Damn Cool Pics |
| Posted: 30 Aug 2015 05:12 PM PDT Bad dogs shamed with signs.                                 |
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The only emotion that spreads more reliably is panic.
Contempt is caused by fear and by shame and it looks like disgust. It's very hard to recover once you receive contempt from someone else, and often, our response is to dump it on someone else.
If you want to be respected by your customers/peers/partners/competitors/constituents, the best way is to begin by respecting them and the opportunity they are giving you.
And the best way to avoid contempt is to look for your fear.
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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
| Still "Too Early" to Decide on Rate Hikes: Let the Market be Your Guide Posted: 29 Aug 2015 10:32 AM PDT Still "Too Early" After all the hemming and hawing by nearly every Fed governor, and despite the fact the Fed has to do something in just over two weeks, the Fed still does not know what to do. Speaking in Jackson Hole Fed governor Stanley Fisher Keeps September Rate Hike Option on the Table. With market turbulence casting a cloud over the outlook for US monetary policy, a senior Federal Reserve official strove on Friday to keep the option of an interest rate rise alive at September's key meeting.Fisher Not Certain Here's the funniest line by Fisher in the interview: "The economy is returning to normal. We're not certain we are there yet." I am certain the economy is nowhere near normal, and the Fed is the primary reason why. My speech was all prepared for Jackson Hole, but somehow I was not on the invite list. It was a severe oversight by someone. Where They Stand Meanwhile, let's take a look at where all the Fed governors stand. MarketWatch details Where every Fed member stands on raising interest rates.
Those are the voting members. It's difficult to say how recent moves have changed the opinions of those last offering a view months ago. None of this matters of course. Such discussions are for entertainment purposes only. Despite the fact the Fed is clueless about whether or not the economy is "normal", they will line up like ducks if Yellen decides to hike. Let the market be your guide. It's still "too early" to know what the market view will be two weeks from now. Mike "Mish" Shedlock |
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Damn Cool Pics |
| World’s Largest Food Records From Around The World Posted: 29 Aug 2015 09:06 AM PDT |
| Drone Spots Man Sunbathing On Top Of A 200 Ft Tall Wind Turbine Posted: 29 Aug 2015 08:42 AM PDT Kevin Miller was flying his drone near some wind turbines in San Diego when he saw some thing odd. He moved in a little closer to see that a man was sunbathing on top of the turbine and the man even waved to his drone.       |
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Everything you do is either going to raise your average or lower it.
The next hire.
The quality of the chickpeas you serve.
The service experience on register 4.
Each interaction is a choice. A choice to raise your average or lower it.
Progress is almost always a series of choices, an inexorable move toward mediocrity, or its opposite.
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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
| Posted: 28 Aug 2015 03:53 PM PDT One of my constant themes over the past few years is the underfunding of state and local pension plans. Illinois is particularly bad, but let's look at some aggregate data. The National Association of State Retirement Administrators (NASRA) provides this grim-looking annual picture. Annual Update  Between the end of 2007 and end of 2014, pension plan assets rose from $3.29 trillion to $3.71 trillion. That's a total rise of 12.76%. Plan assumptions are generally between 7.5% to 8.25% per year! S&P 500 2007-12-31 to 2014-12-31  In the same timeframe, the S&P 500 rose from 1489.36 to 2058.90. That's a total gain of 590.54 points. Percentage wise that's a total gain of 40.22%. It's also an average gain of approximately 5.75% per year. Analysis
Drawdowns Kill! To be fair, the first chart only shows assets, not liabilities, but we do know that pensions in general are still enormously underfunded, with Chicago and Illinois leading the way. Negative Flow My friend Don Campbell pinged me with this comment the other day: "Nearly all public pension funds have a negative cash flow, meaning they pay out in benefits each year more than they receive in contributions. For all public pension funds, the negative cash flow is approximately 3% of assets, which means an average fund needs to produce an annual return of 3% to maintain a stable asset value." That's fine if assets have kept up with future payout liabilities and plans are close to fully funded. However, it is 100% safe to suggest that neither condition is true. So here we are, after a massive 200% rally from the March 2009 low, and pension plans are still in miserable shape. And plan assumptions are still an enormous 8% per year. Let me state emphatically, that's not going to happen. Stocks and junk bonds are enormously overvalued here. GMO Forecast  "The chart represents real return forecasts for several asset classes and not for any GMO fund or strategy. These forecasts are forward‐looking statements based upon the reasonable beliefs of GMO and are not a guarantee of future performance. Forward‐looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and GMO assumes no duty to and does not undertake to update forward‐looking statements. Forward‐looking statements are subject to numerous assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, which change over time. Actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in forwardlooking statements. U.S. inflation is assumed to mean revert to long‐term inflation of 2.2% over 15 years." Over the next 7 years GMO believes US stocks will lose money (on average), every year. Those are in real terms, but returns are at best break even, assuming 2% inflation. Bonds are certainly no safe have either. I strongly believe GMO has this correct. Assume GMO Wildly Off Even if one assumes those GMO estimated returns are wildly off to the tune of four percentage points per year, pension plans needing 8% per year will be further in the hole with 4% per year annualized returns. Imagination I have a musical tribute to imagination in regards to pension finances, especially imagination in Illinois. link if video does not play: Creedence Clearwater Revival - Lookin' Out My Back Door Illinois Non-Answer Illinois house speaker Michael Madigan and Chicago governor Rahm Emanuel believe tax hikes are the answer. Both are sorely mistaken. Here are a few viewpoints to consider.
The only way out of this mess is a pension restructuring coupled with municipal defaults. Mike "Mish" Shedlock |
| Fed Queen Race: Personal Income Rises 0.4% as Expected; Good for Rate Hikes? GDP? Posted: 28 Aug 2015 09:59 AM PDT Personal income for July rose as expected in today's Personal Income and Outlays report. Consumer spending rose nearly as expected, led of course by auto sales. Price pressure was nonexistent. There's no hurry for a rate hike based on the July personal income and outlays report where inflation readings are very quiet. Core PCE prices rose only 0.1 percent in the month with the year-on-year rate moving backwards, not forwards, to a very quiet plus 1.2 percent. Total prices are also quiet, also at plus 0.1 percent for the monthly rate and at only plus 0.3 percent the yearly rate.Favorable Beginning for Third Quarter GDP? Let's investigate the above Bloomberg claim "The growth side of this report is very favorable and marks a good beginning for the third quarter." Today's GDPNow Forecast The Atlanta Fed GDPNow Forecast sees it this way: "The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the third quarter of 2015 is 1.2 percent on August 28, down from 1.4 percent on August 26. The forecast for real GDP growth in the third quarter decreased by 0.2 percentage points following this morning's personal income and outlays report from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The slight decline in the model's forecast was primarily due to some weakness in real services consumption for July, which lowered the model's estimate for personal consumption expenditures from 3.1 percent to 2.6 percent for the third quarter." GDP Now Model  GDP By Quarter 2015 Q1: 0.6% 2015 Q2: 3.7% 2015 Q3: 1.2% GDP Nowcast Fed Queen Race Consumer spending is supposedly humming along. GDP is not doing much of anything. This reminds me of the Red Queen Race, an incident in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass that involves the Red Queen and Alice constantly running but remaining in the same spot. "Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing." "A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" Clearly we need to sell twice as many autos to get GDP where the Fed wants it to go. Mike "Mish" Shedlock |
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Posted by randfish
Step 1: Create 10x content. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Massive flood of traffic.
There's a bigger gap in step 2 than many marketers anticipate, and one of the best ways to fill it is getting your content in front of influential people who can help spread the word. You'll have to make it worth their while, though, and in today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains how to go about that.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about a problem that many of you have mentioned in comments, in tweets, in questions, and emails to me and to other folks here at Moz when we talk about content marketing and specifically content amplification like, "Okay, I made some great content. But how do I actually get people to share it? In particular, how do I get content into the hands of the influencers who might amplify it?"
Look, this is very frustrating, right? If you're a small brand, a small site, have a small social account, content amplification often feels like this.
You're like, "I just made the most amazing thing ever." It sucks, and I get that pain. I totally get that pain. We have all been there.
Moz has the wonderful privilege and opportunity of having this great content amplification channel. But when I started out, when I was making the blog in 2004/2005, nobody was listening. It was a very frustrating experience, and it took years before that content amplification lifecycle became to the point where I remember one year, I think it was 2008, and Greg Boser, who is legendary in the SEO world, was on a panel at a search engine conference. He's there and he says, "Well, Rand just cheats. All he has to do is hit Publish."
I was like, "Oh yeah, all I have to do now is hit Publish." But it takes a long time to build that. Those folks who already have a following, a following on their blog, on their social account, on an email list, on a news site, whatever it is, have this outsized ability to spark virality, to help something that might be incredible, that you've made, become seen by a wide audience who will actually appreciate it.
But it can be a frustrating process. Here's Ann Handley's account.
Ann Handley, one of the best, most followed folks in the online marketing world, @MarketingProfs is her handle, and she tweets stuff all the time that gets a lot of retweets, a lot of engagement, and folks are thinking like, "How do I reach her? I have something amazing that I want the marketing world to see. How could I get Ann to share my content?"
First off, this is going to sound tough, but... it is tough.
This is the thing that I think you should probably be using 80% or more of your time.
The simple nudge is just like what it sounds like. "Hi, Ann. I'm a big fan. I'm a long-time follower. We made this thing we think you're going to love. Let us know if you have any suggestions. We're going to be updating it for the next few weeks. Thanks, Rand."
That could be through email. It could be a LinkedIn message. It could even be a Facebook message. It could be a tweet. That's a little bit long for a tweet, maybe a long series of VMs. But the thing that is going on here is the content and relevance have to be outstanding. It has to be something that is remarkable just as soon as you share it, as soon as you give the title of it, Ann's like, "Oh wait, I have not seen one of those. I am super interested in that."
How are you going to find something that you can nudge that influencer with, where they will think, "That's so remarkable that even though I have never heard the name of this person before, I'm going to check it out and then I'm going to share it"? That's hard to do. It's a very, very high bar. But that's the same high bar that you have for creating what I have been calling 10X content, the kind of content that people will actually amplify and share.
I talk about this a lot. But I always urge folks to ask the question, "Who will help amplify this and why?" If you have a great answer to that question, the nudge should be all you need 80% of the time.
Now, I do have two tools that I'm going to recommend. They are both used for email outreach, specifically finding folks' emails or getting connected to folks through email.
Voila Norbert is a great tool for finding email that I have talked about on Whiteboard Friday before, and Conspire is a wonderful tool that will show you all of the people, who you have emailed, who have emailed that person. So if I hadn't emailed Ann directly, I could look in Conspire and I could see, "Oh look, Cyrus Shepard has emailed Ann previously. Great, let me reach out to Cyrus, ask him for an introduction. He'll connect me up."
So some good tools that can be helpful there. I'm reticent to promote it, but Followerwonk is also very useful for this discovery process, figuring out who those influencers are in the first place.
This tactic can work, and it's a nice, subtle way to get folks involved, especially if you're not too frustrated when it doesn't work out. For example, let's say Ann had tweeted something around CRM software. Well, she did send a tweet around CRM software that I copied in there, but maybe she has expressed some frustration around CRM software. She is like, "I don't know which vendors to choose. I wish there was a great resource."
I can say, "@MarketingProfs, your tweet about CRM frustration inspired us to make this." Cool. Now I'm sharing with her something that she has directly expressed an interest in, and I'm including her in there, again through Twitter. I could reach out through email. I could do it through LinkedIn. It could be through a lot of things.
I think any time you have content that's inspired by or particularly inclusive of a person, brand, or a place, let them know. There's no harm in letting them know. It could be that this is ignored 9 times out of 10, but 1 time out of 10 you're going to get that extra amplification and that's a wonderful thing.
I have found, by the way, that many times when it comes to a longer form content responding to a blog post, responding to a tweet, responding to something that's been shared, that professional, respectful, well thought out pieces that advance the conversation can work well even if we disagree about things.
So if Ann's expressed something and I go, "Hmm, I disagree with that. Let me explain why and the thinking behind it." But I'm going to be very professional, very respectful. I'm going to advance the conversation, like bring things forward, include non-obvious stuff that is helpful that makes this a better dialogue.
I can write up that piece, and then I can share it with her. This can be especially effective if you share it with the person before you hit Publish. Again, a good reason for pre-content amplification outreach.
Well, the review is a tough one. I don't love it all the time. I especially don't love it when it's been done to death, which it has very often. But this is something like, "We reviewed the latest guide from @MarketingProfs here." So we go check out MarketingProfs, and we download one of their guides. We really like it. We write up a review.
This works when it's positive and when that positivity is clearly authentic and not just designed to get amplification. One of the things that happens that I see all the time, especially in the web marketing, but even in the technology world and a lot in the travel world is folks doing things like this with no intention other than hopefully getting a link or a retweet. They clearly have not put any authentic thought into it. It's not a quality piece. It's just designed to get that link. It's very transparent to the vast majority of influencers who get targeted with this stuff all the time.
So if it's been done to death, probably don't bother. But the review system can work for other kinds of things, and if it's positive and authentic, and that's not why you did it, great.
It's frustrating because it's not always as effective. However, it can still be a small win even when you don't get the big win. So the idea would be I go and I check out, maybe potentially use Followerwonk. Or Little Bird is another one. It's paid and expensive, but very, very good.
These four accounts tend to share things that major influencers later pick up. Hmm, interesting. So at such-and-such and at so-and-so, like these folks tend to be often much easier to target and to reach out to, much higher response rate, much more likely to reply to you and engage with you, and even if those major targets never come through, so even if these folks are targeted, they're followed by these seven influencers that we really are going after. Well, you know what, even if they share and none of the seven influencers do, that's okay. It's still a win.
So I hope that with these in your pocket you can go and do a little more successful content outreach and content amplification. If you have some tactics that you would like to share that have worked well for you, I would love to hear about them in the comments. I'm sure everyone else would as well, and you'll get lots of thumbs up.
So I look forward to that and to seeing you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
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