When it comes to content, everyone has theories on how to create and maintain quality. There are strategies to writing headlines, style of verbiage, and even paragraph spacing.

But what if content creation and optimization involved more than the technical aspects of copywriting, and are actually comprised of several stylistic elements that come together to form a kaleidoscope of subject matter that improved the overall quality of a website both immediately and in the long run?

An article at Pandia explores just such a question. The piece, entitled Using honey pots and sleepers to get higher search engine rankings, looks at several conceptual approaches to content creation.

First, we have the Rocket:

Rockets are articles that manage to catch the interest of web sites and readers right now. The point is to be there first with the news, so that your site is the one all the other bloggers and search sites are linking to. Not only do you generate a lot of links that way, you also get a lot of traffic.

Next, the Sleeper:

A sleeper is an article that does not take off like a rocket. Instead of thousands, you get a few hundred readers the first week — or even less. Still, in the long run this article may outperform a successful rocket.

This is why:

The search engines love good content and aim at listing articles that helps searchers find the information that they are looking for.

And, for the not-so-fortunate, the Dud:

There are articles that never will succeed, by a lack of fortune or, normally, due to a lack of quality.

The Web is full of duds. Such articles may attract a few readers down at the other end of the long tail, but when these people read your article, they will be sorely disappointed and never come back again.

Moreover: If 10 000 blogs have covered the role of Web 2.0 in search engine marketing, another article on the topic will normally not make an impression. Your only chance will be to present the phenomenon from at totally new perspective.

The article covers more categorical classifications of content that are helpful when trying to optimize a site. It’s definitely worth a read if you’re at all serious about improving the quality of your site’s subject matter.

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

She’s also planning to develop a comedy series for HBO. Freed from the three-minute, small-screen constraints of the Internet, the one-time host of the Rocketboom video blog is capitalizing on her 15 minutes of fame as quickly as she can.

An ABC executive must have glowed when discussing Congdon’s potential in a BusinessWeek interview:

Catherine Holahan, the writer who crafted the article as well as a mild Q&A session with Congdon, dubbed her a “cewebrity” for her web celebrity. Though Congdon isn’t the first person to crossover from online to traditional media, she is probably the best known right now.

Amit Agarwal suggested how others might follow Congdon out of the Internet tubes:

Frank Barnako’s take on the Congdon buzz shifted quickly into gleeful prodding at the new “cewebrity” on his blog at MarketWatch:

It’s one thing to make it up the hill, but another to stay there. Congdon is hooking up with very big media today. Tomorrow, who knows where she may be?

—
Tag:

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Delivering Web Video The Rocketboom Way

Our men on the scene, Rich Ord and Mike McDonald, continue to feed us reports from the conference. These notes come from Baron’s industry perspective chat on The Implications for Media in a Global Internet Culture to attendees, which we’ve excerpted for presentation here.

VON organizer Jeff Pulver welcomed Baron to the conference, and effused on how much he enjoyed being around “a bunch of people who really get it. I want to thank all of you for making this really cool.”

Baron thanked Pulver for his welcome and opened his talk. (Readers: please note this is a raw cross-section of Baron’s talk; we’re giving it to you this way to give you a feel for the impression he makes. Any perceived deficiencies in the flow or content are the fault of your humble scribes, not Andrew. – David)

Quickly, Rocketboom is a 3 minute blog style program where Joanne … our host … does quirky stories. One of the things that made Rocketboom so popular (about 350000 views a day)… is because we were one of the first adopters. I took an approach that I didn’t have fear of people grabbing RocketBoom and redistributing it.

By letting this go these people are becoming aware of Rocketboom as a brand. I feel that people online are inclined to come to us at the home page if they liked the content. We don’t allow commercial use without something worked out, but for any other reason I have no problem with that. Essentially, Rocketboom is like a big catcher’s mitt. We don’t do press releases or PR.

I found that if people want it over here I think we should make Rocketboom available …. So, we have an obnoxious number of file types.

Another thing I noticed is that the mainstream media does a good job with mainstream entertainment. Then there is the other side, and that is more about information. The qualify of production and effort for those kinds of programs is somewhat incidental.

So I thought ‘why not put entertainment and information together?’

Another element of a successful web video site is the sense of belonging. At least 25 percent of the content comes from viewers. We also have barely filtered comments off of every video cast. If you are watching a video on your iPod or on TV you can’t comment.

If you noticed we kind of have a Google aesthetic to the site…. websites are like your house or office…. it is a space where you want people to feel comfortable to watch your content.

Over the next year I will probably become a real proponent for wikis. This allows my audience to come in and really belong, really take ownership of the site. So far we only have 24 articles in the wiki I just set up. I showed which camera I used, and what happened is that the audience came into my wiki and corrected spelling and formatting and sort of cleaned it up.

We recently posting a question in the wiki; one was ‘where were you on September 11, 2001?’ It was fascinating to watch and see how people are reacting to it.

Imagine you come onto someone’s website, suppose you are a fan of the show… oh here’s Steve Garfield in my wiki…. it is interesting that the audience can come in and mess with this …. the audience feels like it belongs. That’s really powerful and important.

Now lets jump into monetizing web video. I have a sense that monetization is what people are interested in …

So far over the last 2 years because we all know that the level of entry is so low, you don’t need to raise money or even have money, but what you need is time. So then, where am I going to make my money?

I say set that aside and focus on building your audience. If I have 200,000 people or 400,000 people viewing, anyone on Wall Street will say that there is value there.

We charge $60,000 for a weeks worth of ads. We aren’t yet selling many ads because I am selling them myself at this point. I’m good at making the sale but I don’t have any feeling for it. I’m sorry but that’s me.

We like to create ads for our advertisers because I feel I know our audience best, and I know what works and what doesn’t work.

Our advertisements increase in value over time. As an example we used a Guinness commercial at the end of a segment on a brewery called Brooklyn Beer. Now here it is a year later, and because Rocketboom has a good link value on Google, there are over 6 million links in. It is more likely if someone is searching for a brewery in this area Rocketboom will come up. I see this as value for the advertiser.

We have a larger audience than many TV shows.

Another way to monetize your content is a premium subscription. For the hardcore fans, we will give you extra content and our newsletter, and ask them to pay $3.50 a month. For 10,000 people that is $35,000 per month.

Another method of monetizing is merchandising. At CollegeHumor.com these guy were making $400,000 per month. It’s crazy. At Rocketboom we are lousy at this, but still make $3,000-$4,000 per month from our one T-shirt.

Later I may plug in other shows to my huge catcher’s mitt of Rocketboom.

Blogging is so important to Rocketboom. How does blogging translate to video blogging? The answer is making the videos compelling and interesting. If you can find bloggers with a lot of authority to talk about you, that prompts the thousands of other bloggers to comment and take action.

Then journalists who feel threatened by bloggers notice what bloggers are saying; their big megaphone talks about you.

—

Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl

Bookmark WebProNews:

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

The Skylark program was started in the 50s in the middle of the cold war to compete with the Soviet Union and the United States. Britain, then a major innovator in air and space technologies, was stuck in the middle but the first Skylark, launched in 1957, met the challenge and much more.

“We should be immensely proud of the contribution to science that Skylark has made and it is a testament to the skill of British engineers that the program has lasted half a century,” Hugh Whitfield of Sounding Rocket Services Ltd., which has operated the Skylark vehicles since 1999, told the BBC.

The last Titan rocket also soared over Kennedy Space Center last Friday ending an 46 year hitch with NASA for the ballistic missile. The Titan flew over 150 missions including the legendary Gemini astronauts like Gus Grissom, Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell into space.

The final mission was a secret payload by the National Reconnaissance Office(NRO). The NRO takes care of the various spy satellites for the U.S.

These two rockets performed great services for their countries and mankind as a whole. The numerous manned and unmanned expeditions continue to benefit man in his quest to pioneer further and further.

The support personnel for the Titan mission are preparing to scour the want-ads for new jobs. Lockheed-Martin employed over 400 employees for the Titan program. 300 or so will be looking for in a couple of months and 125 more will leave the company when storage of the Titan facilities has been secured.

The demise of these rocket programs truly do end and era for those of us who grew up watching the space program develop into what it is today. The Skylark program wasn’t as publicized in the U.S., but it was still no less effective in the pursuit of science and knowledge.

To those of us in the science and tech industry in one form or another this stuff is why we have our jobs and we wish those crews and individuals who dared to dream and take our imaginations with them into space good luck and a well earned thank you.

John Stith is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Findings from a study of health records of sick children were published by Nature, a peer-review journal. According to Reuters:

Researchers from Vector, the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk, showed in an unpublished study that children in areas of Siberia where the fuel is sprayed during take-off suffer serious health problems.

An unnamed expert on the country’s space industry told the journal that profit from an individual commercial launch could be as much as $25 million.

Other launch sites used by NASA and the ESA launch rockets out over an ocean, avoiding the potentially harmful fuel spray.

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.