Marketing Coups, Search Engine Optimization, And The Only Diet Tip You’ll Ever Need
As returning readers know, I’ve been known to enjoy a drink or two in my day. I prefer red wine. My husband prefers scotch. I would rather gouge my own eye out with a dull crochet hook than drink scotch, but I do like good marketing.
For Christmas, Jamie bought himself Santa bought Jamie a FAIRLY PRICEY BOTTLE of Laphroaig. Along with his FAIRLY PRICEY BOTTLE of Laphroaig came a little booklet. Normally the booklet that comes with booze is total raging shit. This one, however, gave him a code he could use to redeem land on their island.
I’m not kidding.
Apparently, as the owner of land on the island, he can go and visit, get a free drink of FAIRLY PRICEY scotch while he’s there, read the Laphroaig monthly diary, oh, and join a damn social network. Still not kidding. This is not your father’s scotch, people.
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I was reading O Magazine (is it Oprah Magazine? O Magazine? I don’t even know. It’s the one with Oprah on the front, right under a big O.) Anyway, I can’t claim to have read this book, but here’s a quote from In Defense Of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
The awesomeness of this statement cannot be overstated. It’s like diet haiku. I will purchase this book for this one line alone.
Also in The Magazine I Can’t Figure Out The Name Of, we have an interview with Denzel Washington. Our pal Denzel has a new movie, The Great Debaters.
Oprah: How difficult was it to both direct this film and act in it?
Denzel: Sending your child to Baghdad is difficult. What I do is not hard.
Dude just shot down Oprah. I will be quoting this for the rest of my damn life, it’s that good.
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If you’ve never had a blog, you don’t know the joy that comes from discovering what search terms readers use that cause them to eventually end up at your blog. The boxed wine incident got me some doozies and the scared shitless post continues to get a lot of search engine traffic, but here are my favorite of late:
“strength is life but weakness is death” - Verbatim! Twice!
“my friends thong” - Is this a plural, possessive, or both?
“paint off a cat” - I don’t have a clue, either.
“pootang” - No comment.
“sticks in my craw” - I said it once, for God’s sake, and it’ll haunt me forever.
“magical powers for money” - This one I love. This may be a tagline someday. I’m not totally sure what it means, but I love it anyway.
Do you have good ones? Share! Go forth to your stats and share! The people want to know!
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[...] Here’s another interesting post I read today by Naomi Dunford [...]
I can vouch for the Laphraig because I have seen this. Outside the gates is a patch of land with lots of tags in it from different countries around the world!
Glad to hear things have improved, have a better year! hugs Dorcas
Thanks for asking this question– I just found this amazing stat:
Eight people searched for: “are hydrids worth it”
yes, hydrids…
Amazingly enough, only two people searched for the same phrase spelled correctly!
Ooo! Fun game! Here are a few from the last month. Keep in mind that these searchers ended up on a blog about preserving photographs:
‘dangerous chemicals that start with j’
‘ginger rogers color of gowns’
‘magical treasure vector’
‘in love with datamancer’
And my fave: ‘website to amuse dumb people’
Merry New Year!
-Sally J.
(The Practical Archivist)
I’ll play! For a parenting blog, here are some that showed up in my stats:
‘arguing drains energy’
‘early bedtime for the husband’
‘droppings identification’
‘what is an ideal family’
‘my ideal boy’
‘dealing with a difficult 4 year old’
‘permanent kick me sign’
I unfortunately don’t have any interesting search strings like those mentioned in this post and comments, but I’ll certainly keep an eye out from now on!
I recall a similar post by Shane at askshane that discusses optimizing your posts to cater to some of these unusual search phrases.
I think Denzel just became my favorite actor.
Man, I wish *I* ranked for “website to amuse dumb people”!
I get a lot of hits on “how to tell a story,” which is nice. I didn’t remotely try to rank for that, it just happened.
The weirdest search string in recent memory was “hot little Russian sweets.” Uh, ok.
i think the best one i got so far was “arkansas state bird”.
that term is the name of one of our signs. it shows a bird with a mullet.
i am proud of that one.
’scared shitless’ warms my heart. that’s how i found naomi.
good times, good times.
oh now i want to go look at my stats - have never looked at that part (ok really just get the email weekly and go ‘huh well, maybe if i actually posted once in a while someone would visit?’)
also, it’s O magazine and seriously the best mag EVER. love it! the whole interview with Denzel was fantastic, he may just be my new favorite too. i believe you can listen to it on oprah.com
i just found YOU from http://www.workitmom.com and i already think i have to book mark you! just like everything else at WIM, you are quality stuff!
I’ve had two:
“I’ve never heard of Led Zeppelin”
“led zeppelin digital box set is a complete joke”
Before pointing these out on my blog, I think I mentioned that band once.
I too have seen the Laphroaig offer, but didn’t follow-up on it.
Hello new commenters, and welcome! I think my favorite so far in the messed up search queries is one I found in an old email from Aruni at Babblesoft :
“I plan to gaslight my husband”
Okay then. Moving on, re: Laphroaig, the beauty of this offer is this… I do not and never will drink scotch. I don’t know anything about scotch and am therefore a non-purchaser of scotch. Or so it was two weeks ago. Now, though, because I’m lazy and don’t want to put any thought into what to get the men in my life for gift-giving occasions, I will think of Laphroaig. Why? Because there’s no-one else for me to think of. When I think of scotch now, they’re the only one in the market for me.
Wow! Namoi, you were the first to guess and correctly, at that! Good job. I should have offered a prize or something. How about for guessing correctly, I link to your site (which is awesome, by the way!) Thanks for coming by. I check your site everyday, you have some great marketing tips, thank you.
Haha! This is why they call me a guru! (Not even true. I’m the only one who calls me a guru.)
Glad you like the site. I will happily accept your prize. :)
Talisker ;)