The 2011 Ford Explorer - good for chasing traffic; web traffic

For a second I thought there had been some great PR win. Both TechCrunch and Mashable published posts about the 2011 Ford Explorer at about the same time.

What's that got to do about social media or startup tech? I thought to myself. Not much.

Mashable has the fact that Ford is turning to the internet to do its adverts. In fact there's a Ford Explorer Facebook page to get people talking about the car.

I admit that the Reveal tab is pretty well done and there's over 45,000 people who like the Ford Explorer. Not sure this is new enough strategy to appeal to Mashable though.

TechCrunch go for the CrunchGear approach; passing the car off as tech and suggesting its greentech.

Call me cynical if you want; I supect both blogs have been approached by Ford, I suspect both blogs would love a relationship with Ford but both blogs are also predicting search surges for the face "Ford Explorer 2011" or "2011 Ford Explorer". Heck; once I worked out what they were up to; I just had to write this post.

It's just unfortunate that both blogs had back to back posts. I wonder if either one is now regretting it (or regretting that the competitor also took the same oppertunity).



The great advantage of being a popular blog is that you're given the traffic driving terms before everyone else. You have a chance to get that optimised content online before people even know to search for it.

The question is - does the blog suffer if it strays too far from its usual course? I can't have been the only one to wonder why I was looking at pictures of a Ford Explorer on TechCrunch.

Popular Posts