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miercuri, 8 august 2012

An Administration-Wide Response to the Drought

Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, August 8, 2012

An Administration-Wide Response to the Drought

Throughout much of the country, communities are struggling with one of the worst droughts to strike the U.S. in decades. And President Obama has directed the federal government -- from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to the Army Corps of Engineers -- to provide assistance to farmers, ranchers, and small businesses wrestling with this crisis.

The President has described this as an "all-hands-on-deck response." Yesterday, he said, "We're going to continue to solicit ideas from state and local organizations, faith-based organizations, not-for-profit groups, the private sector, and most of all, the farmers and ranchers that are directly impacted, to find additional ways that we can help -- because when there’s a disaster like this, everybody needs to pull together."

Learn more about the administration's all-hands-on-deck response.

President Barack Obama meets with the White House Rural Council to discuss ongoing efforts in response to the drought, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Aug. 7, 2012. Among those attending with the President were, from left, Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Karen Mills, Administrator of the Small Business Administration. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

How and What to Write for Twitter

Posted: 07 Aug 2012 05:13 AM PDT

It’s only 140 characters, so it should be easy – right? Well, not necessarily. Twitter’s ‘microblogging’ approach has become well established in the last few years, and many companies are finding it an excellent way to keep in touch with customers, while reducing the administrative burden of doing so. After all, typing 140 characters can be much faster than typing out a full email – as long as you know what you’re saying.

A New Format

Twitter isn’t just about saying the same things in fewer characters – it differs from everyday language in some very specific ways. Back in 2009, Oxford University Press looked at almost 1.5 million random tweets, and found some interesting distinctions between their content and that of text in general usage. For instance, unsurprisingly, each sentence in a tweet is less than half as long as an ordinary sentence, at 10.69 words compared to a ‘normal’ average of 22.09 words.

Each tweet contains an average of 1.4 sentences, or 14.98 words in total, and verbs – ‘going’, ‘getting’, ‘watching’ and ‘eating’ – are particularly popular in the top 100 words used on Twitter. All of this means you need to think carefully about what you type – every character counts, and you’re working in a whole new language, even if the words it uses are familiar to you.

Learning Brevity

Learn to be brief.

That doesn’t mean using text-speak or missing out articles (‘a’, ‘the’), conjunctions (‘and’, ‘but’) and modifiers (such as adverbs). Rather, you should learn to order your thoughts, pick out the key point, and write it as plainly as possible. Don’t just use fewer words – use shorter words – and trim the unnecessary text completely.

It helps to be assertive, as adding doubt to a sentence usually increases the character count too. And if you’re hoping to be retweeted, leave a good 20 characters or so free for retweeters to add their own comments if they wish.

Twit Tricks

Make sure you know about Twitter – how it works, what features you can include in a tweet, and so on. Know that, if you place a person’s @username at the beginning of a tweet, it becomes a ‘mention’ and will usually only be seen by that person, and by anyone who follows both of you. For publicly visible tweets that include a mention, make sure the username is later in the tweet, or add a full stop before the @ sign (be careful with this though, as some users don’t want other people’s mentions littering their timeline).

Spend some time familiarising yourself with hashtags, how they work, what happens when you click on one, and where they usually go in a tweet (almost always at the end, but there are some exceptions to this). The more you learn the tricks and techniques of Twitter, the more you can use them in your own tweets, increasing your arsenal of options when it comes to getting your message across in the fewest characters possible.

Be Yourself

There are few things more annoying to regular Twitter users than dry, bland, corporate accounts using what is meant to be a social network as a marketing tool. You should try to avoid this approach – instead, make engaging with your customers your priority, and let that boost your sales naturally. Let your customers guide you in terms of what to write – run searches for your company name or industry area, and start replying to people in positive, helpful terms.

Often, Twitter works better as a customer service platform than for direct sales, so if you find it better for customer retention than for acquiring new customers, recognise the value of this and make sure your tweets reflect it on your account’s timeline.

Image credit: Slava Baranskyi

Seth's Blog : 2 new articles

What's your average speed?

My car informs me that I've been averaging 26 mph over the last month. Much lower than I would have guessed.

It's low not because we don't drive on the highway, it's low because there's also a lot of time spent sitting still in traffic and at lights.

When we remember our journey and our work, the highlights are the fast parts, the thrilling moments, the peaks (and the valleys). It seems, though, that we spend most of our time in preparation, or circling, or considering. Probably worth investing some effort into our performance there, and enjoying those parts as well.

• Email to a friend •

Analogies, metaphors and your problem

Innovation is often the act of taking something that worked over there and using it over here.

Your problem, whatever it might be, probably has a solution somewhere in the world. And your organization is probably stuck because they don't know what to do, and more important, don't have the guts to do it.

An example in the real world that's precisely about your particular problem, then, is fabulous because it not only shows you what to do, it gives you the confidence to do it.

Louis CK had the same problem of many comedians--too much time, not enough money. His pay-on-the-honor-system internet special was a huge success, and of course, dozens of comedians (ostensibly creative risk takers) rushed to follow in his precise footsteps.

What were they waiting for? After all, Radiohead did a similar thing years before Louis did. Of course, they make music and he makes comedy.

"Oh, that's a fine example of how a company in the hockey stick industry grew, but we make lacrosse sticks. Do you have any case studies of how a lacrosse stick company has succeeded?"

If you're waiting for a proven case study, directly on point, you're going to wait too long.

The skill, it seems, is having the desire and the guts to seek out examples by analogy instead of insisting on being a follower of someone with guts.

• Email to a friend •

marți, 7 august 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Birth-Death Model in Spain: 391,000 companies closed, 334,500 New Businesses Launched; Spain Lost 57,000 Companies in 2011

Posted: 07 Aug 2012 11:25 AM PDT

Inquiring minds are looking at the birth-death model of Spanish businesses.

Statistics show Spain Lost 57,000 Companies in 2011

The number of active enterprises decreased 1.6% in 2011 and stood at 3,199,616. This is the fourth consecutive year of decline according to the latest update of the Central Companies Directory (CCD) released by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

During 2011 more companies ceased their activities (391,270) than were launched (334,516). The net effect is a loss of 56,754 businesses.

By size, measured in number of employees, Spanish firms are characterized by their small size. 55.2% of companies (1,764,987) did not employ any workers in 2011. In addition, 867,550 companies (27.1%) had one or two employees, while those hired 20 or more workers accounted for only 4.7% of businesses.

The fewest casualties were in education (2682), the utilities (1,478), recreation and entertainment (859), and sector programming and computer consulting (828).

By contrast, construction of buildings had 13,206 net company closures, followed by specialized construction (10,170) and architectural and engineering (7343).

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

Italy Industrial Production Plunges 8.2% YoY, GDP Declines 2.5% Annualized; Italy to Pay Civil Servants 80% of Their Salary to Do Nothing

Posted: 07 Aug 2012 07:35 AM PDT

News in the eurozone's third largest economy is once again on the dismal side. Italian Industrial Production Plunged more than expected as did GDP.

Italian industrial production declined more than forecast in June, signaling the euro region's third-biggest economy probably contracted for a fourth quarter. Economists forecast a decline of 1 percent, according to the median of 16 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Production fell 8.2 percent from a year ago on a workday-adjusted basis.

Italian business confidence declined last month more than economists forecast as executives became more concerned that the country's economic recession will deepen in coming months.

Fiat SpA (F) temporarily stopped new investments in Italy as the European debt crisis caused sales in the region to plunge. Italian car sales have plummeted 20 percent through July, with deliveries this year on track to slip to the lowest level since 1979.

Italy to Pay Civil Servants 80% of Their Salary to Do Nothing

To plug the rising deficit gap, Prime Minister Mario Monti approved Deep Cuts in National Spending (a needed measure but not how they went about it), and also hike the VAT by 2% (economic insanity in a deepening recession).

Italy's government has agreed to cut spending by 26bn euros (£21bn, $32bn) over the next three years to plug the gap between spending and income.

Staffing levels will be assessed by October. Some workers will be sent home for two years on 80% of their salary before losing their jobs or being retired.

The package means the country will not now need to bring in an unpopular increase of 2% in value added tax (VAT) and will be able to funnel 2bn euros to the Emilia Romagna region, which was hit by two earthquakes in May.

The cost of servicing Italy's debt increased by 16% to 18.7bn euros, up from 16.2bn euros in the first quarter of 2011.

Italy Recession Lingers for Year

The official estimate for decline in GDP this year was -1.2% (revised lower from about half that). Prepare for another downward revision as Italy's Recession Pain Deepens.

Italy shrank further into recession in the second quarter for a 2.5 percent yearly decline, data showed on Tuesday, threatening attempts by Mario Monti's technocrat government to control a debt crisis that is undermining the whole euro zone.

A 0.7 percent fall in gross domestic product, only slightly better than the first quarter's 0.8 percent decline, means the Group of Seven economy has now been contracting for at least a year, according to figures from government agency ISTAT.

This will weaken tax revenues and hit jobs and consumer spending, a vicious circle which makes it harder for Monti, who is aiming to cut the budget deficit to 0.1 percent of GDP in 2014, to meet his public finance goals.

A Reuters survey of analysts last month forecast that the budget deficit this year would be 2.3 percent of GDP, compared with Monti's 1.7 percent target, and 1.3 percent in 2013, when the government forecasts a 0.5 percent shortfall.

ISTAT gave no numerical breakdown of GDP components with its preliminary estimate, saying only that activity contracted in agriculture, industry and services.

ISTAT said so-called "acquired growth" at the end of the first quarter stood at -1.9 percent.

This means that if GDP posts flat quarterly readings in the final two quarters of 2012, over the whole year it will be down 1.9 percent from the previous year.

Expect Debt-to-GDP to Rise

Italy's debt-to-GDP ratio is 123%. Given rising borrowing costs and shrinking GDP, that number is going to go up, perhaps substantially.

Eurosceptic Government in 2013

What Italy needs is work rule reform, pension reform, a dramatically smaller government, and lower taxes. As with Spain, work rule and pension reform is very slow in coming but tax hikes have been plentiful, exactly the wrong approach.

A eurosceptic government may be on the way next year as Mario Monti will step down in April.

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

miercuri, 8 august 2012

An Administration-Wide Response to the Drought

How and What to Write for Twitter

How and What to Write for Twitter

Seth's Blog : 2 new articles

What's your average speed?

Analogies, metaphors and your problem

More Recent Articles

marți, 7 august 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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miercuri, 8 august 2012

More Recent Articles

marți, 7 august 2012

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Arhivă blog

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