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luni, 1 octombrie 2012
Hitting the Road with the Secretary of Education
The Anatomy of a Link Building Hack Day
The Anatomy of a Link Building Hack Day |
| The Anatomy of a Link Building Hack Day Posted: 30 Sep 2012 07:51 PM PDT Posted by Rob Toledo The “hack day” is a popular and effective practice used by developers and designers alike to quickly ship new products with minimal administrative overhead. These events have consistently proven fruitful by the likes of Google, TechCrunch Disrupt, a variety of startups, and even the US Government in allowing creativity to turn ideas into reality much quicker than a traditional release cycle. Subscribing to the Facebook philosophy of “move fast and break things,” hack days are not about releasing a perfect product with signoff and approval from every boss in the building, but rather quickly developing and acting on great ideas. In early 2012, Distilled held an internal hack day of our own. There were 40+ of us in the same room, and we were given the green light to run with any thoughts we had on how to make Distilled better. With little instruction, teams were formed, ideas were hashed out, a lot of coffee was consumed, and at the end of the day, we ended up with 70+ new ideas going live. Ranging from improving how we track data, fine-tuning a daily process, or somehow producing 57 SEO protip videos for our clients and blog readers, the main benefit from this day was how motivating it was to see the collective effort of a team creatively coming together to improve things for everyone. Seeing the success of this effort, our Outreach team now applies this hack day concept once a month to a rotating list of projects. We typically pause other work and, as a team, pour all of our focus and resources into one client for eight hours straight. Thus far, this collective effort has quickly revealed itself as successful and most certainly worth the resources. Below I will outline what a typical hack day looks like for our outreach team here at Distilled, which is to act as merely a skeleton of what could work for you. Things might be completely different for you and your team, and that is perfectly fine. There are very few rules as to what makes for a successful hack day, but we do recommend every team, whether you are in-house, agency, or even freelance, give it a try. Under each section, you will find italicized text referencing the specifics of our most recent hack day for those hoping to briefly peek into daily operations here on the Distilled Outreach team. But first, three key things to keep in mind:
Second, a brief introduction to our main cast -- feel free to reach out to any of us and ask any questions you may have: Adria “Jersey” Saracino (follow on Twitter): Head of outreach James “Jamazing” Daughtery (follow on Twitter): Outreach coordinator Alyssa “Unofficial Distilled Rapper” Ennis (follow on Twitter): Junior outreach coordinator Kyra “Dirty Look” Kuik (follow on Twitter): Content writer, editor Luke “Tuts” Clum (follow on Twitter): Creative designer, content creator And myself, Rob Toledo (follow on Twitter): Outreach coordinator ___________________________________________ 8:00 AM – Prepare a ton of coffee: This goes without saying. I like to show up early to settle in a bit. There is a growing internal competition between myself and several others to see who can be the one to arrive early enough to unlock the door and get first shot at the Aeropress (soon to be replaced by an espresso machine). 8:15AM – Create a collective workspace: Getting away from your desk can be one of the easiest ways to create almost instant productivity. Breaking daily routine will immediately foster outside the box thinking, which is exactly what leads to the most success during a hackathon. It is also beneficial to have the team in the same room. If this is not possible with people working from various locations, consider setting up an all-day webcam for easy and quick communication. We also use a shared Google doc to track our progress throughout the day (feel free to copy our template here). Consider offering your clients (or managers if you are working in-house) the opportunity to sit in for as long as they want. The enthusiasm that comes out during a hack day is very contagious. We have a (relativey) cozy conference room here at Distilled Seattle, which makes for a great work environment for such collaboration. Adria will typically project the shared gdoc onto the wall so we can all watch in real-time as we make progress throughout the day. 8:30AM – Preliminary strategy and goal setting: This will vary greatly depending on the project. When looking to promote existing content, we might discuss what types of sites would be interested in the piece, what previous contacts would want to help, what benefits the content provides to niche communities, etc. If it is more of a freestyle project, the strategy extends well beyond that. What creative work can we throw together? What sort of design can we get done in a day? Do we have time to start at square one and put out feelers to see what kind of content bloggers are interested in hosting, and then immediately turn around and provide that content? Nothing is off-limits here. This time should be used for hyper focus on one project, figuring out what expectations you can set, and making a plan to achieve your goals all within a limited one-day period. Looking for a few ideas to get the ball rolling? The only one Paddy Moogan gave an epic presentation on 35 ways to get links at MozCon 2012 with plenty of great ideas. Our most recent hack day featured the Small Business Guide to WordPress. We tend to focus these monthly efforts on clients who have taken a chapter out of Wil Reynolds #RCS Bible (did you see their RCS Money project?) in order to not only maximize success, but to encourage more of this type of behavior. We broke down this specific project into several areas of potential interest: small business blogs, web designers, social media influencers, and tutorial sites. We discussed what our pitches would look like, how we would reach the most people, and in what ways we could quickly turn around and provide the content we were hoping to deliver. We agreed that the time would be best spent for the first few hours with James and I focusing on outreach to our previous contacts, Alyssa and Luke outreaching to new contacts, and Kyra prospecting at first then transitioning into writing once we started receiving positive responses. 9:30AM – Start taking action: Put your head down. You should be tweeting, you should be emailing, you should be making phone calls, delivering hand-written letters, perhaps sending the occasional smoke signal. Start communicating your successes in real-time to the team. Update the Gdoc, do a quick happy dance in the room for everyone to see, but then get back to work. Turn it into a light and friendly competition among the team if that motivates everyone to push one another. One thing to keep in mind, though: a link building hack day is not an excuse to get sloppy. As I will explain later, a bad pitch is still a bad pitch, so make sure you are still utilizing best outreach practices. At Distilled, we start off our outreach efforts by pushing the magic “get links” button we built and then kicking back with a beer and opening up a bag of Cheetos (it’s noon somewhere) as the successes just start rolling in… …Ok but seriously. This is where things turn into a complete frenzy. It is fun to take the occasional step back and watch everyone hyper-focused on one collective project. It acts as a real incentive to act similarly. On this project, we started seeing immediate results as our initial response rate was pretty high, which immediately meant Kyra had plenty on her plate. Adria normally takes this time to start playing some Top 40 to get us all pumped up. James most likely is on his second bag of Cheetos, and I won’t be found without at least one pack of Hi-Chews (which I think translates into "little slices of heaven"). 11:30AM – Check in: This is a great time to touch base, pivot away from things that aren’t working thus far, focus on what has been successful, and discuss new ideas for after lunch. We realized there was quite a bit more immediate success in the design space than expected, so we decided to place a little more focus on that niche, shifting focus a bit away from social media outreach. Small business bloggers had been about as responsive as expected, so we kept on pace there. 12:00PM – Lunch: Take a deep breath. Get something to eat. Refresh the coffee pot. Get back to work. 1:00PM – Follow up: This part will vary greatly depending on countless factors. Ideally, by the time you come back from lunch, you will have heard back from the majority of people you pitched your ideas to in the AM. If that is the case, congratulations! Now you’ve got your afternoon cut out for you making sure you can deliver the content promised in a timely manner. But what happens if you didn’t hear back from very many of your contacts? It could be any number of reasons, but a couple things to keep in mind: What day is it? We try to avoid scheduling outreach hack days on the bookends of the week as Tuesday and Wednesday are typically the most fruitful. Be mindful of time zones as well. What are you offering? Are you targeting the right bloggers and influencers? Are you providing them with something relevant to their readership? Are you offering them enough quality? And most importantly… How was your pitch? B.L. Ochman, a contributor for AdAge, owner of the What's Next Blog, and all around awesome person, is always someone I can chat with about all the bad pitches she receives daily. In fact, she has an entire section on her blog dedicated to them: Press Releases From Hell. When I asked her for some input, here is what she had to say: "The pitches I read and reply to: - Are from people who have bothered to read my blog and refer to a post that I wrote that is relevant to what they're pitching. - Are briefings about topics I cover and care about. I'll never write anything related to a pitch that starts "Because you cover the Internet (really, they say that!) I know you'll want to write about ____." Nope! You don't know what I want to write about. I'll make that decision. - Tell me in one sentence or two (max) what they want and why it might be news. - Are pitches from people who know my dog's name. The pitches that will be deleted immediately: - Have unsolicited press release attachments. - Are clearly going to everyone and their dogs. Give me an advance, an exclusive or some detail you haven't given anyone else and I may be interested. - Are from people who keep sending the same pitch. I get hundreds of emails every day. If I didn't answer yours I'm not interested. It's ok to remind me (once), but tell me what you're reminding me about." The reason your pitches might be getting ignored is because you need to improve how you are communicating your efforts in the first place. But don’t get discouraged! There are plenty of great resources available to help you learn how to improve on your outreach efforts. How to Write an Elevator Pitch is a personal favorite that has some fantastic takeaways that can be translated into outreach efforts. And by all means, feel free to contact me with your specific questions about how we handle outreach at Distilled. I am always happy to offer advice, review pitches, and give my brutally honest feedback on what I think could be improved. We had a pretty fruitful morning at our hack day, with everyone seeing pretty high response rates. Our afternoon quickly shifted into delivery mode, making sure Kyra was as stressed as possible with all our requests for copy and introductions. We had to start focusing most of our efforts on content creation, but were not slowing down too much on our initial outreach emailing. 3:00PM – Crunch Time: The last two hours should focus heavily on both distributing out your completed content as well as scheduling follow-ups, planning your emails for the next few days, cleaning up your reports, and ideally recapping the event with a brief breakdown of how everything went. Totaling your successes, discussing what worked, dissecting what didn't work, and creating as much takeaway information as possible in order to improve your next hack day. We used this time to send out some final emails, finish up and distribute content to those who were waiting for it and one more big push through social channels. We used the last 30 minutes or so to clean up the report that would eventually make its way into the client’s hands. We debriefed at the end about what we accomplished, what we learned and what we could take with us into future hack days. 5:00PM – Beer O’Clock: Crack open a beer, pat yourself on the back, throw your feet up, and relax. While the next few days will require some project management, it's best to step back at the end of the day and breath a bit. What do you think? Does your team do anything similar to this? Could you see benefit from trying something similar? 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! |
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Seth's Blog : The easiest way to thrive as an outlier
The easiest way to thrive as an outlier
...is to avoid being one. At least among your most treasured peers.
Surround yourself with people in at least as much of a hurry, at least as inquisitive, at least as focused as you are. Surround yourself by people who encourage and experience productive failure, and who are driven to make a difference.
What's contagious: standards, ethics, culture, expectations and most of all, the bar for achievement.
The crowd has more influence on us than we have on the crowd. It's not an accident that breakthroughs in music, architecture, software, athletics, fashion and cuisine come in bunches, often geographic. If you need to move, move. At least change how and where you exchange your electrons and your ideas.
We all need leaders who challenge the tribe. We benefit even more when our leaders have peers who push them to be even better.
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- Instead of outthinking the competition...
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duminică, 30 septembrie 2012
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
- What If I Am Wrong About Europe?
- At Some Point the Hat Runs out of Rabbits; First Catalonia, Now Basque Separatists Call for Independent Country; El Pais Survey Shows 43% Catalans For Independence, 41% Opposed
- Austerity Programs Hit France; Marchers Demand Vote on Treaty; Hollande Reneges on Campaign Promise
| What If I Am Wrong About Europe? Posted: 30 Sep 2012 08:59 PM PDT I have long stated the eurozone will breakup. Historically speaking, no currency union has ever survived in the absence of a political union. Moreover, in It's Just Impossible I noted
Mathematically Speaking Mathematically speaking, I also fail to see how the eurozone can stay intact. Specifically, please consider point number nine of Michael Pettis: Long-Term Outlook for China, Europe, and the World; 12 Global Predictions 9. Disruptive European PoliticsThat prediction was made by Michael Pettis, and I am in complete agreement. But what if I am wrong? Can Politics Triumph Over Math and History? What if the eurozone in spite of all obstacles stays intact? Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999 offers an interesting viewpoint for The Telegraph in Spain teeters on the brink All of a sudden, the talk is of the breakdown, not just of the single currency, but of the parliamentary system on which it rests. Commentators across Europe fret that Spain, which emerged from dictatorship less than 40 years ago, might give up on multi-party politics.Sad Reality The sad reality is Spain and Italy may linger on just as Greece did, destroying their countries in the process. Consider once again what I said on September 26, in Firebombs, Teargas, Riots Near Greek Parliament; 57% Say Greece Should Abandon Pledges Made to Troika Sentiment Has TurnedSame Track, Wrong Track Spain, Greece, Portugal, and Italy are all on the same track and the wrong track. All need work rule reform and lower taxes. Instead, the countries have been short on productivity improvement, short on pension reform, short on work rule reform, and long on tax hikes. It is no wonder their economies are imploding. It is no wonder protests are getting louder. Yet the political class, beholden to the banks and the IMF have taken the wrong track. In the end, I highly doubt I will be wrong. In the meantime, however, Telegraph writer Daniel Hannan appears to be correct in his assessment the "the tragedy is that the monetary union will limp on, condemning hundreds of millions to gradual immiseration." Mike "Mish" Shedlock "Wine Country" Economic Conference Hosted By Mish Click on Image to Learn More  Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. 
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| Posted: 30 Sep 2012 12:27 PM PDT Calls for the splintering of Spain have picked up steam. Euskal Herria Bildu (EHB, a left-wing, Basque nationalist party) has called for "A Great National Act" in Favor of Independence according to El Pais. EH Bildu has called "a great national political act" in favor of the independence of the Basque Country for the next October 13 in the BEC Barakaldo (Bizkaia), announced its candidate for lehendakari, Laura Mintegi in an appearance before the media at EA headquarters in Bilbao.El Pais Survey Shows 43% Catalans For Independence, 41% Opposed According to El Economists, Catalan Separatists Not Quite at Absolute Majority. About the option of independence for Catalonia, El País published a survey in which, in case of a referendum, 43% would vote for secession, compared with 41% who would decide against.At Some Point the Hat Runs out of Rabbits I am sticking to my long held belief that "Eventually will come a time when a politician will hold up a copy of the EMU treaty, declare it null and void, and the debt null and void right along with it. That politician will be elected." Yields have come down since my July 24, appearance on Capital Account: Discussion of Social Media Panic in Italy, Soaring Yields in Spain, and the Upcoming 20th Euro Summit, Bound to be Another Failure so it appears there was another rabbit left at the time. However, the government of Portugal recently had to back off announced austerity measures following a mass protest, and additional protests elsewhere have become more frequent and more violent. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. 
|
| Austerity Programs Hit France; Marchers Demand Vote on Treaty; Hollande Reneges on Campaign Promise Posted: 30 Sep 2012 10:16 AM PDT Following protests in Portugal, Spain, and Greece, a wave of Leftists march in Paris against austerity. Thousands of leftists marched through Paris on Sunday demanding a referendum on the EU's new fiscal discipline treaty in the latest of a series of anti-austerity protests in countries hit by the eurozone crisis. Hollande Reneges on Campaign Promise Recall that Hollande ran on a platform to rework the Merkozy Treaty. We now clearly see that was just another campaign lie. However, Hollande has followed through on all of his economically destructive ideas including massive tax hikes, lowering retirement age, and pressuring companies to not lay off workers. Destructive follow-through of the worst ideas, with no follow-through on the best campaign ideas is typical of presidential elections everywhere. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. 
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Damn Cool Pics
Damn Cool Pics |
| A Brief History of Weddings [Infographic] Posted: 29 Sep 2012 09:28 PM PDT Over the course of history weddings have evolved quite a lot. The ceremony where two are united as one vary greatly between cultures, nations and religions, but most wedding ceremonies invoke an exchange of vows and gifts between the bride and the groom. Traditionally a couple exchanges wedding bands, but there have been some pretty extravagant gifts given. Moissanite takes a look at some of the most over-the-top gifts of all time and also examines how wedding traditions began and what they signify. Click on Image to Enlarge.  Via: Moissanite 
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Google's EMD Algo Update - Early Data
Google's EMD Algo Update - Early Data |
| Google's EMD Algo Update - Early Data Posted: 29 Sep 2012 05:21 AM PDT Posted by Dr. Pete Recently, I wrote about changes we’ve been tracking in how Google treats Exact-Match Domains (EMDs). Yesterday (Friday, 9/28), Matt Cutts tweeted the following message: It was initially unclear what “upcoming” meant and whether the change was in progress or would roll out later in the weekend. Matt went on to say that the change “affects 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree,” but didn’t pin down the timeline. This morning, our new MozCast "Top-View" metrics showed the following: We measured a 24-hour drop in EMD influence from 3.58% to 3.21%. This represents a day-over-day change of 10.3%. While the graph only shows the 30-day view, this also marks the lowest measurement of EMD influence on record since we started collecting data in early April. So, Who Got Hit?Across our data set of 1000 SERPs, 41 EMDs fell out of the Top 10 (5 new EMDs entered, so the net change was 36 domains). Please note that we can’t prove that a domain lost ranking due to the algorithm change – we can only measure what fell out. Here are 5 examples of domains that lost ranking as of this morning (9/29) – all had previously ranked for at least the past 7 days:
The parenthetical value shows the EMDs ranking on 9/28 (the day before the drop). Again, all we know is that these domains fell out of the rankings for their exact-match phrases as of this morning – I’m not making any statements about the quality of the domains as a whole. As you can see, the affected domains cover a range of phrase length and TLDs (including .com’s). There’s no clear pattern in the size of the drop – some fell out of the top 100 entirely, while others slipped a couple of pages. For example, www.charterschools.org fell from #7 to #23, whereas playscrabble.net dropped from #3 down 18 pages to #183. What About The #1s?You may have noticed that none of my example domains were previously ranked in the #1 spot. Across the 41 EMDs that dropped out of the top 10 in our data, none of them ranked #1 the previous day. Three domains held the #2 spot prior to their fall, including www.mariogamesonline.net, which is no longer in the top 100. It’s interesting to note that, of the 41 EMDs affected, 5 of them had “games” in their domain name, but this could just be a fluke (or a sign of an industry with too many low-value sites). What’s The Pattern?It’s not my goal to call these sites out – some may have dropped in ranking due to factors that had nothing to do with this algorithm update (and were only coincidentally EMDs). For example, www.charterschools.org appears to be a legitimate site representing a professional organization: the Michigan Association of Public School Academies (MAPSA). At first glance, it appears that their only crime may be choosing a keyword-focused domain over their own brand. The site doesn’t really target the phrase “charter schools” particularly strongly and is tied to one state. It’s not a bad site, but one can argue whether it deserves to rank in the top 10 for a competitive keyword simply because of its domain name. Other sites in the mix do appear to exhibit more traditional low-quality signals – aggressive keyword usage, low-authority, spammy link-building, etc. – and seem to have been ranking solely by virtue of their EMDs. There’s no one clear signal in play, though – at this point, we have to assume that Google is weighing multiple factors. Again, it is interesting to note that no EMDs previously at #1 were affected, but our data set is still relatively small. If you have specific questions about the data, please feel free to ask in the comments, and I’ll do my best to follow up. These patterns are surprisingly complex, and I wanted to dig in for a quick first look while the data was still fresh. 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! |
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