I believe little giraffes are real

I believe in you

What I learned from the little giraffe.

The DIRECTV commercials using the CG created giraffe are very intriguing. I will admit that the first time I saw it I immediately fired up Google and looked for information about the little critter. I mean if they have miniature horses then of course they have little giraffes, right?

Well, no.

Someone at the ad agency for DIRECTV (which appears to be the mega agency Grey Global) is very aware of my search and other fools like me doing similar ones. So they put up a web site petitelapgiraffe.com to capitalize on the interest and not so incidentally showcase the two DIRECTV ads.

Very cool marketing.

Here is what I learned from the small giraffe:

First of all: People are gullible. I was. I turned a bunch of people on to the ad, either by posting it on Facebook or emailing them embedded videos. Universally the first reaction is along the lines of this one:

Kimberly W****sky: unreal…i wonder if they can really be bought ?

Second of all: Well, this one requires a little set-up.

I am working on understanding the whole Social networking/marketing concept.

My motives are not entirely pure.

I want to find the pony under all the horseshit.

Put another, more elegant way, I want to convert the blood, sweat and tears of my blog and my efforts at writing into something beyond a warm feeling in my pants.

I would like to get exposed and ultimately get some return.

I wanna make some money, OK?

So my older son, who does this sort of stuff for a living is patiently (sometimes less than patiently) showing me how to.

One of the key things I bring from my days in radio is that measurement improves performance. We called it “ratings.”
So using Google analytics I diligently check my stats daily to see what, who, how, where and all the myriads of numbers my feeble attempts generate. I get a daily “ratings report.”

It would have driven me insane in radio.

It’s been a very interesting process as I try different things, fail, succeed and slowly grow by tiny increments.

But.

It has grown.

Until I posted about the little giraffe.

That day my traffic was multiplied by a factor of about ten.

Holy crap!

You can search out what people used as search terms. The increased traffic is all phrases about the small giraffe.

Drilling down further.

My understanding of all this is rudimentary at best.

But I can read and I know that bigger numbers are good.

My marketing attempts, feeble as they are: A pair of daily posts on Facebook with a link to the blog.
A few kindhearted souls have linked me on their own blogs.

But, as near as I can see from the stats, the majority of new eyeballs on my blog were what the boy calls “organic” or as I get it, people searched “giraffe” and got led to my blog.

I checked it today and sure enough, five pages in on Google there I am:

I am willing to bet the day I posted it was probably a lot higher.

Why?

I think I did a lot of things right, completely by accident.

I “coat-tailed” on an extremely hot Google topic.

Page 5 of about 2,270,000 results (0.07 seconds)

My timing was perfect.

The new DIRECTV ad with the lovable little giraffe was just being aired.
The petitelapgiraffe.com site was up and running.

I was opportunistic to say the least.

But.

I wrote a GREAT headline:

Petite Lap Giraffes: Real?

Almost every search used the word “real.”

Aha!

So what did the little giraffe teach me?

A lot. Much of it is still processing.

But I know one thing for sure now.

There is NO pony under all the horseshit.

But.

There may be a little giraffe.

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