Central Perk

joi, 7 februarie 2013

How to Get Your Boss to Care About Content Marketing

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 05:27 PM PST

This article consists of part selling content marketing, and part how to actually create a content campaign. However, at a more Meta level, it's also about the idea of "how to be good at getting what you want." If you want your boss to care about content marketing, you need to know how to pitch it right.

Like everything in business, from sales to link building, "selling an idea" is all about persuasive speech and delivery. However, if persuasion doesn't come naturally to you, how do you formulate a pitch that will be sticky and affect change?

I'm not here to give vague, unhelpful advice like "be persuasive," "give solid delivery," or some other abstract concept that is difficult to act upon. Rather, I will do my best to give you an actionable, step-by-step formula to constructing an effective pitch and convincing your boss that content marketing is the answer to your online business woes.

Whether you're selling content marketing to the C-Suite, your manager, a client, or even trying to convince yourself, here is everything you need to make a compelling argument and be on your way to content marketing success.

Step 1: Paint a story

Think of some of the best advertising campaigns you can recall. I get chills every time the Kellogg's Special-K commercials come on and they end it with the simple phrase, "What will you gain when you lose?" Genius in one simple question.

Just like Kellogg's stays top of mind by getting viewers to think about the flip side of weight loss, you need to paint a story and deliver an overarching vision in which the decision makers can relate if you want them to support you throughout the process.

Tom Critchlow once told me to "voice a vision" and I literally walked away baffled because it was so non-actionable that I wanted to rampage. However, now being on the other side, I'm going to say this "story painting" part is the most abstract piece of the "making-your-boss-care" puzzle because at the end of the day, each story will differ depending on the company. Since you have more intimate knowledge of the brand than I ever will, this story-painting task lies in your creative ability to succinctly develop a vision for your company.

All this being said, I can provide some tricks for developing your story:

What is the brand message? If there is a PR team, ask. No sense painting a new vision that doesn't align. If not, start thinking about what you know about your customers and brainstorming why they chose your brand over another. What is your brand's USP? Sales and FAQ pages could be invaluable here. You could even bribe the social media manager to throw a question out on Facebook and see what responses you get.

PRO TIP: Send out an email asking all (or a group) of employees to put into an Excel doc words that come to mind when they think of your brand. Throw it into Wordle to create a word cloud to help with brainstorming. You could also add words from the Facebook responses from customers if you ended up bribing your social manager.

Can you re-position the conversation? Just like Kellogg's, Taco Bell re-positioned the conversation in its market with the tagline "Think Outside the Bun." It was in the market of burger joint vs. burger joint, but instead of comparing itself to the competition by creating more noise about "fast food" and "sandwich-like" options, Taco Bell re-positioned the conversation to "us vs. them."

Can you focus the conversation on another angle in your market? Think about your competition and what all of the marketing noise sounds like. How can you differentiate your message?

If you're not a natural storyteller, find someone who is. I personally am hit or miss with storytelling, so I often go to Lexi Mills or Ron Garrett for this skill. The bonus to getting someone else invested in the vision is that it becomes an opportunity to recruit more advocates of content marketing. Think of it as a mini coup, as there is strength in numbers.

Google it. Hey, if you're not a great storyteller look to see what other people are saying. I just did to make sure I wasn't missing anything and found some great resources on storytelling for marketing.

Remember: decision makers need to see, understand, and be on board with your vision if you want to truly get their buy in. Sell the vision and you're on your way to getting the resources you need to get there.

Step 2: Match it with specific goals

I'll make it easy for you. There's only one real goal: conversions. All other "goals" are really just means to this one end. You're in business, so all goals should end in the monies. Any other goal you think of (links, rankings, domain authority, etc.) will be a short-term checkpoint to reaching the end of the race and improving conversions.

Your long-term goal should be the first thing you pitch: "I want to make us more money." Perfect; you got their attention and are speaking in their terms. Now, how do you get specific and create a road map of short-term-goal measurement "checkpoints" to show you are coming to the pitch with solutions and not just fanciful stories?

Remember, it's about painting a story. You want to go all Memento on them. Start with the end of the story (end goal = more money) and then flash back to the beginning – give them a high-level snapshot of your company's current performance.

For current performance: Usually a few key graphs and specific metrics in areas where the company is under-performing will be enough. If you can pair it with some competitive research, such as "so-and-so is dominating the search results," that will most likely help. The key is to not get caught up in minutia and to talk big picture. Don't say, "We are getting a high bounce rate on this one page and I think it's important to build content to improve it." You want the conversation to sound more like, "I audited our site and saw there are over 30 pages in which we're getting X-significant-amount-of-traffic and it has a 100% bounce rate, which is costing us approximately $X a year."

For future goals: Again, you want to think bigger picture and not get caught up in the minutia. You definitely don't want to say, "I'm going to make a piece of linkbait that's going to get us a lot of links." Business leaders don't think in links, they think in money so start leveling up your language.

Content marketing isn't a string of piecemeal linkbait. It is aligning content with a company's customer funnel to make sure the brand is at top-of-mind throughout the purchasing path. Thus, your pitch should sound more like this, "To improve our organic traffic by X% and bring in $X more a year, we need to dominate the SERPs for keywords relevant to our customers' purchasing behavior. To get here, we need to do X, Y, and Z."

Below, we'll talk more about the recipe for developing a content strategy which, depending on your company's specific performance, you can most likely plug into this part of the pitch for the X, Y, and Z variables. Also, I really loved Jay Baer's presentation at Content Marketing World on the four different types of metrics.

Step 3: Pair the vision + goals with the benefits

Kane Jamison of Content Harmony and I were shooting emails back and forth in preparation for our meet-up on content marketing in March, and he explained the core benefit of content marketing so well:

"Tangential/viral campaigns have to be justified to the client like this:
'Well, viral may results in links/social, which may result in domain authority and may result in ranking improvements across the domain, but if it fails then we don't have much to show for it.'

That can be too much of a stretch for a client to get on board with. Aligning the content you produce with the client's sales funnel sidestep that. The discussion turns into this:

'Well, if it goes viral, then we win the internet, but if it doesn't go viral then it's still great for X, Y, & Z business goals, and you can continue promoting it long in to the future.'"

If you have inquisitive management, they are going to start coming at you with questions and rebuttals trying to say what your team is currently doing is enough. Kane's reasoning will be enough explanation for most, but counteract any serious dubiousness with a list of reasons why content marketing is beneficial. You know your boss best, so you can read whether or not you'll need to dive into this in detail or just have it ready, but it's always good to pepper some of these into your pitch.

I wrote an article on aligning content marketing with the customer funnel that had some of these benefits, but here is an expanded list:

It's safer and actually strategic

Frankly, if a piece of content doesn't go viral, you have a backup plan if you align content to the broader marketing goal and message.

As Kane mentioned, "viral" content pieces on tangential topics put a lot of strain on the outreachers to deliver links and shares. However, creating sharable content that is also relevant to the top of your company's funnel can make sure you're not putting all your eggs in one basket. If it doesn't go "viral," it could still have other benefits, such as ranking for a relevant term, being used by the sales team, and so on. This is called diversifying your link building plan.

In addition, if you build content around broader PR or social media efforts, you are now integrating campaigns – economies of scale for content marketing. This makes sure you are leaving no stone unturned and capitalizing on all the potential business wins possible.

EXAMPLE: If the social team is hosting a huge contest, is there an opportunity to create relevant content onsite that has the opportunity to rank for keywords relevant to your funnel?

Creates a flywheel

Content marketing is a COO's operational dream. Over time, it creates a flywheel for efficient content creation. No endless cycle of "think of epic idea, build it, outreach it, repeat." Instead, you are front loading the research and planning to create a long term road map that follows a strategic set of creative parameters.

In addition to the internal flywheel, content following a strategic plan can also market itself over time, eliminating the need to keep promoting it manually. For example, if the content targets a low-competition keyword that has decent volume, it can start ranking well on its own. If it's a topic a lot of other authors write about, when they are researching they could use your content. Furthermore, since users are search heavy during decision making, it's bringing new potential customers to your site all by itself. If you create content regularly enough, people can come to expect it and start coming to your site to see what you will launch next. All of these are examples of how content can become a snowball effect of wins with little to no redundant work.

Provides consistent user experience

This is the benefit I am personally most passionate about because, at the end of the day, your customers are who matter most. If you are creating inconsistent, tangential content to target who I call the gatekeepers, you run the risk of confusing your customers and irreparably damaging your brand's trust factor. Here's an easy rule to follow: all content you create should make sense as coming from your brand. No zombie infographics if you are an insurance company. No cat memes if you are a travel company. Keep it relevant and consistent. I have another version of #RCS: Relevant, Consistent Shit.

Captures long-term traffic

I used this image in my last post and I'm going to use it again because it's so relevant: content that is relevant to your customer funnel builds traffic over time. Unless they are searching for zombie apocalypse equipment, no one is searching for keywords around your zombie infographic. It will not gain long-term traffic unless you keep pushing it.

However, if you create content that you know targets a topic heavily searched, you could see results like this:

content growth chart

Step 4: Demonstrate potential results with examples

Keep up the storytelling theme by ideally having both good and bad examples to represent the hero and the villain. We are hardwired to connect with storytelling, so it can be difficult for decision makers to resist rooting for the good guys. You want to subtly paint this good vs. bad picture by choosing the right examples. The best "bad" examples usually hit home when they are your own company's work, but just remember to be tactful when talking about the negatives.

Here are some good examples for you to use. Note, I am showing these because I have access to how the campaigns did and the results are what you need to show your boss this stuff works. There's a lot of really, really cool content marketing going on out there, and I encourage you to follow up with the companies that are doing them to see if you can get some case studies on the results.

"The Small Business Champions"

Mackenzie Fogelson just talked about them in her building community value post. They even wrote a post explaining their campaign and the results. They might be all over the place, but I'm going to say it again because it has such clear results you can show your boss (remember: show, don't tell) – the team over at Simply Business is onto something with this whole content marketing thing.

I'll let you read the post over at CMI that goes into more depth, but essentially SB developed a brand message to become "the small business champion." As such, it decided to create content around common roadblocks businesses face – successfully navigating all the backend mumbo jumbo around operations. Things like being more efficient, installing and using Google Analytics, hiring your first employee…anything and everything that frustrates business owners.

The results*:

Moved to 1^st or 2^nd position in SERPs for head key terms
Ranking for top-of-funnel keywords
6% higher first-visit-to-buy conversions
Improved customer retention by 30%

* Pulled from Simply Business' CMI post linked above

Platform for #SocialSuccess

Kieran Flanagan revealed the results to Salesforce's #SocialSuccess content marketing campaign on Moz last year. Similar to Simply Business above, Salesforce identified its brand message, "Get Found," and embarked on a journey to pull new potential customers into its funnel by creating content around social media issues its tools address.

The result was a #SocialSuccess section of the Salesforce site that included a variety of rich media around social media topics, including interviews with experts and eBooks.

The results*:

Traffic for launch month up 80% YoY
Traffic from social sites up 2500%
6500 newsletter signups
10,000 eBook downloads (and thus 10K leads)
An ongoing platform for content marketing – Salesforce is still killing it today with #SocialSuccess-themed content

* Pulled from Kieran's SEOmoz post linked above

Step 5: Outline a "bird's eye view" plan

Don't plague them with the minutia. It's generally a fixed plan with concrete steps no matter the business. It's only four real steps with some mini actions in between: research, compile, execute, analyze (RCEA – management loves acronyms, right?).

Note: I am going into more detail for each of these sections so you know what it is and have a starting point for when you get to the execution part. You don't need to include all this detail in your pitch!

Before you begin: Talk to other teams. You would not believe how many companies silo their teams and waste time, money, and efficiency repeating processes. One of these processes is understanding the customer. Someone in your company might already be an expert, so don't duplicate the work to find out yourself!

If you don't have anyone to talk to or a team that did one of the below steps, here is an overview of the type of functions you will need to perform to create a content marketing plan from the ground up.

Research

Benchmark audit

Look through all of the company's back-end analytics to get a clear picture of its current performance. You want to find out the answers to questions like:

What is traffic pattern like? Any seasonality?
What pages were visited most?
What is the typical visitor flow?
What pages get the most conversions?
Where do visitors spend the most time?
What are the bounce rates, particularly for high volume pages?
How long goes the visitor typically stay on the site?
How did they get to the site?
What are the predominant referring keywords?
Any interesting mobile vs. web data?

I call this a "benchmark" audit because you should also be taking out key metrics as the baseline you will compare all future performance to in order to determine ROI of your efforts. While you are doing this, keep in the back of your mind that you will need to develop a way to track all future content goals you develop.

Talk to your customers

From the benchmark audit, you will probably start seeing visitor patterns in which you can draw conclusions around customer behavior. However, you cannot go solely off this data because it's usually muddled with a large number of potential and failed customers.

Instead, pair these metric-driven insights with more thorough market research: talking to your customers. I wrote an article on how to develop personas, so I won't dive into it in detail here, but this is arguably the most important piece to making #RCS content: you need to know who you are creating it for! Conduct surveys, hold focus groups, do in-depth interviews, etc.; the more info you can gather, the better you will be able to develop clear customer stories.

Keyword research

This is so, so important because if you want to earn those long-term traffic benefits, you need to make sure your content aligns with phrase people are actually using as they search. The key here though is to focus on keywords THROUGHOUT the funnel. This is the number one task I see all SEOs struggle with – they are hardwired to only focus on the conversion, bottom-of-the-funnel-terms. If you are planning for a content piece around "buy X online" and think it will go viral or is even worth outreach time, you are sorely mistaken.

The key here is to dive into research by asking yourself questions as if you were searching yourself. You need to understand the search intent to be epic at more top-of-funnel keyword research. This is a pretty good article on the topic, and there are plenty of tools out there to aid creativity. Also, Kieran Flanagan gets it. Just remember, a winning content strategy is aimed at getting new customers into the funnel at all levels; don't miss the opportunity to get people in at the top.

PRO TIP: Like above when brainstorming your brand message, when you get a pretty good keyword list, throw it into Wordle after cutting out the redundant terms to get a word cloud that shows the most dominantly searched topic for your funnel. This will help get the content creative juices flowing later.

Content audit

This is essentially taking inventory of all the content on your site so you can conduct a content gap analysis. I wrote an article on conducting a content audit, but the specifics might change a bit depending on your needs. For example, you might stick to just the quantitative parts (pulling metrics) and only assessing qualitatively the content that has gregariously inconsistent metrics (such as tons of traffic, high bounce rate).

Compile

Bring all the pieces together and define goals

I'll keep this part short and sweet. Once you have all the above pieces:

Create your customer personas
Address any outlandish technical woes you found during benchmark audit
Identify key areas on your site that you need to repurpose content based off findings from benchmark audit
Figure out what content you are missing based off your content gap analysis and keyword research
Prioritize keywords
Start prioritizing areas to focus your content
Clearly define measurable short and long-term goals

Create an editorial calendar

Once you are done prioritizing your areas to focus on, start brainstorming and filling in the editorial calendar (aka long-term project plan). Depending on factors like whether or not you have a blog, you might need to create a more detailed editorial calendar to keep your daily content creators focused. The key is to plan out all your content so you only have to focus on execution – this is the starting point of that flywheel.

Make sure you have the brand message, standards, and tracking in place

Remember the importance of a consistent user experience? You want to keep it consistent not only through the topics you cover but also the style in which you write. Remember that brand message you developed? All content should definitely align with that. Remember those personas? All of your content should definitely target one persona each.

In addition, make sure you are aligned with your brand/editorial standards that the wider company uses. If there isn't one, make one. This covers things like grammar, voice, on-page SEO considerations, blog theme style, etc.

PRO TIP: You also need governance standards – trust me, the bigger the organization, the crazier it can get. You want to clearly define dependencies early. This includes answers to questions like what is the editorial review workflow, who owns getting it through each stage, and what are the engagement standards?

Lastly, remember I mentioned during the benchmark audit to start thinking about how you can track goals? By now, you should have goals clearly defined. Make sure you implement any necessary backend tracking so you can start measuring and comparing to those benchmarks right away.

Execute

Easy – get 'er done. Start creating the content and launching.

Assess

After each larger content piece, you should be assessing how it did. However, you should also plan on assessing long term and conducting a content inventory of this new content (just like the content audit, just smaller scale and more outcomes focused). This is where you will really see the ROI of all your efforts. Check out this great article on measuring content marketing.

Step 6: Manage those expectations

Just like with everything else, you need to give due diligence to managing your boss' expectations. There are a ton of resources out there around effectively managing expectations, which takes practice. However, some key components include:

Be honest – content marketing is front loaded, long term, but smart business
Give clear deadlines – and meet them
Involve the right people from the start

Step 7: Demand greatness

You're almost done. One key component to a successful content marketing program is to ensure everyone is on board and the key decision makers are all in. If they aren't, it will cause unnecessary roadblocks down the road, like cross-team conflict and lack of required resources.

Thus, before beginning, you need to demand greatness. This may be a conversation for after the initial pitch, but it is important. You can't let your decision makers half-ass their commitment to the program; they are either all in, or you're not proceeding. In addition, you need to clearly and consistently voice that there is a right way to do content marketing. Remember, this isn't a plan for putting together a string of irrelevant linkbait pieces.

Step 8: Deliver

If you had to sell the idea in the first place – you better deliver. If you make mistakes, own up to them and devise a solution for how to fix them.

Whew! There is your eight-step program to selling and delivering a content marketing plan. Hopefully you walk away with your boss caring, but if not, keep at it and consider shipping a smaller version of it anyway. Sometimes you need to show those results to get buy in because it puts them in terms they definitely understand: their own business success.

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The President's Choice

Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, February 7, 2013

The President's Choice

Speaking in the State Dining Room at the White House, President Obama yesterday announced that he will nominate Sally Jewell to be the next Secretary of the Interior. For the past eight years, Ms. Jewell has been the CEO of REI, one of America's most successful and environmentally conscious retailers.

"She knows that there’s no contradiction between being good stewards of the land and our economic progress," said the President.

Learn more about President Obama's announcement.

President Barack Obama and Sally Jewell applaud outgoing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar after President Obama announced Jewell as his nominee to replace Salazar, in the State Dining Room of the White House, Feb. 6, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

AdWords Enhanced Campaigns: What You Need to Know

Posted: 07 Feb 2013 02:13 AM PST

Google has announced a major update to its AdWords advertising platform, with the introduction of 'enhanced campaigns'. According to the AdWords blog, it is meant to help advertisers manage ad campaigns more simply and smartly in today's multi-device world.

What are enhanced campaigns?

Enhanced campaigns let you manage bids across devices, location and time, allowing you to bid higher or lower based on the user's proximity to you, or the device that they're using.

You can also show the right ad, sitelink, app or extension based on user context and device capabilities. An example cited by Google is that "a national retailer with both physical locations and a website can show ads with click-to-call and location extensions for people searching on their smartphones, while showing an ad for their e-commerce website to people searching on a PC — all within a single campaign".

In addition to the above, advertisers will have access to detailed call reporting, with free Google forwarding numbers and conversion metrics for digital download campaigns.

The core changes that have been made in enhanced campaigns are as follows:

Enhanced campaigns give you control over the mobile bid by allowing you to set bids for mobile ads to a percentage of your default bids. They can range from -100% (your ads won't be shown to mobile users) to +300% of your default bids.
Advertisers do not have the option of splitting campaigns targeting desktop devices and tablet devices separately. Under enhanced campaigns, tablets and desktop devices are grouped as one device type with the following exceptions:
- Ads for app promotion will only appear on devices that the app operates on. For example, ads that promote your latest Android tablet app will only show on Android tablets.
- For "Display Network only" campaigns, advertisers will be able to target the device models where an ad can run.
- For display ads, certain formats (for example, 3rd party ad serving/HTML5) will have a "Touch Device" filter for ads.

Upgraded extensions

In addition to the above changes, enhanced campaigns let you use new features on four types of ad extensions: call extensions, app extensions, sitelink extensions and offer extensions. These new features let you:

Create an extension for your campaign or ad group, which means you’ll have more control over which ads your extensions are shown with.
Schedule start and end dates for your extension to run on specific days of week and times of day.
Specify sitelink extensions you want to give preference to on mobile.
Each extension will go through an ad approval process separately. This means that if you create four sitelinks, for example, and three are approved and one is disapproved, then the three approved sitelinks are still eligible to appear with your ads.
Edit each extension without resetting its performance statistics. In comparison, when you edit an extension in a non-enhanced campaign, AdWords creates a new extension and delete the edited one.
You'll receive performance data for each extension. For example, you’ll be able to see how many clicks or impressions an individual sitelink received. This means you’ll be able to better evaluate the performance of each extension.

Enhanced campaigns will roll out to advertisers as an option beginning in February 2013 and all campaigns will be upgraded by mid-2013. If you need assistance, contact the Google ads team.

If you're ready to upgrade, and you want a detailed guide on upgrading your account to Enhanced Campaigns, we recommend reading this step by step guide here.

Resources and further reading:

Read Google's announcement on their blog – click here.

Check out the 'AdWords enhanced campaigns' section on their site – click here.

Google AdWords Help Centre – click here.

Google AdWords on Google Plus – click here.

If you have any further queries, it would probably be useful to drop your questions here, at the AdWords Community forum.

Other media reports

Search Engine Land - The Big AdWords Update: Enhanced Campaigns Puts The Focus On Mobile.

Search Engine Watch - Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns: The Good, Bad & Uncool and Google AdWords New Enhanced Campaigns Connect Ads With Multi-Device Consumers.

Wordstream - AdWords Enhanced Campaigns: Google Announces Big Changes to Mobile Ad Campaign Management.

TechCrunch - Google Launches 'Enhanced Campaigns' To Manage Cross-Device Campaigns In AdWords.

Econsultancy - Google AdWords changes the game with enhanced campaigns.

Blogs

PPC Associates - The scoop on Enhanced Campaigns (good and bad).

SEER Interactive - First Reaction to AdWords Enhanced Campaigns.

Interestingly, there's even a petition demanding more options from Google. If you're unhappy with these changes, it might be worth signing this petition at Change.org. Also, Richard Fergie shares his thoughts on the update on this Google plus post here.

What are your thoughts on the new changes? Will they actually help the advertiser and the end user? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Seth's Blog : Scarcity and abundance in the digital age

Scarcity and abundance in the digital age

Thankfully, for many people in the privileged world, food scarcity is an ancestral memory. We don't have to scrounge over lunch so we'll have something to eat for dinner.

Sandy reminded millions of people in the Northeast what scarcity felt like. When gasoline shortages hit, the thought that there might be a day or more without gas in the tank led to six-hour lines and occasional fistfights. Many grow up with a sense of unlimited... go ahead and gun the engine or throw out the extra, there's more around the corner.

And yet, physical goods always manage to bump up against scarcity. There's always one more shiny new thing to buy, one more mini-storage unit to rent. The media amplifies our envy of physical goods with reality TV shows and commercials about that next thing you ought to buy, if you hurry, if you can borrow to do so.

The digital world doesn't offer similar scarcity. Two generations have grown up with the understanding that all music is available essentially for free, all the time. Our internet connections are largely unlimited--and when the limits do kick in, our entitlement comes out in the form of umbrage at the affront.

But economies are always based on scarcity (hence the term 'economize'). There is no market for humming, for example, because everyone has unlimited humming at their disposal at all times. So, in the abundant digital world, what's scarce? Where is the economy?

It's in connection.

Who trusts you? Who wants to hear from you? Who will collaborate and support and engage with you?

These are things that don't scale to infinity. These are precious resources.

When there was no power during Sandy, people had to decide (for the first time in a long time) if a song on their phone was worth listening to. Was it battery worthy? That's the analysis that informs the connection economy--is it worth interrupting this person? Is my next action going to build a relationship or take from it? Am I earning trust or burning trust?

In the connection economy, we reward art and innovation and things worth talking about. We seek out transparency and generosity and the long-term. Sure, there are still people who will profit in the short-run by burning the assets they've got, but as we get ever more connected, that's just not going to scale.

Connection and leadership and trust are going to get ever more valuable. Sure, go ahead and shake your head in agreement, but when you get back to work, are you busy working in the scarce universe or trying to build a place for yourself in the new one?

• Email to a friend •

miercuri, 6 februarie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Germany Rebounds but ... France Economic Implosion Accelerates; Record Decrease in Service Employment in Italy

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 03:47 PM PST

A quick look at economic data from Markit shows a recovery of sorts in Germany (it will not last) and a contraction in France at the steepest rate in four years. Meanwhile, Italy saw a PMI survey-record decrease in services employment in January.

France - Sharpest Contraction in Four Years

The Markit France Services PMI®, shows service sector business activity falls at sharpest rate since March 2009.

Key points:

Final Markit France Services Activity Index(1) at 43.6 (45.2 in December), 46-month low.

Final Markit France Composite Output Index(2) at 42.7 (44.6 in December), 46-month low.

Historical overview:

Summary:

French service providers signalled a further reduction in business activity during January. Moreover, the rate of contraction accelerated to the fastest since March 2009. Incoming new business fell at a slower pace, but there were accelerated declines in both backlogs and employment. Input prices rose further, but output charges decreased at a sharper rate.

The seasonally adjusted final Markit France Services Business Activity Index slipped to 43.6 in January from 45.2 in December. The latest reading was indicative of a marked rate of contraction that was the sharpest for almost four years.

The amount of new work placed with French service providers was down for a tenth successive month in January. Outstanding business in the French service sector decreased at a faster rate in January. The latest fall was the sharpest since August 2009.

Faced with spare capacity, French service providers cut employment further in January. The pace of job shedding quickened to the sharpest for just over three years. Manufacturers also signalled a faster decline in staffing levels during the latest survey period. Consequently, overall employment in the French private sector fell at the sharpest pace in over three years.

Input costs faced by French service providers continued to rise in the latest survey period, with panellists commenting on higher prices for fuel, raw materials and salaries. Prices charged by French service providers fell further, with the latest drop the steepest since November 2009.

Take another look at that chart of French GDP vs. the PMI. It should be easy to decipher where GDP is headed.

Spain Employment Drops at Accelerated Pace

The Markit Spain Services PMI® shows Slowest fall in activity for 19 months.

Key points:

Activity and new orders decline, but at slower rates

Cost inflation moderates

Further sharp fall in employment

Summary:

Although the Spanish service sector remained in contraction at the start of 2013, both activity and new business declined at slower rates during the month and confidence among firms with regards to the 12-month outlook improved. That said, employment continued to fall during January, and at an accelerated pace.

The headline seasonally adjusted Business Activity Index rose to 47.0 in January, from 44.3 in the previous month. The latest reading signalled a further solid reduction in activity during the month, although the rate of contraction was the weakest in the current 19-month sequence of decline.

New orders decreased at a solid pace in January, although the rate of decline eased to the slowest since August 2011. Backlogs of work decreased further in January as new orders fell. The rate of depletion in outstanding business remained marked, but slowed over the month to the weakest since August 2011.

In contrast to the trends in activity and new business, employment fell at a faster pace during the month. Moreover, the rate of job cuts was the sharpest for a year.

Germany Rebounds

The Markit Germany Services PMI® shows strongest rise in German service sector activity since June 2011.

Key points:

Final Germany Services Business Activity Index at 55.7 in January, up from 52.0 in December

Final Germany Composite Output Index at 54.4 in January, up from 50.3 in December

Summary:

January data pointed to resurgent growth across the German service sector, with business activity and new order volumes both rising at the fastest rate since June 2011. Adjusted for seasonal influences, the final Markit Germany Services Business Activity Index picked up from 52.0 in December to 55.7 in January. The index highlighted back-to-back monthly rises in business activity for the first time since May 2012.

Higher levels of service sector output were underpinned by stronger intakes of new business in January. Latest data pointed to a robust and accelerated rise in new work, which contrasted with the declines recorded throughout the eight months prior to December. The overall improvement in new business was driven by a solid rise in the Transport & Storage sector.

Increased service sector staffing levels were recorded during January, which marked a third rise in employment in the past four months. That said, the rate of job creation was only marginal and slightly weaker than the long-run survey average.

Italy - Record Decrease in Services Employment

The Markit Markit/ADACI Italy Services PMI® shows Survey-record decrease in services employment in January.

Key points:

Rate of job losses sharpens amid faster drop in business activity

Slower, albeit still marked, decrease in new work

Future expectations highest in ten months

Summary:

Italy's services workforce shrank at a survey-record pace in January, as business activity also decreased at an accelerated rate. New work levels fell more slowly, however, with firms increasing in confidence about growth in output over the coming year.

Business activity compared to one month ago fell from December's post of 45.6 to 43.9 in the first survey period of the year. This latest reading was the lowest since last July, and signalled that the sector's ongoing sequence of contraction extended into a twentieth straight month.

Reflecting the sustained (and accelerated) decrease in business activity, Italian service providers continued to slash staff numbers during January. Moreover, the decline in employment over the month was the most marked since data collection commenced over 15 years ago.

Behind the weakness in the sector was a further drop in the level of incoming new business, which panel members suggested was in part due to a loss of clients since December. Although slower than in the final two months of 2012, the rate of decline in new work was nevertheless still sharp in the context of historical data.

Increased cost burdens were mostly absorbed by businesses in January, with charges falling on average for the eighteenth month in a row amid increased competitive pressures.

Eurozone Divergence Hits Record High

The Markit Eurozone Composite PMI® shows (as do the above reports) national divergence hits record high.

Key Points:

Final Eurozone Composite Output Index: 48.6 (Flash 48.2, December 47.2)
Final Eurozone Services Business Activity Index: 48.6 (Flash 48.3, December 47.8)

Summary:

Although signalling a further deterioration in output of the Eurozone private sector economy, the rate of decline has now eased for three straight months. Both manufacturing production and service sector business activity declined at the slowest rates since last March, with similar modest rates of decline seen in each sector.

Inflows of new orders fell at the slowest pace since last February, dropping at reduced rates in both manufacturing and services. Goods producers continued to see the steeper rate of contraction.

A diverse picture was seen among the four largest euro members, with strong growth in Germany – output grew at the fastest rate for just over a year-and-a-half – contrasting with ongoing downturns in France, Italy and Spain. Output in France fell at the steepest rate of these four countries, registering the fastest monthly decline since March 2009 and causing the gap between the headline indices for France and Germany to increase to the widest in the survey history. The rate of decline also accelerated slightly in Italy, but eased to a 19-month low in Spain.

I will have detailed comments on the divergences between Germany, France, and Italy in a followup post. Here's a hint: This is not a good thing for the eurozone.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Boehner Opposes Delay in Spending Cuts Without Reforms; House Passes Bill Requiring Balanced Budget Plan From Obama by April 1; Anyone Believe Either Will Happen?

Posted: 06 Feb 2013 10:37 AM PST

Government Executive reports House passes balanced budget bill.

The House on Wednesday passed legislation that directs President Obama to submit a balanced budget plan to Congress this spring.

The Require a Plan Act (H.R. 444) compels Obama to submit a supplemental budget by April 1 if his fiscal 2014 budget blueprint does not include a plan to balance the government's books. That supplemental budget would outline a long-term deficit reduction strategy and timeline for balancing the budget. The chamber approved the legislation, shepherded by Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., and the GOP leadership, after debating it Wednesday morning.

The Democratic-controlled Senate is unlikely to take up the bill.

DBA (Dead Before Arrival)

Given the senate will not take the measure up, the bill is nothing more than political grandstanding. Besides, there is not much merit to the idea anyway.

Congress is in control of the budget, so it is up to Congress to present a plan to balance the budget (which, other than Senator Rand Paul, they will not do).

No Delay in Automatic Spending Cuts?

Here's one for the "I hope it's true, but I'll only believe it when I see it category" : Boehner Opposes Delay in Spending Cuts Without 'Reforms'.

House Speaker John Boehner said he will oppose any delay of $1.2 trillion in automatic U.S. spending reductions set to begin March 1 unless Congress replaces them with other "cuts and reforms."

"At some point, Washington has to deal with its spending problem," Boehner, an Ohio Republican, told reporters at a Washington news conference today. "I've watched them kick this can down the road for 22 years that I've been here. I've had enough of it. It's time to act."

The March 1 deadline marks another fiscal showdown between the administration and Republicans, who control the House of Representatives. Boehner and other Republicans have said for weeks that they expect the spending reductions to take effect, and that they won't accept any tax increase to prevent them.

"Deep, indiscriminate cuts to things like education and training, energy and national security will cost us jobs and slow down our recovery," Obama said at the White House yesterday in urging adoption of a short-term plan. "This doesn't have to happen."

Democrats who control the Senate debated alternatives for replacing the spending cuts during their retreat yesterday in Annapolis. They agreed they should pursue a measure to replace the cuts with a combination of new tax revenue and a different set of spending reductions, said a Senate Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private. The lawmakers didn't decide on details or how long the spending cuts should be delayed, the aide said.

Mish Point of View

Congress is squabbling over $20 billion here and $12 billion there. The deficit is over a trillion dollars a year for as far as the eye can see.

Reporters, Obama, and Democrats all talk as if there is "$1.2 trillion in automatic U.S. spending reductions" on the way. There isn't, and reporters ought to know better.

In fact, there are no cuts at all that I can see. Rather, there is a reduction in projected increases, and even those reductions are back-end loaded.

Even if the reductions represented true cuts, the cuts are spread out over 10 years, a pathetic $120 billion a year, when a total of a $1 trillion in cuts is needed to balance the budget.

Furthermore, the above math assumes the economy will grow as fast as the Congressional budget office assumes (and I assure you it won't).

The very best thing that could theoretically happen would be automatic "cuts" coupled with additional, meaningful "real" cuts. The odds of that combination are roughly zero percent.

The best one could possibly hope for in practice is for the automatic cuts to kick in. Unfortunately, Spoiled Brat Syndrome is highly likely to get in the way.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

joi, 7 februarie 2013

How to Get Your Boss to Care About Content Marketing

How to Get Your Boss to Care About Content Marketing

Step 1: Paint a story

Step 2: Match it with specific goals