Written Thursday, October 28, 2004 by Ed Hill

New 30 second TV spots for download

HighlyDef Productions Political Ad

We've been using the JVC HD10 HDV camera for documentary, TV commercial and band video press kit work for almost a year now. (HighlyDef Productions is Ben Buie and I, doing writing shooting and editing.) This month the Black Women's Coalition of Atlanta hired us to do 5 :30 second spots. The theme was motivating voters to go to the polls. They are running on three cable networks in Atlanta going this Thurs through Monday, Nov 1.


Clients don't seem to care whether we shoot on HD (HiDef) TV or Standard Definition (SD). I just shoot on HDV format and down rez if needed. I like the letter boxed 16:9 frame for SD TV and the clients seem happy too. The great thing about the HD10 is that we get the HD look at a price all the clients can afford.

The files are 5 Megabyte or 20 Megabyte MPEG files. Its best if you have DSL or cable modem to download these.

http://www.highlydef.com/BWCA_campaign_demo.html
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Written Thursday, October 07, 2004 by Ed Hill

Black Women’s Coalition of Atlanta Launches New TV Ads to Encourage Black Voter Turnout

HighlyDef Productions Political Ads for Black Women's Coalition of Atlanta

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 30, 2004Contact: Jo Ann McClinton, President
Black Women’s Coalition of Atlanta
404-377-5101

Black Women’s Coalition of Atlanta Launches TV Ads to Encourage Black Voter Turnout

With the November second election only days away, the Black Women’s Coalition of Atlanta wants black voters to go to the polls in large numbers. BWCA members created 5 television ads that use startling facts about health insurance and government programs to motivate the black community to vote. The television spots will air on 3 cable networks in the Atlanta area; TV ONE, Spike and Oxygen. The 30-second ads were produced by HighlyDef Productions of Atlanta. Two of the ads can be seen online at http://www.highlydef.com/BWCA_campaign_demo.html.

BWCA President Jo Ann McClinton said, “Some times black voters take too much for granted. We don’t take our politics personally enough. Everything around us is political and we don’t seem to understand”. BWCA members want voters to realize that voter apathy could hurt government programs that provide medical care for children and the elderly.

Georgia voters in the black community have registered in larger numbers, during September and October, for the hotly contested 2004 Presidential election. In two metro Atlanta counties overall voter registration has increased significantly since the 2000 Presidential election. The Georgia Secretary of State figures show that over 27,000 new black voters registered in DeKalb County and in Fulton County during September and October.

In Dekalb County, the number of all 2004 active voters increased 10% to 345,423 active voters, according to Mary Frances Weeks, secretary to Linda Lattimore of the DeKalb County elections office. Over 120,000 DeKalb county voters have turned out during the first 4 days of the Early Voting period. Election workers and volunteers are excited about the large voter turnout, “We’re glad. We want everyone to get out and vote,” said Mary Weeks.

With the larger turnout, Jo Ann McClinton, president of the Black Women’s Coalition of Atlanta is hoping that the five commercials will help motivate Atlanta’s black voters to do their part. The spots will run from 4pm to 10pm starting Thursday October 28 through the Monday before Election day.

The Black Women’s Coalition of Atlanta is an educational organization for black females in the community. Its purpose is to educate and inform. Reporters can contact BWCA President Jo Ann McClinton at 404-377-5101. Jo Ann is available for media interviews immediately.
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News Search Engines Comments

http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156261
Google News
http://news.google.com/

Provides the ability to keyword search across thousands of news sources found through crawling the web

Yahoo News
http://news.yahoo.com/

Similar to Google News, you can keyword search across thousands of news sources found by Yahoo's news crawling partner, Moreover

AllTheWeb News
http://www.alltheweb.com/?cat=news

This Overture-owned service lets you keyword search against content gathered from news sites across the web.

AltaVista News
http://news.altavista.com/

This Overture-owned service lets you keyword search against news content found by sister-search engine AllTheWeb

Daypop
http://www.daypop.com/

Daypop lets you search through weblog content or information from RSS feeds.

News Hubs
DailyEarth.com
http://dailyearth.com/

A guide to newspaper web sites and news search resources around the world. Formerly known as NewspaperDirectory.com.

HeadlineSpot
http://www.headlinespot.com/

Major categories include news by subject, news by region, media type, opinion pages, and so on. Other categories point to resources helpful to news junkies. These include links to cool tools, resources for journalists

Kiosken
http://www.esperanto.se/kiosk/engindex.html

A guide to newspaper web sites around the world.

NewsDirectory
http://www.newsdirectory.com/

Easy access to thousands of news sources, including newspapers, magazines and television stations worldwide.

Blog Search Engines
Blogdex
http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/

Long-standing services that leverages blog links for discovery purposes. Think of it as a "buzz index" according to blogs, where the goal is to show you which links anywhere on the web are currently getting the most references from bloggers. (Review: RSS: Your Gateway To News & Blog Content, April 2, 2003)

Blogdigger
http://www.blogdigger.com/

While it's called Blogdigger, this service also includes some non-blog content, as it is based on searching through RSS feeds. Feeds are either submitted or found via the Weblogs.com site.

Blogging Headline News
http://blogging-news.info

This news site samples 12,000 RSS feeds, selecting about 5,000 posts three-times a day to feature in about 130 different categories. It's designed to be an online blogging magazine. You can also keyword search for material.

BlogStreet
http://www.blogstreet.com/

Blog discovery and investigation tool that allows you to view information about a blog, such as other blogs that seem to be related to it, people linking to its entries, how it ranks in the blogging world, and much more. There's also a range of RSS tools, such as the ability to create an RSS feed for any blog (or ordinary web site) that lacks one.

Weblogs.com site http://www.weblogs.com/

Fagan Finder: Weblogs, Journals, & RSS
http://www.faganfinder.com/blogs/

Superb all-in-one search page that lets you easily search a variety of blog/RSS search engines, plus provides related links on the subject.

Feedster
http://www.feedster.com/

Feedster lets you search against content distributed via RSS. That means it's essentially a blog search engine for many people, since so many blog entries are distributed via RSS. However, some non-blog newsfeeds are also included. Feedster's Images feature is designed to present a visual look at that day's blogging world. Feedster was originally known as Roogle when launched in March 2003 and absorbed the formerly separate RSS Search service in June 2003. (Review: Feedster, July 1, 2003)

NewsIsFree
http://www.newsisfree.com

A long-standing major directory of RSS feeds. It organizes thousands of news feeds -- what it calls "news channels" -- into categories. You can browse the categories to find feeds of interest or do a search for feeds that mention your keywords in their titles and descriptions.

Syndic8.com
http://www.syndic8.com/

Another major directory of RSS feeds. It lets you look through thousands of RSS feeds that users have submitted or which have been added by volunteers to its collection. In other words, it's an Open Directory for RSS feeds.

Technorati
http://www.technorati.com/

Technorati is a great service. Plug in the URL of any web page, and you can quickly see what bloggers are saying about it by using the "Link Cosmos" feature. The Breaking News feature assembles top headlines automatically

FindArticles.com
http://www.findarticles.com/

Let's you search through articles from over 300 sources, dating back to 1998, and view them for free. You can narrow your search to specific magazine categories, such as "Automotive," using a drop down option next to the search box. You can also search within a particular publication by using the "View Publications by Name" link, which appears below the search box. Find the name of the magazine you are interested in, click on its name, and the search box that appears searches against only that publication's content. (Review: A Free Deep Content Search Engine, Mar. 21, 2002). You can also access the same information from LookSmart, the owner of FindArticles, by clicking on the "Articles" tab at LookSmart.

MagPortal
http://www.magportal.com/

Allows you to find magazine articles, plus you can order results by date or publisher. Articles can also be found by browsing a directory structure.

Loving Each Other More: Search Engines & Blogs
The Search Engine Report, April 2, 2003
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2175261

Explores the timely content that blogs provide, work they can do to make themselves more search engine friendly and some thoughts on what search engines might do on their end.

Making An RSS Feed
The Search Engine Report, April 2, 2003
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2175271

RSS is a method of distributing links to content in your web site that you'd like others to use. In other words, it's a mechanism to "syndicate" your content. It can be an easy way to draw attention to your material, bringing you some traffic and perhaps a little net fame, depending on how good your information is.




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News Search Engines

Excerpts from articles about News Search Engines

Nan Dawkins, Co-Founder of RedBoots Consulting. Dawkins recommends using a gateway site into news search engines.

"In the environmental sector, we have found a great little site called Environmental Media Services," she said. " Google will pick it up within 2 hours."

"You have to roll up your sleeves and figure out what those are gateway sites are for you," she continued. "They are out there. There are sites that Google News and Yahoo News like a lot. Yahoo has 'full coverage' where they group the news with other coverage about that news topic. To get content in, email the editor of that topic. It does not have to be your news, specifically."

Newsgroups are another good source for PR. "If you have content that relates to the topic of a topic specific news group, and if you are a contributor to that news group don't be afraid to post a message to that newsgroup," Hawkins recommended. "Let people know you have some content they might be interested in. When you do that be sure to treat it like a press release. Put keywords in your subject line and in the message you post."

Related articles:

News Search Engines
http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156261

Optimizing Press Releases to Show Up in Search Engines
http://aboutpublicrelations.net/ucyudkin2a.htm

RSS: Gateway to News and Blog Content
http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/opt/article.php/2190381

SEM and Online Publicity
http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/results/article.php/3351131

A 1998 study co-authored by Craig Silverstein, now Google’s director of technology, found that for 85 percent of search queries analyzed, searchers only looked at the first screen of results.

The result: Sites are desperate to get to the top. At AltaVista, Mr. Monier recalls a memorable limo trip in New York City, when he learned just how much people would pony up for a good ranking. He received a desperate call from the owner of a pornography site, who was willing to pay a bounty – $50,000 a year – for a top result for a particular search. Mr. Monier declined the offer.

A slew of companies called “search engine optimizers,” which specialize in helping Web sites improve their placement on the major search engines, built a business on this observation.

These companies help Web sites improve their search rankings by tweaking titles of Web pages, optimizing the key words embedded in them, and in some cases, creating pools of artificial links to their customers’ sites to boost their ranking.

“It does no good to be number 55 in search results,” says Danny Ashworth, CEO of 2submit.com, a search engine optimization company in Provo, Utah. He says that as the cost of sought-after search terms rises – the term “annuity buyer,” for example, can cost advertisers up to $100 a time on Google – it’s only natural for people to try to boost their rankings in search engines’ main index.



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Useful PR and Ad Web Links

Articles and Blogs


  • http://www.searchenginewriting.com/seo-writing-book.html

  • http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/brandautopsy/2004/10/and_the_marketi.html

  • http://ad-rag.com/113658.php

  • http://influx.bsands.com/ - Marketing to 13 to 25 demographic


  • http://www.adrants.com/ Ad Rant

  • http://creativegeneralist.blogspot.com/ Creative Madness

  • http://www.consumerwhore.biz/ consumerwhore - crazy marketing and branding schemes

  • http://www.snarkhunting.com/ Branding

  • John Kuraoka, freelance advertising copywriter
    http://www.kuraoka.com/adblog/

  • http://ad-rag.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Web_Links&file=index&req=visit&lid=667

  • Visual Feast http://www.cameronmoll.com/

  • Brand Mantra http://brand.blogs.com/

  • Duct Tape Marketing http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/weblog.php

  • Meiser's Web marketing http://mmeiser.snth.net/blog

  • http://www.octopusdropkick.net/ Strange Marketing fun

  • http://masamania.com/ Crazy working in Japan blog

  • MARKETING AT MICROSOFT http://weblogs.asp.net/heatherleigh/category/4666.aspx


  • http://www.zeldman.com/adgraveyard/ AD GRAVEYARD




PR Blogs


  • http://www.natterjackpr.com/ Some thoughts and opinions on the Public Relations profession

  • POP! http://pop-pr.blogspot.com/

  • http://pr.typepad.com/ John Cass writes about PR, marketing and the Internet

  • SETH BLOG http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/

  • Trever Cooks Australian PR commentary http://trevorcook.typepad.com/weblog/



  • http://www.marketingsherpa.com/ Marketing Sherpa


  • http://www.mediapost.com/ Media Post Media Contacts






















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Written Tuesday, October 05, 2004 by Ed Hill

New Brandy Rich Music Video

New Brandy Rich Music Video


http://www.highlydef.com/clips.html


Here's the complete music performance video for the
song "I'll Take My Chances" by Brandy Rich.
This time the files are smaller so they're easier to download.

I hope you guys enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed shooting it.

My company, HighlyDef Productions specializes in Video Press Kits for
music performers and documentaries. This is my chance to show
off our latest project.

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http://www.xpresspress.com/ClippingService.html

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Written Saturday, October 02, 2004 by Ed Hill
Welcome to the Ed Hill Atlanta PR News blog.

I'm collecting news and notes about my friends and activities in Public Relations writing. I'll also be recording some of my PR experiments and PR activities related to my video productions and my company, HighlyDef Productions.

Oct 2, 2004
Sept 16 through Sept 30 PR and web SearchEO campaign
tasks:

  • Submit pages to 2 bb
  • Add video to web site
  • 2 weblogreferences
  • 2 releases on 3 outlets
  • submit site to directories
  • optimize content
  • submit to jp sites

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Search Engine Optimization - SEO Case Studies