miercuri, 7 martie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Concerns in Germany About Its Gold at the NY Fed, London, and Paris; German Gold Off Limits, Greek Gold Subject to Confiscation

Posted: 07 Mar 2012 01:02 PM PST

GoldCore has a pair of interesting articles on German concerns about its gold reserves. The most recent article regards gold held outside Germany.

Please consider Germany to Review Bundesbank Gold Reserves in Frankfurt, Paris, London and Federal Reserve Bank of New York
German lawmakers are to review Bundesbank controls of and management of Germany's gold reserves. Parliament's Budget Committee will assess how the central bank manages its inventory of Germany's gold bullion bars that are believed to be stored in Frankfurt, Paris, London and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, according to German newspaper Bild.

The German Federal Audit Office has criticised the Bundesbank's lax auditing and inventory controls regarding Germany's sizeable gold reserves – 3,396.3 tonnes of gold or some 73.7% of Germany's national foreign exchange reserves.

There is increasing nervousness amongst the German public, German politicians and indeed the Bundesbank itself regarding the gigantic risk on the balance sheet of Germany's central bank and this is leading some in Germany to voice concerns about the location and exact amount of Germany's gold reserves.

The eurozone's central bank system is massively imbalanced after the ECB's balance sheet surged to a record 3.02 trillion euros ($3.96 trillion) last week, 31% bigger than the German economy, after a second tranche of three-year loans.

The concern is that were the eurozone to collapse, Bundesbank's losses could be half a trillion euros - more than one-and-a-half times the size of the Germany's annual budget.

In that scenario, Germany's national patrimony of gold bullion reserves would be needed to support the currency – whether that be a new euro or a return to the Deutsche mark.

Jim Rickards has outlined possible plans by the Federal Reserve to commandeer Germany's and all foreign depositors of sovereign gold at the New York Federal Reserve in the event of a dollar and monetary crisis leading to intensified "currency wars" and the 'nuclear option' of a drastic upward revision of the price of gold and a return to a quasi gold standard is contemplated by embattled central banks to prevent debt deflation.
Currency Wars

It is difficult to separate fact from fantasy, and speculation from reality in such stories, but those wishing to learn more about Jim Rickards' ideas, might be interested in his book, "Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis"

In January, Eric King had an Interview with Jim Rickard on King World News.

Rickards' Biography

James G. Rickards is a writer, lawyer and economist with over 30 years experience in global capital markets. He is Senior Managing Director at Omnis, Inc., a consulting firm in McLean, VA and is the leading practitioner at the intersection of global capital markets and national security. His advice to clients from 2002 to 2006 included early warning of impending financial collapse, the rise of sovereign wealth funds, the decline of the dollar and the sharp rise in gold prices years in advance of these events. He has held senior executive positions at Citibank, Long-Term Capital Management and Caxton Associates. In 1998, he was the principal negotiator of the rescue of LTCM sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

German Gold Off Limits, Greek Gold Subject to Confiscation

The other article of note on GoldCore regarding German gold reserves was back in November when various proposals for Germany to backstop Greece and the EFSF with its gold surfaced.

Please see Germany to G20: German Gold "Must Remain Off Limits"; Italian Gold Sale Again Proposed in Germany for details.

Those proposals were shot down quickly. However, Germany did make Greek gold subject to confiscation in the latest bailout proposal by the Troika.

Greece is foolish to accept this parasitic offer of "help". Greek gold reserves may be the only thing that prevents all-out hyperinflation and complete destruction of currency when Greece returns to the drachma.

Please see Pact With the Devil Over Gold for further discussion as to sad state of affairs that may befall Greece.

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.

Mish Video on Capital Account, March 6: Netherlands, Greek Exit, Stock Valuations, War in Iran, Where to Put Your Money, Faber's Formula for Safety

Posted: 07 Mar 2012 11:46 AM PST

Once again it was a pleasure to be on Capital Account with Lauren Lyster yesterday afternoon. We discussed Europe, a Eurozone breakup, and general investment ideas proposed by Marc Faber, and my own thoughts on the same subject.



Link if video does not play: Netherlands looking for Euro Exit as Supercomputer prepares for Financial Judgment Day.

Normally I can see the same thing you see in the video above while the live TV show is recorded. This time, the video feed went down, so I could not see the charts they asked me to comment or, Lauren Lyster, or anything else. This was recorded (from my perspective) on audio cue only.

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.

LPS Home Price Index Shows U.S. Home Prices Accelerated Decline; Psychology Change and Demographics Suggests Bubble Mentality Shattered for Decades to Come

Posted: 07 Mar 2012 09:47 AM PST

U.S. home prices declines to a new low for the move and are back to a level last seen in September-October 2002 according to a LPS News Release.


The LPS HPI national average home price for transactions during December 2011 reached a price level not seen since September 2002. This is the sixth consecutive month of price decreases.

Price changes were largely consistent across the country during December, increasing in only 8.0 percent of the ZIP codes in the LPS HPI. Price changes were also consistent across price tiers with a uniform decline of 1.0 percent.



"Despite the broad picture of home price declines following the bubble, prices have not been consistently declining for all MSAs in the country. About one-fifth (89) of all the MSAs that LPS covers has seen average home prices increase since December 2008," commented Dosaj. "For 90 percent of these MSAs, prices rose only if the lowest-priced homes in their markets rose. This correlation did not necessarily hold for higher-priced homes in those areas. Unfortunately, the MSAs that have seen price increases since December 2008 are generally relatively small; Boston and Pittsburgh are exceptions."

About the LPS Home Price Index

The LPS HPI is one of the most complete and accurate home price sources available. It summarizes sales concluded during each month using a repeat sales analysis of home prices as of the transaction dates. Each month, the LPS HPI reports five price levels in each of more than 14,500 U.S. ZIP codes. Five price levels are also reported at the national and state levels and for 436 of the statistical areas defined by the White House Office of Management and Budget; including all 29 of the Metropolitan Divisions and their 11 MSA "parents." The five historical paths of price levels can be easily used to find price paths of intermediate prices. The LPS HPI also supplies REO discount rates for each ZIP code, which are used in the HPI calculations to correct for the impact on estimates of open-market prices that REO sale prices would have.

By combining property and loan data in its repeat sales analysis, the LPS HPI covers about 75 percent of single-family residential properties in the U.S. The innovative approach used to maximize geographical resolution enables the LPS HPI to meaningfully cover about 98 percent of these properties at the ZIP-code level.

The LPS HPI provides the financial industry with the most accurately timed home-price information available – detecting market changes sooner than other HPIs – with valuation accuracies competitive with AVMs in out-of-sample tests.
Bubble Mentality Shattered for Decades to Come

The key take-away is home prices still have not bottomed in most areas. Moreover, nothing stops a renewed decline in those 8% of areas that did not decline.

Also bear in mind that first chart shows nominal prices. Inflation adjusted prices have likely taken back the entire rise in prices, except of course for property taxes.

Once there is a bottom, and we are certainly closer to a bottom than a top, expect home prices to generally languish due to immense shadow inventory, anemic wage growth, anemic job growth, boomer downsize demographics, and most importantly psychology.

Housing prices were a once-in-a-multi-generational bubble, now gone bust. The mentality that "your home is your retirement" is dead for decades to come. A similar bust will happen in Canada, Australia, and China.

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.
Publicat de 1 la 23:35 0 comentarii

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

Spiders Invade Australian Town

Posted: 07 Mar 2012 03:59 PM PST

Thousands of spiders have escaped the floodwaters inundating the town of Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, Australia, by moving to higher ground and building massive networks of interconnected webs over raised sticks and bushes. They have covered entire fields with snow-like coverings. Meanwhile, the floodwaters show no sign of subsiding from the town, declared a disaster area: 9000 people have been evacuated.

Farm Covered With Spider Webs



Trees Covered With Spider Webs



Dog Walking under the Spider Webs


Via: NYpost

Apple Unveils New iPad with 4G LTE

Posted: 07 Mar 2012 12:41 PM PST



Apple rolled out the latest version of the iPad Wednesday with a Retina Display, quad-core processor, 4G LTE, and an improved camera. . The gadget was not called the iPad 3 or iPad HD. Instead, Apple kept it simple with "new iPad." The lack of a new name could cause confusion for buyers, particularly since the older model, the "iPad 2," will still be sold.

So what does this new iPad bring to the tablet scene? Check it out:

* 4G LTE
* 9.7 inch retina display with 2048 x 1536 pixels
* 5-megapixel iSight camera
* 1080p video recording
* 1.4 pounds and 9.4mm thick
* A5x quad-core graphics
* 44% greater saturation
* 10 hour battery life (9 hours on 4G)

Pricing:

* Wi-Fi only models: $499 for 16 GB, $599 for 32 GB and $699 for 64 GB
* 4G models: $629 for 16 GB, $729 for 32 GB and $829 for 64 GB

On sale March 16.
Via: mashable

The Death of Manners [Infographic]

Posted: 07 Mar 2012 12:33 PM PST



Please. Thank you. No, sir. Yes, ma'am. If these words sound foreign to you, it's because we are in the middle of a rude awakening: manners, it seems, are dead in today's society—and it's not going unnoticed. In fact, 76% of adults believe Americans are ruder and less civilized than they were 20 or 30 years ago.

From the road to the sky, people are seeing more rudeness, hearing more rudeness, and speaking more rudeness. The question is: why? In the below infographic by Schools.com, we share shocking stats about just how rude today's society is—and why old-fashioned manners have become extinct.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

More Infographics.
Publicat de 1 la 19:41 0 comentarii

Energy Update: An All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy

The White House Wednesday, March 7, 2012
 

Energy Update: An All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy

President Barack Obama tours the University of Miami Industrial Assessment Center in Miami, Florida, Feb. 23, 2012. The IAC is where students learn how to become industrial energy-efficiency experts as they help small to mid-sized manufacturers reduce their energy costs. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy).

In his February 23rd speech at the University of Miami, President Obama addressed the energy issue on everyone's minds – gas prices. He detailed his all-of-the-above energy strategy that expands production of America's energy resources, like oil and natural gas; promotes energy efficiency to save consumers and businesses money; and supports a wide variety of clean energy technologies.

In Miami, President Obama announced new programs that will provide $30 million for natural gas vehicle fuel research and $14 million for algal transportation fuel research, funding that has the potential to decrease our dependency on foreign oil and increase energy security. His remarks followed a tour of the University's Industrial Assessment Center (IAC), which trains students to become energy-efficiency experts who can identify areas to improve productivity, reduce waste, and save energy at small- and medium-sized manufacturers. The IAC program was started by the DOE in 1976, and there are now 24 across the country.

The following week, President Obama travelled to Nashua, New Hampshire, to tour Nashua Community College's automotive technology lab, where students learn how to work with alternative fuels and emerging automotive technologies. His remarks following the tour reiterated the all-of-the-above energy strategy being implemented by the Obama Administration.

To further emphasize the Administration's energy agenda and fact-check the current gas price discussion, Dan Pfeiffer posted this blog, noting that:

The truth is that there is no silver bullet to address rising gas prices in the short term, but there are steps we can take to ensure the American people don't fall victim to skyrocketing gas prices over the long term. That's why since taking office the President has been focused on a sustained, "all-of-the-above" approach to developing new domestic energy sources, expanding oil and gas production, and reducing our reliance on foreign oil, most notably through the historic fuel economy standards the President has established, which will nearly double the efficiency of the vehicles we drive and save families $1.7 trillion at the pump.

These actions represent just a snapshot of the Administration's efforts to promote American-made energy. For more information, check out the highlights below, read President Obama's speech at the University of Miami, take a look at the blog entry on the Clean Energy Standard, and learn about how our dependence on foreign oil is declining.

Events

President Obama highlights Blueprint for American Energy at University of Miami
During his visit to Florida, President Obama highlighted the University of Miami's Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) as a smart and important piece of the administration's "all-of-the-above" approach to domestic energy sources. The President spoke about his blueprint for a new era of American Energy and discussed concerns about rising fuel costs. Learn more about the President's visit to the IAC in this blog post and listen to his full remarks here.

President Obama tours Advanced Vehicle Lab Facility at Nashua Community College
On March 1st, the President toured the Nashua Community College automotive lab, which is part of a consortium of community colleges across the country that have received funding from the Department of Energy (DOE) to develop specialized training related to alternative fuels and advanced vehicle technologies. During the tour, the President viewed a Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) truckfrom the City of Nashua, which partners with the automotive program for the service and repair of their expanding CNG fleet. Check out the President's remarks for the event.

Secretary Chu visits site of America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Three Decades
On Feb. 15th, Secretary Chu visited the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Waynesboro, Georgia, highlighting the steps the Obama Administration is taking to encourage America's nuclear power industry, including $10 million in new funding for research and development in advanced nuclear reactor and fuel cycle technologies. Read Secretary Chu's comments.

ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit held from Feb. 27th to Feb. 29th
ARPA-E held the third annual Energy Innovation Summit from Feb. 27th to Feb. 29th, bringing together energy leaders from academia, business, and government. The event allowed the leaders to explore and discuss emerging technology innovation in areas of zero carbon power, power management, electrical storage, bioenergy, and more. Take a look at the presentations.

Secretary Clinton and Administrator Jackson launch Short-Lived Climate Forcers Initiative
On Feb. 16th, Secretary Clinton, with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, launched the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, a global effort to combat climate change by reducing short-lived pollutants such as methane, soot, and hydroflourocarbons. The United States has committed $12 million in new funding for the effort, contributing to the $15 million provided to the foundation from the other members, including Bangladesh, Canada, Mexico, Sweden, Ghana, and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Watch the event.

News

DOE announces funding for the newest Energy Innovation Hub
On Feb. 7th, Secretary Chu announced plans to launch a new Energy Innovation Hub for advanced research on batteries and energy storage with an investment of up to $120 million over five years. The hub, which will be funded at up to $20 million in fiscal year 2012, will focus on accelerating research and development of electrochemical energy storage for transportation and the electric grid.

DOE announces the winning companies of the America's Next Top Energy Innovator Challenge
On Feb. 10th, Secretary Chu announced the three winning startup companies – based on a public vote and an expert review – out of the 14 participating in the "America's Next Top Energy Innovator" challenge.

US and Mexico sign agreement easing the way for resource development in the Gulf of Mexico
On Feb. 20th, representatives for the US and Mexico signed an agreement on the exploration and development of oil and natural gas reservoirs along the United States' and Mexico's maritime boundary in the Gulf of Mexico. This Transboundary Agreement removes uncertainties regarding development of transboundary resources in the resource-rich Gulf of Mexico. As a result of this Agreement, nearly 1.5 million acres of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf will now be made more accessible for exploration and production activities.

President Obama signs Presidential Memo to increase bio-based product purchases
On Feb. 21st, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum directing the Federal Government to take decisive steps to dramatically increase the purchase of biobased products over the next two years, which will create jobs and drive innovation where biobased products are grown and manufactured. The Memorandum will also result in a 50 percent increase in the number of new products that are designated as biobased. Biobased products include items like paints, soaps and detergents and are developed from farm grown plants, rather than chemicals or petroleum bases. The biobased products sector marries the two most important economic engines for rural America: agriculture and manufacturing. Read more about the BioPreferred program.

Energy Star leaders achieve President Obama's energy efficiency goals for buildings
On Feb. 22nd, the EPA announced that nearly half of the organizations recognized as Energy Star Leaders have improved the energy efficiency of their building portfolios by 20 percent or more. Last year, President Obama announced a nationwide call to action to improve the energy performance in buildings across the nation by 20 percent by 2020. EPA's Energy Star program has helped these 90 leading organizations achieve the President's goal by providing them with a proven energy management strategy, which includes a focus on ongoing performance measurement and whole-building improvement. Energy Star Leaders have cumulatively saved more than $150 million on utility bills and prevented greenhouse gas emissions equal to the electricity use of nearly 95,000 homes.

Army unveils world's first military fleet of fuel cell vehicles
On Feb. 22nd, U.S. Army, Pacific, unveiled a fleet of 16 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that the military services in Hawaii are testing in an effort to research efficient, clean and renewable energy sources, and reduce the U.S. military's dependence on petroleum.

EPA announces recipients of inaugural Climate Leadership Awards
On Feb. 29th, the EPA, the Association of Climate Change Officers (ACCO), the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) (formerly the Pew Center on Global Climate Change), and The Climate Registry (TCR) named the winners of the inaugural Climate Leadership Awards. The awards recognize corporate, organizational, and individual leadership in addressing climate change and reducing carbon pollution. From setting and exceeding aggressive emissions reduction goals to reducing the emissions associated with shipping goods, these organizations are improving efficiency, identifying energy and cost saving opportunities, and reducing pollution.

ARPA-E announces $150 million in funding for breakthrough energy technologies
On Feb. 29th, Dr. Arun Majumdar, Director of ARPA-E, closed the Summit by announcing that on Friday, March 2, ARPA-E will release a $150 million funding opportunity open to all breakthrough energy technologies. The Open Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) will support transformational and disruptive high-impact energy R&D projects related to renewable power, bioenergy, transportation, the electrical grid, and building efficiency, among other technology areas.

DOE announces ambitious new initiative to deploy US offshore wind projects
On March 1st, Secretary Chu announced the start of an ambitious initiative to capture the potential of wind energy off American coasts. As part of a planned six-year $180 million initiative, an initial $20 million will be available this year as the first step in supporting up to four innovative offshore wind energy installations across the United States.

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Publicat de 1 la 10:04 0 comentarii

Influencer Marketing - What it is, and Why YOU Need to be Doing it

Influencer Marketing - What it is, and Why YOU Need to be Doing it

Influencer Marketing - What it is, and Why YOU Need to be Doing it

Posted: 06 Mar 2012 01:09 PM PST

Posted by Eric Enge

Content marketing is an increasingly hot topic these days. More and more people are starting to realize the potent role that high quality content plays in creating visibility for your brand on the Internet. Seth Godin was quotes a few years back as saying "content marketing is the only marketing left".

One of the biggest reasons for this is the intense competition that exists on the web today for nearly any commercial offering. For example, you can see this if you do a search on something like intitle:"lathe operation", as shown here:

Search Results for a Niche Product

Even this very niche oriented term generates over 7,000 results. Surely the end user only wants to consider a very few options. As I always like to say: "Google only needs 4 results, so how are you going to be one of the 4?" Superior content is one key component of this.

But, superior content is not enough. Unless the world gets to know about it your superior content will get you nowhere. You have to have a way to get the word out. This is where "Influencer Marketing" comes into play.

By definition, influencers reach a lot of people (often more than you do), and they have the ability to influence people's opinions.

Influencer Marketing Defined

Influencer Marketing is the name we give to the process of developing relationships with influential people that can lead to their assisting you in creating visibility for your product or service. This type of marketing depends on your having something great to offer your potential customers, and the audience of the influencer, and it also depends on your building a great relationship with the influencer as well.

In today's social web, there are a three major ways an influencer can have a big impact on your business:

  1. They can write a blog post / article about you.
  2. They can share information about you in their social media accounts.
  3. They can ask you, or permit you, to guest post on their site.
  4. Or, any combination of, or all of, the above.

Of course, they can also Like or +1 your content as well, which has a lesser impact, but is still potentially interesting. To recap the benefits of the influencer, they often have a larger audience than yours, or at the very least, a different audience:

Influencers have Different and Large audiences

However, the benefit is much larger than that. Let's say you had 100 followers in your Twitter account that shared a piece of content, and this results in 20,000 people seeing what they shared. This may result in 20 additional shares and 10 links.

Now consider the same audience being reached by one influencer. Those 20,000 connections will be much more responsive to the shared content because of the trust they have in the opinions of the influencer, and this much result in 100 additional shares and 50 links.

People more likely to trust influencer recommendations

That's a pretty hefty advantage. Further, the search engines actively calculate author authority, so they will also place more weight on the vote of the influencer.

Leveraging the Influencer

As a fan of content marketing, chances are that you already have your own blog, and your own social media accounts. You probably already use these in tandem, and make sure that you follow similar content themes, and any time you create a new blog post you share it on your social accounts. When you do this correctly, you set yourself up for the following type of virtuous cycle:

Social Media and Blogs Reinforce each other

Doing this effectively is a great start. You can grow your audience over time because people who are already connected with you will share your stuff, and this does reach their audiences.

However, this works much more effectively if you can goose the process in two ways:

  1. Develop relationships with major influencers so they are subscribing to your blog or following/friending/circling you in social media accounts. This is made possible by developing enough of a relationship with the influencer and having a history of creating content of interest to them. Here the payoff occurs when they choose to link to it or share it on a social network.
  2. You actively reach out to influencers and get published directly in front of their audiences. One example of this is writing guest posts for them and getting published in their blog. This also depends on having a credible history so they will consider your article. The payoff here is quite direct, and happens as soon as the content publishes.

Both of these strategies lead to the influencer acting as an amplifier for your voice.

Building the Relationship

This is not really so different than making new friends when you move to a new neighborhood. When you go to that first neighborhood party, you don't walk around asking everyone there to give you $20. You ruin your place in the neighborhood by doing that. Doesn't work in the neighborhood, and it doesn't work in building relationships anywhere else either.

The process is really quite straightforward, as shown here:

Create Trust through Active Contribution

The major elements are:

  1. Start interacting with them. Treat it like you are developing a new friendship. When it comes to business, focus on providing value to them. If they have a question, seek to answer it. Don't spend any time telling them what value you bring, just deliver it to them.
  2. On an ongoing basis, show that you will be active in sharing their stuff to your audience. Even if your audience is much smaller, the give and take attitude will be noticed.
  3. Actively help out others. When you focus all of your attention on one person to the exclusion of others it starts to feel a bit freaky. Give value to others on a regular basis. Publish great stuff. Share other people's good stuff. Tip: if you discover great content from a little known author, the influencer you are trying to build your relationship with will be more interested than ever!

As for interacting, the more personal the better. I built many of my relationships in the search industry by going to conferences and sitting in the front row when people I wanted to meet were speaking, and then being the first person up to speak to them, when the session was over. Face to face contact like that is awesome.

The following diagram tries to illustrate which types of relationship building methods are the most personal, and therefore carry the most value:

More Personalized Interactions Build Relationships Faster

It's also important to prioritize. Which people are worth the most effort? How do you decide? You might fly to a conference to go meet some critical person face to face. Others you might simply interact with on social media accounts.

Note that it certainly is possible to build meaningful relationships with people through social media only, but nothing beats face to face.

Opportunities are also important. Your first opportunity to make a big impression on someone might be to respond to a blog post, a tweet, or a Facebook update. Your target may ask for help with something, as Rand did in this November 2006 blog post:

Rand Offered up a Linkbait Idea

How did that one turn out you ask? Somebody stepped up and took it on:

Oh right, it was me. The analytics report published on August 27, 2007. Point is, jumping on opportunities like this makes a big impression, and can really accelerate the building of a relationship.

What are the chances someone will share or link?

Once you have developed a relationship, you still need to do the right things to get someone to share or link to your stuff. No one is going to share everything you do, because some of the stuff you do is not that good or not that relevant (don't be offended, no one is great all the time).

Here is a formula I have developed for the probability of someone sharing or linking to your content:

Chances Someone will Link to or Share Your Content

Let's look at the major elements:

  1. Relevance - if it is not relevant to them, they are not going to share it, even if it's great! - if it is not relevant to them, they are not going to share it, even if it's great!
  2. Uniqueness - Seth Godin likes to tell us to be remarkable. If what you create is not exceptional, no one is going to care, and no one is going to share.
  3. Quality Content - This goes without saying. Crap content will bring crap results and no amount of relationship building will change that.
  4. Trust in the Author - This is where the relationship comes into play. You can create great content, but if you are not yet trusted, your share rate will be far lower.
  5. Trust in Referring Sources - How someone learns about a piece of content is a factor in the share rate as well. If an authority tells you about it, you are more likely to respond by passing it on.
  6. Visibility - People can't share what they don't see. For example, if you create a great blog post and you tweet it once, a small percentage of your followers will ever see it. Tweets are here now and gone 5 minutes later. Even the most addicted tweetaholic misses some of their tweet stream.
  7. Impressions - Impressions is an interesting one. This is classic marketing in action. Marketing experts used to say that it took an average of 7 impressions per sale. Of course, all impressions are not created equal:
Multiple Impressions Increases Share Chances

As you can see the reach of influencers is long. Not only can they get you links, they can give you shares that result in other people giving you links.

Summary

Learning to work the very human dynamics of people on the Internet is a critical marketing activity. This is not new. It has always been valuable to build relationships with influential people. The Internet simply gives us new mechanisms for doing that.

Communication and relationship building is easier than it has ever been. You can easily get started with social media or blog conversations, and that's great. Don't overlook the power of the old fashioned way though. More personal interactions still have the biggest impact.

Creating fantastic content is a must, so make that a key part of your plan. Then, supplement that by building the right relationships so you can get the world to know about all the cool stuff you are doing.

One last tip, add value to the audience at each step of the way. Even when you are creating content for your own blog, people are only going to share it because it helps others. Give, give, and give, and always be helping others. People will notice, and that's a good thing.

For those of you who are interested in more, drop me a line at info at stonetemple.com and I will send you our white paper on identifying influencers.

Eric is active on Twitter (@stonetemple) and Google+ (+Eric Enge).


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