Windows 8 Evaluation Video Rant

If you want to watch an amusing video rant on Windows 8, go here.

Creating Unique Tags For Elevator Pitches

A really good golden tag will be at once familiar, yet unique ;
general and specific. This combination can be hard to achieve.

Getting started is often the hardest part.

In the course of looking at the topic of search engine optimization, I came across
a handy and free tool. Google adwords (Google Adwords Keyword Tool)
can be used to determine just how unique any tag actually is.
 This seems like it could be very useful in crafting a tag line.

Specifically, the adwords tool will tell you about the top 100 internet searches that
would match your tag if it was an ad. The perspective is really
that of PPC  PayPerClick) optimization, where you're trying to drive eyeballs to a
particular site by use of certain words.



Bring up your browser and navigate to the adwords too;. Enter your tag.
You can select a specific category, as I've done in this example, or simply
grab everything that google finds. You will need to enter some captcha information
to set the search in motion.

What you will get back is something like this :



This list shows you quite a few things at once.

First off it's obvious that the term appears frequently in searches.
 At least the " Swiss Army Knife" part does. It is general.

Just as obvious, is the peculiarity that makes the tag work. Most of the
searches originate with users seeking a multi-purpose tool of some kind,
rather than a human being. Yet, a multi-purpose human being is a very
useful thing : This tag has promise; it is specific.

You can also see how local searches compare against the total.
You now know that the locals run the "Swiss Army Knife" search quite a bit,
so it has a certain stickiness that is good in a tag phrase.

Let's look at another good tag line : "I make Excel sing."
The adwords search for "make excel sing" looks like this :







This tag is unique all right : It has NO competition.
At the same time the 'excel' part is doing a lot to make it
general. Anyone looking for spreadsheets, budgets, templates
and the like would possibly turn up our excel-lent singer.
This tag seems to have what it takes to succeed.

Now let's see what a less stellar term would elicit.
 Using a generic term like 'Software Engineer', which could easily
be thought to contain 'IT Swiss Army Knife' AND 'Making
Excel Sing' yields results that different from the previous efforts.
 


The overall number of hits is less than either of the 'Golden',
although the number of local hits is good.
There is not much competition for this one, so it is somewhat
unique. What the data suggest is that there are a few avenues
into these results. Pathways are concentrated around
education, salaries and software engineering companies.
While this is the right neck of the woods, the exact phrase
appears too frequently to be memorable.  Making a
small change can have a large impact. If we add 'Superior' to what
we already have, the results look like this :



 

Now there is no competition for this more exact phrase. It is now
more unique and a bit more memorable. The number of hits overall
is a good bit less, so the tag is less general. The pathways have remained
much the same. While 'Superior Software Engineer' is not so good as
our more golden tags, it is better than a mere 'software engineer' tag.

So, we can see that the adwords tool can help us see if we've crafted
golden taglines or not. It is worth looking at the whole of the results
received for each search because there may be some needles buried
in that haystack.


Sean Nelson 2012