages of each of the thirty-six Google profiles, expressed as a percentage of XX/36. For example, if the links from the category appeared on 34 of 36, or 34/36 individuals’ SERPs, the category on the table below would show a 94% SERPs rating. Note that all of the profiles had links in numerous categories, so the percentages added up vertically will not equal 100%.

Link Category	Amount of time this category was utilized on the 36 sample profiles
Niche/Industry Media*	94%
Own Website, Blog, Domain	94%
Mentions on Others’ Blogs, Forums, and Websites	86%
YouTube, GoogleVideo, VodPod, other video	72%
Wikipedia, Niche Wikis, Info Directories: Answers, Infoplease, About, Woopidoo, BrainyQuotes	72%
Amazon, IMBD Google Books&Movies, Reviews, MetaCafe	56%
Social Networks: Facebook, Linked-IN, MySpace, Twitter, Newsvine, Digg	53%
MSM: Alphabet Media, Newspapers, TV, Radio websites	50%
iRadio, Podcasting Sites: BTR, Music, AOL, Last.fm, MTV, Rhapsody, Vh1, mp	39%
Registries, Indexes, and Feeds: FriendFeed, feedage, NNDB, 123People, Zoominfo, BusinessCard2, Naymz, Plaxo, Technorati, Blog Catalog, Daylife, Classmates, Adoption Reg, Geneology, Meetup	28%
Photos: Google Images, Wikimedia, flikr	25%
Blogger, Wordpress, Wix, Yahoo, Geocities, MSN, Google	25%

 

*Niche/Industry publications specialize in the profilee’s own line of work etc..
Examples of niche/industry sites are CMT.com, in country music, and
Townhall.com in political news and commentary.

Clearly, in this spot-check, the links most valuable to the thirty-six Google profiles studied were links from niche and industry blogs, and the profilee’s own domain, website and blog(s). Also valueable were links from other blogs, forums and websites, from video sites, and from wikis and other information directories.

Wednesday Web 2.0 Q&A

The idea for this new feature, and the questions for this week are from Ben Hodge, of Kansas Progress. If you have questions you would like answered in upcoming posts, or if you have additional story ideas, please e-mail Jenn.

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Q. Can you explain twitter to me? My understanding is that if I really thought way too highly of myself and thought that people would care about what I was doing every 10 minutes of the day, that I would “twitter” them. But why are other groups on twitter, when RSS does almost the same thing?

A. Twitter is a developing phenomenon. Yes, there are some people that literally use it to keep in touch with their “friends” throughout the day, but there are a bunch of conservatives there now that are using it for legitimate networking purposes. Check out TCOT, (the feed is here)and TCON (feed).

 Even if you don’t really do much with your account there, however, any posts you do rank very high in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). You can use Twitterfeed to have your Twitter account automatically updated with your blog posts, too, which is a very convenient feature. You do NOT have to tell anyone what you’re having for lunch or where.

In fact, for general networking, it’s probably better not to do a lot of “small talk” (a little is fine – lets people know they’re dealing with a real person). Also see: Twitter, Twitter Everywhere

Q. Which [social networking] sites should I join…How often must they be updated?

A. It’s really a good idea just to at least “reserve” your name on the major social networking/bookmarking sites. It usually takes just a few minutes, and you really don’t have to keep MOST* of them updated. It’s amazing what a political adversary can/will do to ruin your online reputation. The added advantage of these is that many of them give you a chance to enter your own blog URL, and that will help you with linkage.

Facebook, Linked-IN, and Twitter are the “Biggies” right now. YouTube is great, even if you just set up an account there for the purposes of watching (not uploading). Naymz and Plaxo rank high on the search engines, too.

 Beyond that, it’s just really up to you. There are hundreds of these sites, and you have to draw the line somewhere. The next tier down would be del.icio.us, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Digg, and Propeller.  Stay tuned for an upcoming study to be released soon on which news, indexes, and social networking sites rank highest on Google.

*How often to update? Well, keep in mind that with the social networking sites, you tend to get out of them what you put in, so it’s good to be active in at least a couple. We have received (unconfirmed) information that Twitter may soon start deleting accounts that are over 180 days old. Also, some search engines give less weight or refuse to count links that are over six months old, so it’s a good idea to check on your accounts, even the ones you’re not “active” on at least twice a year.

 Q. [In terms of Search Engine Optimization], if [the links I put on Social Networking sites] don’t “look like” links, but merely show the URL, does that matter?

A. Some social networking sites, such as Facebook and Digg.com, don’t allow “hyperlinks,” (text that points to another URL) or any text that contains html. You won’t need to worry about this for SEO, because the search engines are reading the source code, and will recognize the link, anyway.

This is a valid question to address, however, because on your own blog posts, you can maximize the benefit of internal and external links by properly using “anchor text.” In a nutshell, this means that it is better to format a link to your blog like this: Ft. Hard Knox, rather than like this. For more information on anchor text, see Don’t be Link-Lovin’ in Vain (Judiciously using ‘Anchor Text’).

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Where will Twitter Go from Here?

Twitter is at a bit of a crossroads in its development.

While it has been working on its infrastructure and building it’s staff of nearly 30, it has relied on venture capital for funding, but early in 2009, the company has announced, that it intends to eventually, “become a sustainable business supported by a revenue model.”

In the world of Web 2.0, there are basically three ways to get money – from investors, from advertisers, or from users. Ultimately, whoever is paying for the service, has control of it.

If a company is heavily reliant on investors, it is beholden to those investors, to meet the goals of the investors, whether they be monetary or otherwise. We watched Digg.com go down this path a couple of years ago, much to its detriment.

As a fan of Twitter, I’m happy to see that it is moving away from this option. But then that leaves advertisers or user-paid services.

Either way, the company is likely to receive complaints – users, who have been enjoying an increasingly great service for a couple of years now are not going to appreciate the change. But the company needs to stay in business somehow.

The problem with advertisers is that are answering to their customers, and must be choosy about the content on the websites they advertise on, and they often end up indirectly controlling the content.

The problem with paid service is that, well, users prefer “free” to “paid,” all other things being equal.

Co-Founder of Twitter, Evan Williams recently hinted that Twitter may use some sort of tiered approach, and charging corporate who are using the service for sales and customer service.

I personally hope Twitter does take the paid service approach. This will allow the company to be more independent, and user-centric, and will allow the company to continue to let the users have more control over the content. Assuming the pricing structure is reasonable for business clients, it will also allow the service to earn a profit.

Web 2.0 Christmas Links