Keywords
With every propaganda campaign comes a new set of keywords. These keywords are laid out and presented with a set of old keywords whose meaning already has resonated deeply.In the web world, we all know keywords very well and how to target them. What doesn't happen very much - at least on the small webmaster side of the street - is the development of very powerful new keywords.
A Political Example
Let's look at the political side of the street for a moment - focusing on the Iraq war that we are all so familiar with. Coming into the war, there were a few new keywords:- WMD - or Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Breeding Ground
- Terrorism
- 9-11
Going back, I can't think of any time in my life that I had heard the terms WMD or Breeding Ground. Today, I can't think of any person in the country who doesn't know the meaning of the words.
Why WMD? Why not nuclear weapons? or chemical weapons? or missiles? or bombs? The real reasons I'm sure are quite complex - but I'm thinking of this from a marketing standpoint. The fact is that even our President can't get himself to pronounce nuclear correctly. And judging from his pronunciation, I'm not sure he could spell it. The same can be said for a much larger segment of our nations population than most people are willing to admit. Not only that, but the term has some nice marketing properties:
- Unclear definition - we all know the term, but there is no real definition in the minds of most people. It provides wiggle room on the actual deliverables
- Very clear implication - while the actual definition is unclear, the term itself leaves a very clear implication of what you are talking about.
- Sounds smart - the terms sound authoritative. When you say the words together, you sound like you know what you are talking about
- Easily repeatable - The terms are easy to work into both written articles and speeches
- Lack of synonyms - when people talk about these things, there is nothing that gets the point across with equal power and ambiguity as the terms they were initially presented with.
Linking terrorism and 9-11 with "breeding ground" and "WMD" wouldn't be as easy of a dance today as it was during the political and media climate back in 2003. Even still, the terms all go together because of the subconscious links that are made. This aspect of the marketing technique is very important. Association with existing powerful terms that evoke emotional response is the single most effective way to push new terms out in the market.
Just thinking along these lines I can think of so many parallels to web marketing. Detach yourself from the politics and spend a few minutes thinking about not just the terms, but how these terms came to become regulars in the vocabulary of the American people.
Taking it to the Web
Propaganda campaigns imply media attention. If we could get the newspapers and TV analysts to discuss our projects easily, we wouldn't have to worry about web marketing at all. Just because our audiences are smaller, doesn't mean that the same techniques don't apply - it just means that we'll have to work harder to garner the attention that we want.Before pushing out any new terminology, analyze the terms as you would any other set of keywords that you want to target. You want to make sure that there isn't already somebody taking advantage of the term, or if there is, that you can own the SERPs with little or no trouble. There's no sense in pushing new terminology that you can't rank with.
To push out new terminology, you can't just post it on your blog and hope that your readers will follow suit. You have to attack all avenues available to you. Push the terminology in your press releases, in your blog, on your sites, through your online social networks, to your clients, on your message boards, newsgroups, and mailing lists, and with your human network. There are a lot of people who come at you from multiple angles - they visit your site and also read the same forums, subscribe to the same mailing lists, etc. The more they see your terms, and the more you can interest them in actually speaking about your terms, the more likely they are to propagate your terms.
When your terminology resonates, you have built in authority. You have the oldest resources containing the terms, you probably have inbound well-anchored links from like minded sources, and you have people looking to you for clarity. Sounds a lot better than attacking the same keywords that everybody else is attacking with uncertain and temporary results.
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