Central Perk: 8 feb. 2012

miercuri, 8 februarie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Will Le Pen Be on the Ballot Against Sarkozy and Hollande? Does it Matter?
Bernanke Finally Says Something That Seems to Make Sense "8.3% Unemployment Understates Labor Weakness"; Critique of Bernanke's 2014 Pledge; Perfectly Useless Projections
Spotlight China: Electricity Consumption Drops Sharply; Central Bank Vows Housing Support; Oil Imports From Iran Fall Again; Asia Real-Estate Bull Turns Bearish

Will Le Pen Be on the Ballot Against Sarkozy and Hollande? Does it Matter?

Posted: 08 Feb 2012 04:30 PM PST

Not many people realize this but in spite of polling anywhere between 16% and 22% in recent election polls, Marine Le Pen might not be included on the French presidential ballot. The reason is Le Pen needs 500 signatures by elected official supporting her campaign. Le Pen says she only has 350.

I had been aware of this for some time but figured she could scrape up 500 signatures from a pool of 47,000 or so bureaucrats eligible to sign. Perhaps not.

Please consider Le Pen attacks all sides over 'pathetic' poll

Far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen slammed a poll in a Sunday newspaper that asked people how they would vote if she was not on the ballot paper.

The prospect could be a reality if Le Pen fails to get 500 elected officials to sponsor her candidacy.

Under French law, any presidential candidate needs 500 signatures from elected representatives in at least 30 different departments across the country or in France's overseas territories.

Le Pen told RTL radio on Thursday that she was still 150 short of the target number and risked being excluded from the vote on April 22nd.

A Sunday newspaper, Journal du Dimanche, published an opinion poll at the weekend showing that the fortunes of current president Nicolas Sarkozy improve markedly without Le Pen in the picture.

In that case, Sarkozy and his Socialist rival François Hollande would each get 33 percent of the vote.

Current polls give the president around 24 percent compared to Hollande's 30 percent. Le Pen is just behind on around 20 percent, threatening to overtake the president and secure a place in the final two-way runoff on May 6th.

Le Pen told a meeting in Toulouse on Sunday that the scenario in the poll was "the dream of the political class."

"If I'm not there will you vote for Nicolas Sarkozy, for François Hollande?" she said, as the audience booed and whistled.

"There is your response to their pathetic opinion polls and pathetic manipulations," she said.

Does it Matter?

The answer is not straight forward. It depends on the meaning of "matter".

Le Pen was not going to win. If she is off the ballot, More first-round votes will go to Nicolas Sarkozy than François Hollande.

However, in the second round of voting (recall French elections are two-stage with the top two candidates competing in a runoff), Polls show Hollande beating Sarkozy by 58% to 42% margin. Even if she bumped off Sarkozy, she would not win. Nor will Sarkozy win.

Thus from a candidate point of view, one might say it does not matter.

However, the process is certainly a defeat of democracy. Nothing is served by a process of keeping her off the ballot. Indeed, if she is as bad as Sarkozy claims, then voters should recognize that as well.

The 36,000 mayors and 11,000 other bureaucrats eligible to vote have to do so publicly. Le Pen has a challenge into the French Supreme Court on the secret ballot issue. That case will be heard on February 22 as noted by Reuters in French far right say big parties muzzling democracy.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Bernanke Finally Says Something That Seems to Make Sense "8.3% Unemployment Understates Labor Weakness"; Critique of Bernanke's 2014 Pledge; Perfectly Useless Projections

Posted: 08 Feb 2012 10:19 AM PST

I nearly always disagree with Bernanke on monetary and fiscal policy. Specifically, the Fed ought not have a monetary policy for the simple reason the Fed should not exist.

Indeed, the Bernanke Fed and the Greenspan Fed have both proven beyond a shadow of a doubt they do not know what they are doing, where the economy is headed, or anything else of relevance in setting monetary policy.

However, on rare occasions, Bernanke can say a few snippets that seem to make complete sense. For example, Bernanke Says 8.3% Unemployment Understates Labor Weakness.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the 8.3 percent rate of unemployment in January understates weakness in the U.S. labor market.

"It is very important to look not just at the unemployment rate, which reflects only people who are actively seeking work," Bernanke said today in response to questions at a hearing before the Senate Budget Committee in Washington. "There are also a lot of people who are either out of the labor force because they don't think they can find work" or in part- time jobs.

"The 8.3 percent no doubt understates the weakness of the labor market in some broad sense," Bernanke said today, while noting that some job indicators are improving.

Fed officials last month estimated that the world's largest economy will grow 2.2 percent to 2.7 percent this year, according to the central tendency estimate, while the unemployment rate will average 8.2 percent to 8.5 percent in the fourth quarter.

Disagreements Already

I agree with most of the above analysis, but the more Bernanke or the Fed talks, the quicker a disagreement is bound to arise. The problem above is the Fed's growth projection. The Fed could be right, I just highly doubt it.

Let's put it this way, Bernanke has been seriously wrong so many times on economic projections that perhaps by accident he finally gets one correct.

"8.3% Unemployment Understates Labor Weakness"

Some things are so obvious even Bernanke seems to understand. His labor weakness statement is one of them.

I said similar things on Monday, with far more details and reasons, in Fewer Nonfarm Employees Now Than December 2000; Unemployment Rate: Some Things Still Don't Add Up; Obamanomics?

Please click on link for a series of charts showing just how weak the recovery has been and just how understated the unemployment rate is.

Critique of Bernanke's Pledge to Hold Rates to Zero Through 2014

The strange thing here is that although Bernanke seems to understand the likeliness of further economic weakness, most analysts and writers are tooting the horns of an economic recovery, while chastising Bernanke for promising to hold rates low until 2014, as if the decline in unemployment rate is meaningful.

I disagree with the Fed's rate decision for a different fundamental reason: a bunch of academics chasing their tails cannot effectively set interest rates (only the market can). That simple fact has been proven is spades.

Analysis of Bernanke's "Labor Weakness" Statements

Unfortunately, Bernanke's statements offer surprising little economic insight.

For example, please consider the Fed's estimate that the "unemployment rate will average 8.2 percent to 8.5 percent in the fourth quarter".

Perfectly Useless Projection

Let's assume Bernanke is correct. Is that a meaningful projection?

The short answer is the projection, even if totally accurate, is perfectly useless. Let's analyze "why? in light of Bernanke's estimate that it takes 125,000 jobs a month to keep up with demographics (birthrate plus immigration).

Three Cases In Which Unemployment Rate Stays Flat

Is the Fed projecting 125,000 per month in line with expected demographics?
Is the Fed expecting 200,000 jobs a month with a rising participation rate that holds the unemployment rate steady?
Is the Fed expecting 50,000 jobs a month with a falling participation rate that holds the unemployment rate steady?

It would be more useful (assuming there is any use to Bernanke's statements which is certainly debatable) to know just what he is thinking because those three scenarios are vastly different in terms of economic significance, even though they all project the same 8.2 percent to 8.5 percent unemployment rate prediction.

In other words, the Fed's projection, even if accurate, is totally useless, not that anyone should be paying any attention to what he says in the first place.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Spotlight China: Electricity Consumption Drops Sharply; Central Bank Vows Housing Support; Oil Imports From Iran Fall Again; Asia Real-Estate Bull Turns Bearish

Posted: 08 Feb 2012 12:54 AM PST

Inquiring minds are tired of the spotlight on Greece (believe me I am as sick as anyone of Groundhog Day).

Given the world will not end when Greece defaults, whether in March of this year or next, let's turn our attention to a country far more significant.

Chinese Electricity Consumption Fell Massively In January

Business Insider reports Chinese Electricity Consumption Fell Massively In January, And The Chinese New Year Doesn't Explain It

Ultra-brief note here from Nomura's Zhiwei Zhang :

According to the China Securities Journal, China's electricity consumption in January fell by 7.5%. We estimate this may be the first decline since 2002 (excluding the financial crisis period in 2008-09), indicating industrial production may have slowed sharply in January.

They don't have any more answers here at the moment, except they say that if you're thinking it has something to do with the New Year, then you are incorrect.

For now it's just one of those things that make you go hmm...

China Pressures Iran On Oil Prices

China has stepped up the pressure on Iran in the face of Europe's oil embargo. Business World reports China's Oil Imports From Iran Reduced Again

China will reduce its crude oil imports from Iran for a third month, sources said today, as the two remain divided over payment and price terms, although they plan to meet again for talks as early as this week.

China is the top buyer of Iranian oil and also the fastest expanding major oil importer, putting it in a strong position to negotiate for better terms after it more than halved imports for both January and February.

The reductions for March-loading supplies will be largely the same, if not deeper, than the previous two months, industry officials with direct knowledge of the supply situation told Reuters.

China, which buys around 20 percent of Iran's total crude exports, cut its January and February purchases by about 285,000 bpd, just over one half of the total average daily amount it imported in 2011.

China Central Bank Vows Housing Support

In a sure sign that property prices in China are crashing faster than the Chinese government wants, China Central Bank Vows Housing Support

China's central bank pledged support for first-home buyers as a crackdown on real-estate speculation threatens to trigger a property slump in the world's second- biggest economy.

Officials will increase support for construction of affordable housing and ensure that "loan demand from first-home families" is met, the People's Bank of China said on its website yesterday evening.

Policy makers aim to limit public discontent by making housing more affordable, with Vice Premier Li Keqiang, a possible contender to be the next premier, describing the distribution of low-cost homes as a key test of government credibility. At the same time, the ruling Communist Party aims to avoid the economic "hard landing" that Fitch Ratings said yesterday is a key global risk.

"The government doesn't want to see home transactions slide too fast -- that may hurt economic growth," said Lu Ting, a Hong Kong-based economist at Bank of America Corp.

Too Late to Prevent a Hard Landing

Given the massive size of China's property bubble, it's far too late to prevent a crash landing. The only way to prevent crashes is to not let bubbles get so big in the first place.

Asia Real-Estate Bull Turns Bearish

MarketWatch reports Asia Real-Estate Bull Turns Bearish

Asia's gradually cooling property markets aren't the great buys they once were, according to one expert in the region, who says better bargains can be found in the depressed markets in the West.

Tim Murphy, the Hong Kong-based chief executive officer of property advisory group IP Global, says he's telling his clients to look more towards New York and San Francisco for deals, although London also ranks well in terms of rental yield in some projects.

Back home in Asia, the only market he likes is Malaysia, where average prices in its big cities are about one-tenth of those in Hong Kong, while its commodity-backed economy should outperform its export-dependent regional rivals.

What's changed? Murphy says the ongoing debate in Asia during the current soft patch is being driven by inflation concerns that were absent during previous periods of economic weakness.

Specifically, he sees a "role reversal" from the regional crisis that unfolded in 1997, as fresh barriers to foreign investment and speculative activity are now enacted across many parts of Asia, while hard-hit cities in the West are offering tax breaks and other concessions as incentives to invest.

Today, governments around the region, and particularly in China, are wary that too much liquidity could stoke a U.S.-style housing bubble and inflict long-term damage upon the economy, he said.

"Singapore and Hong Kong are two of the freest economies in the world, yet you pay more in stamp duties [real-estate transaction taxes] now than you would in London, because they are very worried about the markets continuing to overheat," Murphy said.

Infomercial for Property-Advisory Firm IP Global

As much as I agree with the headline message, I have to comment the same message could have and should have been said years ago. Given the illiquid nature of real estate, one cannot sell on a dime when the market turns.

"We see what's happening as a great chance for Asians to buy overseas at the moment," Murphy said, adding that in December he opened an office in Shanghai to tap the growing interest among China's newly wealthy for overseas homes.

Given the entire two-page article was about Murphy and his firm, I have to ask "Was that an news story by MarketWatch or an infomercial for Tim Murphy?"

Regardless, anyone who bought in China in the last couple years and has not sold yet is now likely trapped.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Damn Cool Pics

At the Heart of Valentines Day [Infographic]

Posted: 08 Feb 2012 12:52 PM PST

It is true that many of the traditions surrounding Valentine's Day and similar holidays worldwide are directly linked to consumer industries scheming up ways to build business. And it's clear from the US spending statistics that silly as some people may find it, Valentine's Day is no laughing matter when it comes to the flower and candy industries. However, it's interesting to see different ways this looks across the globe, and to explore some of the deeper legend and history behind it.

Overall, I think giving is a good thing, as long as you keep it within reason, and don't get too caught up in the consumer hype surrounding holidays like this. Check out this infographic to learn a little bit more about just how complex the construction of Valentine's Day really is.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Source: frugaldad

Why the iPad, Flash, Adobe Products and User Agent Detection Really Do Matter Graywolf's SEO Blog

Why the iPad, Flash, Adobe Products and User Agent Detection Really Do Matter

Posted: 08 Feb 2012 10:09 AM PST

Being the owner of a Macbook Pro, iPhone, and iPad, you might consider me an Apple Fanboy. I can tell you I’ve been involved in web development long enough to tell you that the current state of usability on the web is nearing the low point: when, in the late 90′s, browsers had no standardization and we had to design different sites for Netscape and Internet Explorer. The current situation comes mostly from designing sites that don’t render properly or at all on mobile devices like a mobile phone, tablet, or iOS device.

Before you cast me aside as being on the bleeding edge of technology and that I don’t really register as being statistically significant, I’ll share three links with you:

In most cases, people aren’t going to share or link to you if your website doesn’t work on their platform of choice…

Recently, I was trying to fix my dishwasher (listen, I cook a lot and dirty a lot dishes…knowing how to do some basic repairs myself saves me a little cash now then). About every 8-10 months, the part of the dishwasher that is supposed to grind up the food that doesn’t get pre-rinsed gets clogged and needs be cleaned. I’ve bookmarked the site with the video for my model in Evernote because I use it so often. However, because the site was using a proprietary flash video player, when I clicked the link, I only got the audio podcast not the video showing me assembly/disassembly (screen shots below).

Laptop Version

iPad Version

Not a problem. I figured I’d head on over to Sears, get a link to the product manual, and do it the long way. Turns out ManageMyLife.com does such a bad job of user detection that they think I don’t have the Adobe Reader installed and can’t view the PDF for my model number.

Laptop Version

iPad Version

Great. So I had a hard time getting a video on how to fix my dishwasher and viewing the PDF for the instruction manual on my iPad. I had to go upstairs and use my laptop. Boo hoo on me for having first world problems, right? What we really have here is a case of bad site design and usability for not designing in a site that fails gracefully when it gets user agent detection wrong. As a marketer and SEO, these things matter and they are going to matter more in the future …

First World Problems

In most cases, people aren’t going to share or link to you if your website doesn’t work on their platform of choice. They aren’t going to share your link on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other social network, and if they do it will be the way I did: to make fun of you or use you as an example of a McFail. Search engines are getting smarter. They are using lots of signals to determine which sites rank. These days, usability and engagement are two key signals and, as Google gets better at measuring them more accurately, they’ll play an even more prominent role.

So what should site owners do in these cases:

Avoid using proprietary audio/video/pdf viewers and players. If you need to for advertising reasons, build a more bulletproof system of user agent detection and fail gracefully into a condition that allows users to still get the content.
Don’t let the same content exist on a mobile subdomain (link) and normal domain (link) as this only leads to trouble when content gets shared across mobile devices and laptops (looks squarely in the direction of Facebook and Youtube). Use one URL improve your user agent detection if you need to do so, but try to design a system that is user agent agnostic.
The number and kind of devices that people are going to use is only going to increase in the coming years. This is a problem that you will have to deal with sooner or later. If you design systems that are flexible and embrace these platforms, you will have an easier time building links, getting content shared, and improving the on site signals and metrics that the search engines are using.

photo credit: Shutterstock/Jaroslav74

Why Does Gmail User Agent Cloaking Have a Gmail account? Log in unless you’ve set your...
Spam Document With User Agent Cloaking I have to say I find it particularly funny when...
When Google Gets Mobile Detection Wrong I have mentioned the dangers of having multiple versions of...
Adsense Related Products Reviews I’m working on a multi-part multi-day posting about adsense and...
Is Flash Bad for SEO or Can You Work Around it Perhaps it’s related to Apple not installing flash on the...

Advertisers:

Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.
BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.
Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!
Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
LinkWheel SEO - Get Web 2.0 Backlinks
TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.
Article-Writing-services.org - Article Writing Services creates quality content for websites and blogs at no cost to site owners.
Link Building Services - Hire WeBuildLink.com for well-planned advanced link building campaigns. Very affordable. Contact us now for a FREE evaluation.
Join 500+ top agencies & publishers who rely on The HOTH every day. US based, enterprise-grade support. High quality, contextually relevant links. 100% money back guarantee. Try it now.

Professional website designs - Get a unique brand image with website designs that sets you apart and convert your visitors into customers. Make a brand, not just a website
Krystal Glass Whiteboards - Glass writing boards for offices, boardrooms, and classrooms.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Why the iPad, Flash, Adobe Products and User Agent Detection Really Do Matter

10 Ways Paid Marketers Can Leverage Inbound Marketing

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 12:33 PM PST

Posted by JoannaLord

It happened friends. After years of Rand exposing me to the many benefits of inbound marketing I am ready to admit it...{big gulp}...today's marketer needs to be doing more than paid marketing. In fact, I'd go as far as to say, if you are only doing paid marketing you are failing yourself and your company. THERE I SAID IT. I feel better. Way better actually.

Because it's true. Things have changed. There is no longer two main players in the game (SEO and PPC). Search marketing itself has evolved. We've covered a great deal of this here on the blog so I won't go into it too much. If you need a reminder, I urge you to go check out Rand's posts where he outlines The New Era of Inbound Marketing, and outlines how quickly it is growing. As marketers, we saw the shift coming, and now we are feeling it in our every day gigs. Our roles are expanding as traditional SEO itself expands. There is so much happening all around us. Who is freaking out? Yeah me too.

paid and inbound marketing crossover

The real question you may be asking yourself is, "why is this paid marketing lady talking about inbound marketing?" Good question. The other day I was running through my to-do list and I couldn't help but notice how not-focused it was on paid marketing. In fact, most of my day was spent brainstorming with others on how to better share data, repurpose existing assets, and collaborate. While Justin and I manage paid marketing here at Moz, more and more of our time is spent on learning and leveraging our inbound efforts more effectively.

I thought I'd run through some ways that I'm leaning on our inbound marketing efforts to both reduce Moz's costs and capture more leads. Did you all know you could get leads for free? Yeah, crazypants I know. Anyway, here are the top ten ways I've leveraged inbound as a paid marketer here at Moz;

#10: Share Persona Outlines
You know who is really good at researching a target audience? Content writers. Recently, Michael King actually did a killer webinar on understanding your target audience and using social media tools to help define your best audience. It covers this concept really well. The idea is there are so many excellent demographic tools available to us now that these social networks want us to buy ads on them. We can look at audience sizes, location, categories, etc. All of this information has been helping organic marketers write targeted content for years. Paid marketers should be leaning on this data. What have they discovered that could help me better target high-value leads? Outline your target audience and extracting personas can be really challenging, but the more teams connect on this the better all our marketing efforts are targeted.

#9: Leverage Landing Pages
Design resources are hard to come by. Here at Moz we have Derric and Ramil basically sleeping in the office and we still have a backlog of projects that need their creative brains. Ask any paid marketer what is the bottleneck and often you will hear design resources pop up. So what can we do? Use landing pages that our inbound marketers have already queued up for us! Brilliant! Often times these pages are beautifully designed, and laced with excellent engagement opportunities. These are mandatory in a solid inbound marketing page and they are requirements of a successful paid search lander...coincidence? I think not.

#8: Exchange Conversion Reports
Oh conversion data, how sweet you are. I think most paid marketers are looking at the SEO data at their company. At least I hope they are! Beyond that though, there is more data you should be looking at. Here at Moz, we are a little data crazy. Jen, our Community Wrangler, puts together amazing metrics on our social activities every week. I have found that by mining her weekly data summaries I can see what content has gone hot and where. I can see where we are increasing brand awareness and what type of people are taking to the Moz brand. From there I can better allocate our budget to supplement these efforts.

#7: Collaborate on Keyword Research
So this one is one of those things we keep saying we are going to do, but rarely does it actually happen. I am always amazed by the keyword research process. First off, it's really time consuming. Secondly, it's not effective as a one-time step, it really needs to be done in an ongoing basis. Yet despite all this, both paid teams and organic teams have been doing separate keyword research for years. Ick. Yuck.

An awesome benefit to doing inbound marketing is the speed in which we can detect if something resonates. Where as before I might have used paid search budget to test an adjective or product description, I can now push out a targeted piece of content and see how the audience responds. It's immediate data collection and its statistically valid. I can't get over the power of the social graph when it comes to crowdsourcing reactions to certain keywords. This is the new keyword research in my opinion. We must combine our traditional keyword tools with audience response across these inbound channels.

#6: Repurpose Content
This one is pretty obvious, yet, so easy to skip over. I am guilty of this too often myself. Paid marketers need to be driving traffic to past inbound marketing wins. For example, about a year and a half ago we updated the Beginners Guide to SEO. This has gone on to be downloaded close to a million times, translated into other languages, and continues to be an excellent traffic driver. Guess how much of my paid marketing budget goes to driving traffic to this excellent piece of content? Yup you guessed it...none.

In the past, my argument was "it didn't drive enough free trial signups to show ROI." What I've realized over the past few months is I need to go deeper into what "conversion" means. What does acquisition mean? What does growth mean? My paid marketing efforts should be wrapped around these already successful content pieces. Repurposing hot viral content through paid marketing channels is a great example of how we can accomplish cross-channel marketing. Isn't it pretty when we all get along? Who wants to hug? Bueller?

#5: Share Customer Feedback
Customer feedback is gold, pure gold. Inbound marketing is about being found online through a variety of activities -- content publishing, social engagement, etc. A huge benefit of these conversations and interactions is the wealth of feedback you can receive from the community you have created. Often here at Moz, we will ask our community team to help us understand what our customers really love about our PRO service. We can hear right from them what keeps them happy, and what we can do better. This helps drive our marketing messages and our product roadmaps. Sharing the customer feedback and voice is so important, and the value found in sharing that across multiple teams in the organization is huge.

#4: Planning for Resources
Over the past few years we have seen the expectations of an online marketer change. We have more on our plates, more tools to log into, more reports to pull, more content to write, and so on and so forth. Inevitably these demands require more resources and more talent on any given project. I have found that by asking the organic marketers and community marketers here at the company what they are working on, I can better plan for my paid projects. If we are contracting a copyeditor for a content piece, I can slip in a request to revisit some ad copy headlines in the same contract. I can also repurpose design resources for banners, and landers. By knowing what your inbound team is working on, all of us can push out more faster. This is a huge benefit to connecting the to teams in both goals and resource planning.

#3: Fuel the Fire
I am a big fan of the halo effect as it applies to marketing. The halo effect, for those that might not know, is when customers show a bias to a product or brand based on some favorable or pleasant experience they have had previously. The beauty of it as it applies to today's marketing efforts is there are so many opportunities for a brand impression, and most of which are free.

A positive conversation a brand representative has with a user on a Facebook page may be enough to persuade a user to click a retargeting banner when faced with the brand's logo. Those two combined may build enough trust to persuade them to take a free trial. I call this "fueling the fire." While paid marketing may be measured on a CPA basis, there is a lot that happens prior to an action that influences the likelihood of a conversion. Inbound marketing offers mutiple opportunities to positively bias a potential customer. The goodwill a customer has in a brand often has very little to do with push marketing efforts, but has everything to do with these more organic experiences.

#2: Prequalify a Message
At the heart of it, marketers are story tellers. We love to persuade. As a paid marketer I spend most of my time coming up with ways to message my audience. Sometimes it's a new audience and sometimes it's my current audience, but either way I need to constantly be testing new ways to capture their attention. Prequalifying a message can be time consuming and can cost a lot of money depending on how I test it.

In the past I may have run a banner campaign on a relevant blog post and looked at metrics like CTR and CR. I may have also thrown money at a focus group (and whoa those can cost a lot) to see how people responded to a story we had crafted. These days I can use the power of social to test messages in record time. I can put together a presentation or a white paper and see how many times it gets shared, viewed, and downloaded. By counting these "social votes" I go beyond just clicks as a means of pre-qualification. It's a really great way for me to collect good data fast.

#1: Strengthen the Brand's Story
While the other nine ideas are great, this is my favorite. Nothing is more powerful than a consistent marketing message. Over the years I've worked to connect retargeting banners, paid search ads, landers, affiliate banners, and social advertising to send a strong and cohesive message. You know what stinks about that? All of those cost me money...which is no fun. Keeping money is fun. Spending all your money...not fun.

For promotions or time sensitive messages, if I really wanted to see an impact, I had to have serious budgets. There has to be a better way. Aligning some of these paid efforts with some inbound efforts makes for an even more compelling story for half the cost. As you push out new things and try to create buzz, you need to be asking yourself, "Is this the best use of my time and money?" I think as a paid marketer we can often forget to take that pause. We rest on the channels we know well but we need to push for more.

In Conclusion

Rand was right. In fact, all of my SEO friends were right. While paid marketing has a role to play in all of this, the direction the web has taken demands more from us marketers. While I am not sold that inbound marketing is all any marketer needs, I do believe there is a synergy between the two that can be very powerful. If we share resources, connect data, and collaborate rather than compete I think both teams win. I'm super excited about what this means for the future of paid search marketing. If you do paid and you aren't connecting with your organic marketing and social teams, you really are making your job harder than it needs to be.

I'd love to hear from you guys if there are other ways you have seen the teams connect and work more effectively together. Where do you see this all going as social marketing and content marketing continue to take more of our time as marketers? Where does paid fit into this?

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Video: President Obama Launches a Marshmallow Cannon

Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Video: President Obama Launches a Marshmallow Cannon

Yesterday, President Obama hosted the second-ever White House Science Fair, featuring robots in the Blue Room, rockets in the Red Room,and marshmallow cannons in the State Dining Room, showcasing the talents of next generation of scientists, engineers, inventors, and innovators.

President Obama got the chance to shoot a marshmallow across the State Dining Room using 14-year-old inventor Joey Hudy’s "Extreme Marshmallow Cannon":