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Will C. Holden covers MSU football and men’s basketball. He has been with the Chronicle since 2008. Originally from Denver, he began his journalism career working for the Seattle Times, Tacoma News Tribune, Kitsap Sun and Tacoma Weekly. | Articles | Twitter
Gidal Kaiser covers the local prep scene as well as Montana State women's basketball and other MSU Olympic sports. He is a Chicagoan, a Marquette University graduate and has eight years of professional experience. | Articles | Twitter
Chronicle Bobcat Coverage- Staven, Jackson win Big Sky weekly awards February 8, 2012
- Former Montana State star Erik Rush adjusting to life overseas February 8, 2012
- Bussey shares Big Sky award with EWU's Ryan February 7, 2012
- Around Montana: Bobcats qualify nine more for indoor championships February 5, 2012
- Selvig, Grizzlies shoot their way past Montana State February 5, 2012
- Smith's trio of triples helps Lady Griz sink 'Cats late February 5, 2012
- Surging 'Cats meet Lady Griz in crucial league tilt February 4, 2012
- The game of life February 4, 2012
- A SURE THING: Ashley Albert fits right in with the Bobcats February 3, 2012
- Bobcats look to be quick studies in Pocatello February 3, 2012
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Lightning strikes again
Tuesday was a banner day for the Web site thanks to the Drudge Report, which linked to our article about stimulus spending on Bogert Park tennis courts.
According to analytics, Amanda Ricker’s article has received more than 50,000 page views, which, as most of the newsroom knows from our Friday Web stats reports, is considerably more than our articles normally get.
This sort of thing is akin to a lightning strike. You can’t really predict when it’s going to happen, and there’s no way to bottle that energy for easy use later. However, there is at least one good lesson to be learned from this happy accident.
Take a look at the Web headline for Amanda’s story:
I’m betting that someone at the Drudge Report found this article because that person had a Google alert set to find all instances of “stimulus” and “spending.” Thankfully, this headline had those keywords in it, which probably drew that person’s attention to the story.
(From there, of course, we know what happened. The mainstream media and blogosphere took hold, abstracted the incident, minimized the specifics of the situation and transformed the story into politicized ammunition. Still, we got the page views, made some ad money and got our paper’s name out there.)
To encourage this sort of exposure to happen again, it would be a good idea to include Web-friendly headlines in all our stories from now on.
I can’t emphasize this enough. The modern Web runs on keywords that help people find the information they want to consume. If our content doesn’t have keywords, especially in the headlines, it won’t be possible for people around the Web to find us, period.
One more note: When writing your Web headlines, refrain from using the generic “city” and “county” to refer to Bozeman and Gallatin County. The Web doesn’t know where we are, and search engines don’t have context from which to infer our location. Be specific. Save the pithy heads for print.
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