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My Mother Sends Me Silly Emails Like This

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE

1930's 1940's, 50's, 60's and early 70's !

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds , KFC, Subway or Nandos.

Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy  Toffees, Gobstoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY ,
no video/dvd  films, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time...

We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!

RUGBY and CRICKET had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on MERIT

Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and bully's always ruled the playground at school.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.  They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL ! And YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS! You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

PS -The big type is because your eyes are not too good at your age anymore (big type that I removed because it made my blog look ugly)

P.P.S. The bad grammar is not mine and I'm actually posting it to my blog because it's quite funny and very unusual for one of these chain mail things to have any value at all.

Filed under  //   messaging   viral  

Comments [1]

SEO Is Dead!

Oooh, that's a controversial title, isn't it?  I suppose I'd better substantiate this wild claim...

What is SEO?

From Wikipedia: "Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web sitefrom search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image searchlocal searchvideo search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence."

Surely search is still important?

It is.  Saying "SEO is dead" is a bit of an overstatement really.  It's still important as people still use search engines but it's not as important as it used to be because the realtime web and and viral propagation are taking over.  This means that when you do search for something on Google (or whatever) the realtime search results will come up before those with high page ranks.  Also, which is better: A search engine listing or a recommendation from a friend or trusted source?

So what is more important than SEO?

Anyone that regularly reads my my posts will probably already know that my answer for this question is social media!  I've said it before and I'll say it again, this does not mean banging your press releases out over Twitter and leaving it at that.  It's much more than that.  You've got to engage and above all else, you have to listen!  Only with real engagement will you be able to build a community of evangelists.  You need to build a relationship with your target demographic.  Engagement leads to trust, trust leads to evangelism, evangelism leads to virality, virality leads to WIN.

So should we forget about SEO?

Definitely not.  You still need it because there are always those special deep searches for finding out the stuff that not a lot of people know.  Also there are always niche applications where you may not easily build a community (although I'm yet to find one).  There is also the added bonus that someone might find you via Google and enter your community via the back door.

The back door

So SEO isn't dead, it's just that since building the extension, what was your front door has now become your back door.  Social media is the new front door!

Filed under  //   Category: Social media   marketing   search   seo   social media   techforce   twitter   viral   virality   web  

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