joi, 19 septembrie 2013

From Zero to a Million: 20 Lessons for Starting an Internet Marketing Agency

From Zero to a Million: 20 Lessons for Starting an Internet Marketing Agency


From Zero to a Million: 20 Lessons for Starting an Internet Marketing Agency

Posted: 18 Sep 2013 04:17 PM PDT

Posted by NiftyMarketing

Mike's disclaimer: This is not a post about how awesome I am, or how there is only one way to build an internet marketing agency. It's a combination of stories and thoughts about what I have gone through building Nifty Marketing.

When I started in 2009 there was very little information online about starting, running, or growing an Internet Marketing Agency. The ones that did exist were from superstars that charged a billion dollars an hour. I am not a superstar. My company started in Burley, Idaho. Here's a rap about my town I wrote.

My hope with this post is that a few of you who are out there hustling will benefit from doing some of the things that I did, and most of the things that I didn't.

Start smart

I was in my final semester at BYU-Idaho and had accepted a job to be the chief marketing officer of Rove Pest Control after spending my summers during college as a door-to-door salesman for them. I thought my future was set. But, due to some changes at Rove I knew that I was going to have to have to find a different career. My wife was pregnant, we had just started building a house in Burley, and I had a full load of credits. My two favorite classes were a basic HTML class (that used Don't Make Me Think as the textbook) and a web business class for which we had to start an online business and make/lose money. Naturally, as any true Idahoan would do, I started HugeIdahoPotato.com and sold potatoes bigger than heads to people across the country. The website sucks; I'm pretty sure I got it penalized within a year of creating it. But I fell in love with internet marketing in the process of building that site, and I keep it up as a remembrance of where I started.

Lesson 1: Start with a reason that's more than money

After making around $100 on the site I knew that I had found my career choice. I also knew that I was going to live in Burley, Idaho, and that I wanted to bring non-agricultural jobs to the town. I can't tell you how sad it is for many of my friends who grew up in a town they knew they couldn't move back to if they wanted to make a decent living. I wanted to change that. I still do. It's one of the main driving points for me. Of course you need to make money, but if that is the only thing you are looking for as a business owner then eventually you will fail. You will make decisions that aren't for your clients, or for your staff, or for the community; you will get short-term gains and create a long term failure.

Lesson 2: Start by interning/working at an agency

This is possibly my biggest regret of my career. I started Nifty Marketing with literally no experience at all. I had no friends in the industry, I had no idea what I was doing, how SEO companies were structured, or even how to do anything beyond what I had learned in college. I dove into blogs, but at that time I didn't know who to trust and read some really awful advice. I was not a good SEO. I was not a good PPC advertiser. I could have saved myself at least two years if I had worked for someone who could have pointed me in the right direction first.

Lesson 3: Focus on something specific

Business wasn't going very well. I had a few clients, and I decided I needed some help, so I signed up for SEOBook. There was a feedback forum, so I posted my super-awful website for Nifty Marketing. I didn't even own the domain at the time. (I had TheNiftyWay.com, and it wasn't until laterâ€"by some good grace of the heavensâ€"that the person who owned NiftyMarketing.com let it go, and I bought it for $7.99 with a GoDaddy code.) When I posted my site on SEOBook, I got brutal feedback. People told me it sucked. But someone in the forum said something that changed my life forever.

He said something like:

"You offer SEO, Web Design, and PPC. That is exactly the same as 100,000s of companies around the world, who by the looks of things are better than you at it. What can you be the best at? What can you become known for?"

The comment hit me like a ton of bricks. The few clients I had at the time were really small businesses in Idaho, and I had been spending a lot of time in Google Maps. I realized that I enjoyed that aspect of marketing, and was getting clients ranked. So, I redesigned my site, changed my messaging, and decided to focus. I became a local SEO.

Lesson 4: Start with networking, not cold calls

I remember quite vividly trying to use my door-to-door sales skills to try and cold call businesses to get work. I grabbed a phone book and called people with big ads and no websites because I figured that they had budget. What I found was that I was caller #5 for that week offering the same thing as everyone else. Worst of all, everyone "knew a guy who knows a guy who could do it" for them. So, I put away the phonebook and started talking to my friends and asking if they knew people who needed websites and marketing. That's when leads started coming in. Then, I wrote an email to David Mihm on August 7, 2009, and asked him how I could become an expert in the local search field. This was his response:

The best advice I can give you is to optimize the local listings of a bunch of clients. The more you "play" in the space, the better you'll get at teasing out the parts of the algorithm that really matter.

Beyond that, subscribe to these blogs:

http://www.blumenthals.com/blog
http://www.localsearchnews.net
http://gesterling.wordpress.com
http://www.searchinfluence.com/blog
http://solaswebdesign.net/wordpress
http://www.smallbusinesssem.com
http://www.hyperlocalblogger.com
http://www.sixthmanmarketing.com/blog
http://www.expand2web.com/blog
http://www.devbasu.com
http://www.martijnbeijk.com
http://www.seoverflow.com/blog

I immediately dove into every one of these sites and learned everything I possibly could about local search. I took notes, and then I started testing and haven't ever stopped.

While doing that, I realized the most valuable networking lesson I ever learned was to simply share. I started blogging, which led to guest posts on SEJ, and I attended a few small conferences, one of which was the first ever LocalU. I offered to help any way that I could. Fast forward to 2013, and I am a LocalU Faculty Member and speak at conferences year-round. It isn't because I am special. It's because I am passionate about the space and I am willing to share information and help as much as I can. Almost every client we have at Nifty Marketing comes as a referral from clients, friends, blog posts, webinars, and conferences. Not one client came from a cold call. I will forever be in debt to David Mihm and the rest of the local search community for teaching me such a valuable lesson.

Lesson 5: It's good to have funding, it's better to have partners, and it's best to bootstrap alone

From the first year of my business until now I have had opportunities to get funding and take on partners. I have never done it. I am not saying that it's bad to do either of these things, but if you take a close look at our industry you will see that a lot of funded companies and partnerships don't make it.

I remember very clearly going to dinner with some guys from Blueglass in my first year and thinking, "Man, I wish I could be part of that company." And while I respect the founders a great deal they took a massive risk and it didn't workout. Many of them had successful businesses before then, and while the idea of a Mega Company that can make tens or hundreds of millions is alluring, the chance of you being successful and earning more on your own is better. Sure, extremely fast growth and funding means you come to market quicker. But by growing at the slow rate of 2x per year (which isn't that slow), I have been able to continually innovate and offer better services without taking do-or-die risks.

I am very glad I bootstrapped. I own 100% of my company. I can make 100% of the decisions about its future. I don't have to pay a silent partner a large chunk that makes cash flow an issue. I don't have to make short-term decisions for a board that hurts the long-term vision I have. And I make enough that I stopped caring about the money around year three; slow and steady wins the prize.

I know that there are many successful companies that haven't gone the way of solo bootstrapping. At the top of the partnership list for me is Avalaunch Media. But in order to do what they have done you have get big enough to support multiple owners and find amazing partners that can all pull in the same direction. With around 50% of marriages failing, how many partnerships in business actually work out? They are definitely not the norm, and I respect them immensely for it.

Grow smarter

Lesson 6: You are in the business of providing a service, not SEO

I remember becoming a good SEO. I also remember getting amazing results for clients and still getting complaints from them. I thought they were the problem. Then I realized I was. I thought back to the days of pest control and remember the company training techs to take their time at customers' houses. You see, you could service a house in 15 minutes or even less if you hustled. But if you did that, customers would complain that the work was sloppy and it shouldn't cost so much. Instead, you should take your time, get down on your hands and knees, and look around. Take notes and pace yourself. Then, customers felt like the service was worth it. They weren't paying for the product. They could buy the product at Home Depot. They were paying for the service.

Comparing this to Internet marketing, I knew I had done a great job gaining more traffic, but the clients had no idea what was being done. They didn't understand what they were paying for and subsequently thought that I was unnecessary. Most small businesses don't care or understand what a title tag, meta description, an exact match, a naked URL, duplicate content, etc is. So telling them you changed/created these in a report without actually showing them physical pictures is pointless.

We started creating custom reports with tons of arrows and screenshots explaining the work that we were doing. We starting giving them a complete list of the links and citations we were building. We stopped sending over a raw list of traffic counts and started providing analysis of the traffic that websites were getting, and our clients stopped complaining that they didn't know what we were doing. Clear communication is what the business of service is all about.

Lesson 7: Read The E-myth

I was doing everything myself. Everything. Then, I tried to have some people on oDesk help me. My wife even did some of the citation work. The only problem was all the information was in my head. I had very little of the processes and information organized, and I didn't have time to focus on organization when I had so much client work, sales, and bookkeeping to do. That is what The E-myth is about. It talks about the difference between being a technician and being a business owner. It talks about the need to build your business like a franchise with training manuals, easy to follow processes, and the need to not burn yourself or your first few employees out.

When I read this book, I changed my business, and I have never looked back. We were able to start hiring people locally instead of having contractors on oDesk, and we centralized information and grew. While we aren't perfect at systems and delegation, we could have never grown without improvement in those areas. It's still the case.

Lesson 8: Raise your prices; raise your minimums

When I was the only employee in my company, doing everything myself, I could still make good margins and be the lowest price around. I took clients at $200-$500 per month, built some websites, and put tons of hours in, and as long as I could get to where I had $40-50k per year in revenue, I had a decent wage for Burley. That was my first goal. I could be flexible with what I made and could literally have no cost other than a couple of tools and my personal time. Employees, though, cost more than time. Employees cost money. And regardless of how much money you bring in, an employee's wage is constant. If I wanted employees that were good, there way no way I could maintain my pricing and minimums, providing the level of service that was needed. We had to raise prices. We changed our minimum to $1,500 and determined that we would do work for no less than $100 per hour. The types of clients got better, and we had enough revenue to bring in talented people who increased the quality of our work. I know that many SEO firms/companies can charge a lot more than $100 per hour, and we do as well, depending on the type of projectâ€"but for the average small/medium business this is a price that they can afford and you can do good work for.

Lesson 9: Learn when to pass on bad clients

When I was hungry I took whatever client walked through the door. I took abuse. Emails that called me names, clients who would not listen to my advice and would then blame me when things went wrong. Clients that paid three or four months late but would complain when I didn't answer my phone on the first ring.

I kept them because I felt like I had to have the revenue. What I didn't realize is that if I had taken the time I was putting into their project and put it elsewhere, I could have replaced the revenue plus a lot more and had a much better quality of life.

If you are not happy, then no amount of money will make up for it, so fire your bad clients, pass on the red flags, and figure something else out. Remember Lesson 1.

Retain

Lesson 10: Be trustworthy

The fastest way to lose clients and employees is to lie to them. If you want both to stick with you through thick and thin, then there has to be 100% trust. I personally think that the more transparent you can be all around the more you will be trusted.

One of our core values at Nifty is to be "willingly naked." Not literally, but figuratively. We have to be willing to share what we learn, take feedback, tell our clients the brutal truth even if we know they don't want to hear it. But you have to be willing to take feedback yourself.

Lesson 11: Reward your team

I am not going to pretend to be good at this. I know I should say "thank you" about a thousand times more than I do. Instead, I find myself more apt to criticize when things go poorly. It's something I am hoping to constantly get better at. The team at Nifty is amazing and they take a ton of stress, responsibility, and problems on themselves and do an awesome job.

Here's a few things that I have done at times:

  • Thank-you gift cards
  • Revenue sharing
  • Company lunches
  • Pop-Tarts (long story)
  • Big Christmas parties
  • The best office in Burley, Idaho (complete with a moose, a monster, bricks, and staked firewood)

Lesson 12: Auto-renew your contracts

When it comes to smaller businesses, I have found that month-to-month contracts that auto-renew and are paid by automatic credit card last longer than contracts that are 3, 6, or 12 months with renegotiations required. Bottom line, people don't like re-signing up for a committed amount of time. Especially small business owners who believe the word "contract" is a cuss word.

Change

Lesson 13: Never stop learning new things

There are many search companies that fall behind. It's because they don't change. They keep blasting away at the same spammy links, the same old school designs, and the same tactics from 5-10 years ago, and they wonder why a massive amount of their client portfolio drops in rankings.

I personally start every morning by reading blogs, and I have for years. The staff spends the first part of every day doing the same thing, and we pass around articles that make an impression. It keeps us constantly thinking about innovation and learning from our great community. Another way to keep up is to constantly pitch to speak at conferences. You have deadlines around which you can build tests and case studies, and you will do everything you possibly can to be up on the latest news in the industry because you never know what questions the attendees might ask you.

Lesson 14: Request feedback

The best way to find issues in your organization is to request feedback from your staff and clients. The other day, we had a client that paused his account. This is usually a soft way to end the relationship. But, upon asking for his feedback, he said he loved working with his project manager and the work we had done, saying he would be back on track in 2 months. Then he mentioned he was hoping for faster results on a side project we were doing for him. Whose fault was it that he felt that way? It was ours. I took the opportunity to clear up the miscommunication and he was very grateful for it. If we hadn't asked for the feedback, we might not have ever heard from him again and he definitely would have had the issue on his mind.

Lesson 15: Be pleased, but never satisfied

Nobody is perfect. Which means there is always room for improvement. There is always more than can be done, and there is always a better way. The day you stop growing and say that "it's good enough" is the day that a competitor is going to come in and do more that you are willing to.

We have redone our proposal process multiple times. We haven't ever been bad at it, but every time we go back to the drawing boards there is something more that we find that helps to bring in better clients. Right now we are testing out a live walk-through of the proposal, as compared to just sending over a PDF and asking for questions.

SAVE

Lesson 16: Content isn't king, cash is

If you want to run a successful business of any type, then ensure that you aren't running cash-poor. I have followed Dave Ramsey's personal financial guidelines for my business and find that it's very conservative. While it might limit the speed at which we grow, it eliminates a massive amount of risk.

Dave recommends having a personal emergency fund (and in this case business fund) of 3-6 months of expenses on hand at all times. That means that if you are going to pay yourself (your only start-up expense) $3,000 per month, then you should have between $9,000-$18,000 in cash before starting up. At $65,000 per month of expenses, you should have between $195,000-$390,000 in reserves. That's a lot of cash on hand for a small business, but if clients unexpectedly drop, or major industry changes necessitate a completely new model, you will have the cash to make good decisions and not desperate ones. I started out around the six-month reserve when I was smaller, and as time has gone by and we have a more diversified revenue stream, I am comfortable between 3-4 months of cash on hand.

Lesson 17: Pay yourself modestly, and get out of personal debt

I pay myself $4,000 per month. The rest goes to growing the business, savings, and other ventures. Now, you need to realize that I live in Burley, Idaho, and it's literally hard to spend money here. I could pay myself $2,000 if it wasn't for Amazon Prime. But, at a very young age, my wife and I decided that we would have no personal debt and worked really hard to pay off our house and buy cars with cash.

I know many financial experts will tell you that leveraging your home is the best financing you have but let me tell you that the freedom of owning your house outright means that you can make better business decisions over the course of your life. You wont have the "what if I lose my family's home" question circling around in the back of your mind and you can actually take bigger risks, and never make business financial decisions based off of your personal financial needs.

Lesson 18: Don't sign up for every Internet marketing tool under the sun

Tool subscriptions are reoccurring costs. It's very easy to spend thousands of dollars a month on different tools you don't have the cash to do that when you start up. When I first started, I only used Raven Tools, but quickly added a list of 10 to 15 tools like Moz. Occasionally, we have to go through the list of tools and find out what we are actually using and get rid of the rest. I'm not going to pretend there is one tool to rule them all, because everyone has very different needs. The key is to quickly identify which tools work for you and which don't, and to stop paying monthly for the ones that don't.

Lesson 19: Diversify

If you get to where you own a successful guest-blogging company, or a successful SEO company, or a successful content-marketing company, or whatever niche you decide to work in, then realize the problem with a niche is that you are putting all of your eggs in one basket. If that basket disappears, you're screwed.

Try going after more than one niche. We opened a division focused on SEO and website development for lawyers called NiftyLaw.com. I also owned a newspaper in my home town, and am working on some new projects so that I am not 100% reliant on Internet marketing revenue.

Lesson 20: Find a few things to help save yourself

Owning a business is hard work. It's mentally draining, and it's very hard to shut down your mind after constantly thinking. There will be times where you need to save yourself from burning out, so ensure that you have hobbies that can get your mind completely off of work. I golf, mountain bike, and travel with my family. I also don't do any work on Sundays at all.

Overall

I have loved starting an Internet marketing company. It's been hard; I'm going gray and I'm only 29.

I know that you might not agree with certain things I think are important, and that's fine. The best part about business is that it's a "choose your own adventure" storybook with no "right" answers.

Please add your own questions and advice in the comments. I hope that this is a post that can have more insight in the comments than the article itself, and I look forward to learning from all of you!


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How to Use Tumblr for SEO and Social Media Marketing

Posted: 18 Sep 2013 04:52 AM PDT

Posted by TakeshiYoung

An introduction to Tumblr

Tumblr Logo

There are so many social media platforms out there today that online marketers have to be concerned about when promoting content online, that it can be easy to overlook some of the important ones.

Tumblr is one of those social networks which is often overlooked, but which has tremendous potential for SEO and social media marketing. I myself was slow to adopt Tumblr as a social media platform, but once I started using it I became hooked by its power and simplicity. Hopefully by the end of this post, you'll feel the same.

In this post today I will be covering 1) What Tumblr is and how it works, 2) The benefits of Tumblr compared to other social networks, and 3) Actionable advice on how you can use Tumblr for online marketing, including specific content ideas.

Sounds good? Let's get started.

Why should I care about Tumblr?

Before we get too far, let me provide some stats about Tumblr which should help put things into perspective:

  • 130.5 million blogs on Tumblr, as of August 2013
  • 28th highest traffic site on the web according to Comscore
  • 300 million unique monthly visitors according to Yahoo
  • 50% of Tumblr users are under the age of 25
  • 53.5% of Tumblr visitors are female

As you can see, the numbers are massive. There are now over 130 million Tumblr blogs (known as "tumblrogs"), which makes Tumblr the largest hosted blog platform on the web, compared to the 70 million blogs hosted on Wordpress.com. It has 300 million monthly visitors, basically 15% of all Internet users. And it has a demographic that is unique in that 50% of the users are under 25, many of whom are teenagers (whereas teens are reportedly ditching Facebook in droves).

Big brands have taken notice of this too. In May, Yahoo purchased Tumblr for $1.1 billion (the largest purchase of a consumer Internet company since Google bought YouTube), and many of the world's largest brands already have a presence on Tumblr.

Big Brands on Tumblr

Clearly, if you're not on Tumblr by now, you're falling behind the curve.

What is Tumblr?

So what the heck is this Tumblr thing anyway? It can be hard to describe Tumblr because it combines the functionality of many different kinds of sites.

Tumblr = Facebook + Wordpress

The way I like to think of Tumblr is as a cross between Wordpress and Facebook-- Tumblr has all the blogging functionality of a blog platform such as Wordpress, but also includes all the features of a social site such as hashtags, following, sharing, and liking. Tumblr is similar to Pinterest in many ways, except instead of multiple boards you have a single blog.

So although Tumblr is one of the most popular blogging (or microblogging) platforms on the web, it goes beyond just being a blog and allows users to share and like each other's content, follow other Tumblr blogs, and discover new content through hashtags. It's a blog platform with built-in social functionality and incredible viral potential.

The benefits of Tumblr

Ok, so now we have a better idea of what Tumblr is and why it's important, but what are the benefits of Tumblr compared to other social networks and blogging platforms? There are 5 key benefits:

1) Dofollow links

First the biggie. Links from Tumblr, unlike most other social networks are dofollow. Tumblr is at its core a blogging platform, and you have full control of how your tumblrog appears, including using dofollow links on your site.

Where things get interesting is when you consider the social aspect of Tumblr. Tumblr has social sharing functionality (called "reblogging" in Tumblr parlance) built right in, and if you have a popular post it will be reposted to many other tumblrogs.

The thing is that each of these reblogs is a dofollow backlink to your original post! That means if you have a post that is reblogged 100 times, your tumblr blog just got 100 dofollow backlinks! For even more fun, you can include a link within the post itself. By doing so, both your original post on Tumblr, and the site linked to within the post will receive the backlinks.

Tumblr Backlinks

Just imagine if every time your content got shared on Facebook, all those shares were dofollow backlinks. Wouldn't that be nice? With Tumblr, this is the case. The same is also true with Google+ (Pinterest also recently dofollowed their links), but Tumblr has a more active user community and it's much easier to have your content go viral on Tumblr.

Of course, you will want to be careful about what kind of anchor text you're using in this post-Penguin world, but if you're looking for some easy, dofollow backlinks, Tumblr is the place to get them.

2) Great content discovery

Another great benefit of Tumblr is that it has a great content discovery system built into it, thanks to its use of hashtags. If you're ever looking for great images or memes, try searching Tumblr for the hashtag, and you'll find some good material.

The great thing about Tumblr is that people actually use hashtags for content discovery (unlike, say, Facebook). This means that by using relevant and popular tags, it's super easy for your content to get discovered on Tumblr, even if you don't have many followers.

Tumblr Hashtags

I have literally created brand new tumblrogs from scratch, and received dozens of reblogs for my content, even though I had zero followers. And remember, on Tumblr reblogs are dofollow backlinks. This is definitely not the case on social networks such as Facebook, where your content probably isn't going to get a lot of love unless you already have a large number of followers.

3) Content testing ground

Another use for Tumblr is as a content testing ground. If you do a lot of social media marketing, you probably have tons of memes and images that you are considering posting to your Facebook page, or you if you create your own memes you may have different variations of a meme that you might want to test.

One of the ways that I like to use Tumblr is as a testing ground for new content that I've created. Tumblr's dashboard is chronological like Twitter vs the more curated approach of Facebook's news feed, and the upshot of this is that you can post a lot more content at once to Tumblr than you would want to on Facebook. Tumblr fans are more forgiving of less-than-outstanding content because they can simply scroll past it, similar to how users browse Pinterest.

Testing Content on Tumblr

This makes Tumblr a great place to post a lot of content to find which pieces perform the best. Then you can take the most popular pieces and repost them to your other social media profiles such as Facebook. And all the content you produce on Tumblr has a chance of being discovered later, thanks to the use of hashtags.

4) Microsites

Tumblr is the most popular microblogging platforms on the planet, which also makes it an ideal platform for setting up microsites. You won't get the same amount of flexibility as you would with say a self-hosted Wordpress blog, but tumblrogs are quick to set up, simple to manage, and free. And if you want to switch from using a tumblr.com subdomain to your own domain name, it's easy to switch to a domain name you own in the Tumblr settings.

Using Tumblr for microsites is a great way to build up a collection of web properties with decent PageRank that you can then point back to your main site. If you consistently post high quality content, it's easy to get these tumblrogs to PR2 - PR4 within a few months.

Microsites are also a great option if your main brand is super serious, and you don't necessarily want to associate it with memes and other silly content that does well on Tumblr.

5) Branding

Branding Last, but certainly not least, Tumblr is another tool in your arsenal to promote your brand online. In addition to the other major social sites such as Facebook and Twitter, Tumblr provides another opportunity for you to establish your web presence. It's another chance for your to engage with fans, build relationships with potential customers, and get your brand name out there, especially if you want to target a younger demographic. As the online marketer Pat Flynn always says, the best marketing strategy online is to Be Everywhere.

Content ideas for Tumblr

Hopefully by now you're convinced of what a great opportunity Tumblr is for link building, content marketing, and branding. You may have even gone ahead and created your own tumblrog. Good work. But what kind of content does well on Tumblr?

Tumblr, like most other social sites, is a visual medium. That means that captivating images and pictures will do better on Tumblr than long form text. If you're already conducting successful social media campaigns on sites such as Facebook and Google+, then reusing the same content you're posting there is a good strategy.

If you want some specific example of content to post on Tumblr, here are 4 types of content that I've found perform extremely well Tumblr:

1) Memes

SEO Ryan Gosling

Memes are my favorite type of content to promote on social media. Memes are just the ideal type of content for people to consume and share via social media channels, and they're viral almost by definition. You can have a lot of success just by curating funny memes related to your niche that you find across the web, but the greatest potential lies in creating your own. If you want to try your hand at making memes with some serious viral potential, check out this post I wrote for the Moz blog.

2) Photos/illustrations

As with Pinterest and Facebook, compelling images are some of the most popular pieces of content on Tumblr. This is especially true since there is a huge userbase of teenagers with attention spans that are shorter than even most Twitter addicts.

Creating great photos isn't easy, but it's not impossible to do if you have a access to a DSLR. Even if your camera equipment isn't up to snuff, apps such as Instagram can take your ordinary photos and give them a vintage feel that appeals to the teen and hipster demographic.

Moz Rogerbot

Drawings and illustrations also do very well on Tumblr, and if you have an in-house graphic design team, definitely leverage that. Even if you don't have graphical talent, you can go to sites such as Fiverr, Elance, and DeviantArt to get custom artwork created for you that's specific to your niche.

If all else fails, you can just curate other people's photos and artwork and see some results, but always be mindful of any copyright issues, and give credit where credit is due.

3) Quotes

Quotes are an amazingly easy type of content to create that surprisingly few marketers are taking advantage of. Quotes are great because they're simple to create, even if you don't even have any graphical talent. Just take an inspirational quote, put it over an attractive image (or even just a plain background), and you suddenly have a piece of content that can go viral not just on Tumblr, but on sites like Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+ as well. It's super easy.

Matt Cutts Quote

4) Animated GIFs

Like Google+, Tumblr allows you to use animated GIFs in your posts. These are incredibly popular with Tumblr users.

Now, creating animated GIFs is beyond my abilities, but it's really simple to just take existing animated GIFs, add a clever caption to them, and post them on your tumblrog. Instant backlinks, guaranteed.

When my client asks me why their rankings fluctuate every day, I’m like…

I dunno

For a great example of this, check out the This Advertising Life Tumblr. It's an incredibly funny site, and has a PageRank of 5 to boot. You can easily find great animated GIFs to use by searching Tumblr for tags such as "animated GIF" or simply "GIF". There are also sites such as ForGIFS which contain nothing but funny animated GIFs.

Wrap-up

Tumblr is one of the largest social media and blogging platforms in the world, yet it is often ignored by online marketers. Hopefully this post has showed you why you should add Tumblr to your marketing mix, as well as provided you with concrete content ideas you can use to drive success on your tumblrog.

I have built dozens of Tumblr blogs over the past year, and I can guarantee you that if you use the content ideas above, and post on a consistent basis, you will be able to build up a large following on Tumblr and build some strong backlinks to your sites, as well as promote your content and build your brand online.

If you have any questions, feel free to post in the comments or hit me up on Twitter. You can also check out more of my ramblings on my blog. This post was adapted from a presentation I delivered at SMX Toronto.


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Seth's Blog : The failure of the second ask

 

The failure of the second ask

Asking the first time might be brave. Asking again (more forecefully) after you get a no is selfish and dumb.

I think it's the artlessness of it that so offends me.

Someone pitches an idea, tries to make a sale, invites a prospect to participate... and the prospect takes the time to politely decline.

The response of the pushy amateur? Either to deny that the objection is true (or important) or to merely repeat the offer, this time with more volume or urgency.

"I can't afford it."

    "Yes you can!"

"It's too far for me to travel."

    "Vietnam isn't that far away!"

"No, I won't be able to."

    "But it's really important!"

The thing is, gainsaying an objection never works. Perhaps someone will make a new decision based on new information. But the only new information you're presenting with your pushiness is information about how selfish you are.

       

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miercuri, 18 septembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Purposeful Class Warfare? Breathing Room for Rupee? Sheer Stupidity? Ridiculous Comment of the Day

Posted: 18 Sep 2013 10:54 PM PDT

In response to "Bubbles Ben to be Replaced by Calamity Janet", reader "Robert" responded via email "Try thinking of the Fed not as headed by inept persons, but as run by persons whose deliberate intention is to bring about the sort of destruction it is in fact bringing about."

I replied "Don't buy it. I am not a believer in such conspiracy theories. But I am a big fan of Occam's Razor: The simplest workable theory is most likely to be correct. In this case, the simple theory is: They are economic idiots."

Breathing Room for Emerging Markets

Some people think the Fed's actions are purposeful, but in a favorable sense. For example, please consider Bernanke Buys Time for Brazil to India as Rupee Leads Rally
The Federal Reserve's surprise decision to refrain from scaling back monetary stimulus provided a respite to investors in emerging markets, where currencies are in the midst of their worst rout in two years.

"It gives everyone some breathing time," Denise Simon, an emerging-market fixed income manager at Lazard Asset Management, which oversees $147 billion, said by phone from New York. "It certainly takes some of the immediate pressure off the more vulnerable countries. Emerging markets will continue to correct on the upside as the result."

The rupee strengthened 2.6 percent against the dollar at 12:18 p.m. in Hong Kong and Thailand's baht appreciated 2.1 percent, heading for the biggest gain in six years. The Malaysian ringgit increased 2.3 percent and one-month non-deliverable forwards on the rupiah rose 2.2 percent. The Jakarta Composite index jumped 4.4 percent and India's S&P BSE Sensex Index added 2.9 percent.

The Brazilian real and Turkish lira jumped more than 2 percent yesterday, while the Indian rupee led gains in Asia today, after the Fed said it will keep buying $85 billion of debt a month. Indonesia's Jakarta Composite Index advanced the most since October 2011 and JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s index for dollar-denominated bonds in developing nations posted the biggest rally in almost three months.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke held back from paring monetary stimulus to support economic growth, soothing investors who had dumped emerging-market assets since May as higher U.S. interest rates sparked capital flight. A group of the 20 most traded emerging-market currencies lost 7.4 percent between May and August, the most in two years.

The decision came at a time when economic data from China to Brazil are showing signs of improvement and helps countries most dependent on foreign financing such as Brazil and India, said Simon.

Real, Rand Strengthen

The rupee strengthened 2.6 percent against the dollar at 12:18 p.m. in Hong Kong and Thailand's baht appreciated 2.1 percent, heading for the biggest gain in six years. The Malaysian ringgit increased 2.3 percent and one-month non-deliverable forwards on the rupiah rose 2.2 percent. The Jakarta Composite index jumped 4.4 percent and India's S&P BSE Sensex Index added 2.9 percent.

The real led the rally in developing-nation currencies yesterday, gaining 3.2 percent to 2.1860 per dollar.

Strategists at Citigroup Inc. yesterday advised clients to buy the Mexican peso and bet 10-year interest-rate swaps will fall, saying the Fed's decision boosts investor risk appetite.

"This has created a much better environment for risky assets," Paul Denoon, who oversees $25 billion as the head of emerging-market debt at AllianceBernstein Holding LP (AB), said in a phone interview from New York. "It's important because one of the concerns for the market is the large external financing needs for developing countries. This creates stability."
Ridiculous Comment of the Day

The ridiculous comment of the day goes to Paul Denoon who says "This creates stability."

Really? The Fed buying $85 billion in assets a month creates stability? Denoon must live in Bizarro World along with Ben Bernanke and the rest of the Fed.

In Fed Bizarro World; One-Sided Risk Assessment; The $64 Trillion Question I asked "How in the hell is the Fed going to normalize interest rates with a recovery in full bloom, with interest rates three or four full percentages points below normal?"

Some people prefer short-term stability even when the outcome is long-term disaster.

The Sooner the Better

A more sensible comment comes from Brazilian state development bank president Luciano Coutinho who expects currency volatility to increase because the Fed didn't start tapering.

"For us, the sooner it starts and ends, the better. I would rather see it start today and have some date to finish because then we will feel the whole impact. The worst thing is the uncertainty."

Let's see how long this rally in emerging market currencies lasts. I suspect not long.

Common Sense Comment of the Day

Looking for non-conspiratorial common sense? Then please consider this statement I received by email from Pater Tenebrarum at the Acting Man Blog:

"I am deeply convinced that they really have no friggin idea what they are doing. And eventually we will all find out they had no idea."

Bingo.

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

"Bubbles Ben to be Replaced by Calamity Janet"

Posted: 18 Sep 2013 03:06 PM PDT

The quote of the day goes to David Stockman. In a Bloomberg video, Stockman claims (and I agree) "Bubbles Ben to be Replaced by Calamity Janet".



Partial Transcript
They are stumbling into the endgame of this whole misbegotten spree of QE, ZIRP, and massive manipulation of financial markets.

We are going to basically replace bubbles Ben with calamity Janet.

She has no clue how to wean wall street from the pathetic addiction to this massive stimulus, easy money that has been going on for the entire century.

I backed that up because she has spent her whole life as a monetary bureaucrat in the Fed system, and has no clue what honest capital and genuine free markets are about.

[She] believes the entire system has to be run by a monetary politburo, turning all the dials and short-term interest rates and yield curves and the entire financial system.

She is part of group-think, part of the Keynesian consensus that 12 people are running a $16 trillion economy.

They are delusional.
Link if video does not play: Yellen Has No Clue How To Run the Fed

Stockman

David Stockman was Ronald Reagan's Budget director.

Stockman is also the author of The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America and the #1 New York Times bestseller The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed.


For more on Stockman, please see ...

End of U.S. Imperium—Finally!?

Heart of the War-Mongering Hypocrisy

Stockman nails the heart of US war-mongering hypocrisy with this question [on Syria]:

"After having rained napalm, white phosphorous, bunker busters, drone missiles, and the most violent machinery of conventional warfare ever assembled upon millions of innocent Vietnamese, Cambodians, Serbs, Somalis, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Yemeni, Libyans, and countless more, Washington now presupposes to be in the moral-sanctions business?"

There is much more in the article. Please take a look.

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

Fed Bizarro World; One-Sided Risk Assessment; The $64 Trillion Question

Posted: 18 Sep 2013 01:08 PM PDT

The reaction to the FOMC no tapering news was a simple one "Party on dudes, in anything and everything, and in a big way."

For some intraday 5-minute charts of the US dollar, gold, the HUI, treasuries, and the S&P 500 stock market index please see So, It's No Tapering After All; Reaction is Telling.

How long this party lingers on will be interesting to see. Even though most market observers felt there would be some sort of minimal taper announcement today, is it really that relevant the Fed decided to keep asset purchases at $85 billion rather than $75 billion or $65 billion?

The one-day reaction says yes. And that is another indication of just how addicted to stimulus this market is. It is also an indication of something bigger (which possibly explains the reaction).

Until proven otherwise, the Fed is on a QE-to-Eternity mission. It wants to drive down interest rates until it believes in a recovery.

The $64 Trillion Question

The $64 trillion dollar question ($64 million buys nothing, and $64 Billion hardly anything at all) is "Then what?".

How in the hell is the Fed going to normalize interest rates with a recovery in full bloom, with interest rates three or four full percentages points below normal?

I believe the answer is simple "It isn't". And if that is indeed the case, what was that huge selloff in gold all about in the first place?

10 Burning Questions for Bernanke

Bloomberg writer Caroline Baum has Ten Burning Questions for Bernanke (written ahead of the announcement). The first of which is a series of questions similar to what I asked above.
I generally spend Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's post-meeting press conference hoping one of the reporters will ask what for me are the burning questions of the day. Since they never do, and in all likelihood won't later today, I'm going to ask them myself. Here goes.

1. Chairman Bernanke, the Fed's economic projections continue to put long-run full employment at 5 percent to 6 percent. The neutral funds rate -- the rate that will keep the economy growing at its noninflationary potential in perpetuity -- is thought to be about 4 percent. The Federal Open Market Committee has pledged not to raise the funds rate at least until the unemployment rate hits 6.5 percent, and there has been talk of lowering that threshold, perhaps to take the sting out of tapering.

Assuming those parameters are accurate, the funds rate will be 400 basis points below neutral at a time when the economy is approaching full employment. Do you see any risks associated with that strategy? Do you think forward guidance can minimize what are sure to be significant dislocations in financial markets?
The above emphasis on strategy risk is mine

One-Sided Risk Assessment

Risks? Does the Fed Ever See Risks?

Actually the Fed sees risks all the time. But it's all one-sided. The Fed never sees risk in tightening too little. The Fed always sees risks in tightening too much.

The result is a series of bubbles of ever-increasing amplitude.

Today, the Fed is worried about a pissy taper in reducing asset purchases from $85 billion to $75 billion.

Fed Bizarro World

In Fed Bizarro World, $75 billion in asset purchases monthly is "too tight". Let that sink in.

Reflections on Gold

And somehow that "tight" policy was supposed to be bad for gold.

Well, it was, for a while. And perhaps it will remain so. But perhaps not, and that is how I am betting.

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

So, It's No Tapering After All; Reaction is Telling

Posted: 18 Sep 2013 12:19 PM PDT

Party on Dudes. The Fed says "No Tapering". Here is a snip from the FOMC Statement.
The Committee recognizes that inflation persistently below its 2 percent objective could pose risks to economic performance, but it anticipates that inflation will move back toward its objective over the medium term.

Taking into account the extent of federal fiscal retrenchment, the Committee sees the improvement in economic activity and labor market conditions since it began its asset purchase program a year ago as consistent with growing underlying strength in the broader economy. However, the Committee decided to await more evidence that progress will be sustained before adjusting the pace of its purchases. Accordingly, the Committee decided to continue purchasing additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40 billion per month and longer-term Treasury securities at a pace of $45 billion per month. The Committee is maintaining its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in agency mortgage-backed securities and of rolling over maturing Treasury securities at auction. Taken together, these actions should maintain downward pressure on longer-term interest rates, support mortgage markets, and help to make broader financial conditions more accommodative, which in turn should promote a stronger economic recovery and help to ensure that inflation, over time, is at the rate most consistent with the Committee's dual mandate.
Gold



US Dollar



S&P 500



$TNX 10-Year Treasury Yield



$HUI - Unhedged Mining Index



I expected some sort of minimal taper with a wishy-washy statement. So did the market or we would not have seen this kind of oversized reaction in stocks, bonds, the dollar, and gold.

More comments shortly.

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

Spain on Track to Meet Budget Targets Says Economy Minister; Data Strongly Suggests Otherwise

Posted: 18 Sep 2013 11:45 AM PDT

On September 16, Spain's economy minister,  Luis de Guindos, said Spain on Track to Meet Budget.
Spain is on track to meet the 2013 budget deficit target it agreed on with its European Union partners and should emerge from recession before the end of the year, the economy minister said on Monday.

After the financial crisis burst Spain's construction bubble in 2008, "no doubt 2014 will be the first year when Spain will have some recovery," the minister said.

Given the depth of Spain's recession, the European Commission agreed in May to give Madrid more time to reach its budgetary targets. Mr. de Guindos said he expected Spain's deficit to fall to the new target of 6.5 percent of gross domestic product — rather than the initial target of 4.5 percent — from 7 percent last year.

Although officials from the International Monetary Fund and other creditors started another review of Spain's banking progress on Monday, Mr. de Guindos suggested that "Spanish banks don't have an important capital need," implying that Spain would not require an extension of its bank bailout.
How many lies and distortions can one man present in a few short paragraphs?

If by some miracle Spain meets this year's target, it is only because the target changed 4 times in the past two years.

Yet, I still have to ask: how likely is that?

Spain Budget Deficit Soars

On September 17, Dow Jones Business News reported Spain Budget Deficit Soars
Spain's government said late Monday the country's budget deficit stood at 5.3% of gross domestic product in the first seven months of the year, an indication that the euro zone's fourth-largest economy may miss its deficit target for the fourth consecutive year.

Spain is looking to bring its budget deficit to 6.5% of GDP this year, down from 10.6% last year. The target, set by the European Union Commission, was already relaxed earlier this year from a previous 6.3% of GDP, but many economists say even the easier target may be hard to attain, as the economy was in recession at least until the second quarter, and only moderate economic growth is anticipated in the second half, which should keep tax receipts at low levels.

Just Monday, think tank Funcas said 19 economists surveyed were expecting, on average, that the economy will grow 0.1% in the third quarter from the second, and Spain will post a budget deficit of 6.7% of GDP for the full year. The economists surveyed are also expecting that Spain will miss next year's deficit target, of 5.5% of GDP.

This is important because a string of large deficits has driven Spain's government debt to the highest level in over a hundred years. Last week, the country's central bank said debt stood at 92.2% of GDP as of June--well above the year-end target of 91.4% of GDP.

This reinforces the view held by many private sector economists, and the International Monetary Fund, that Spain's government debt will rise significantly above 100% of GDP before it peaks, despite government assurances to the contrary.
Spain's Budget Deficit €54 Billion Through July

Via translation from Guru's Blog, please consider Spain's Budget Deficit Rises to €54 Billion Through July.
Let's try not to lose the debt and deficit data since our politicians have a special ability to change forecasts as if nothing had happened.

The deficit totaled €54.293 billion in the first seven months of the year, and representing 5.27% of GDP against a target of 6.5% set for the full year, according to the latest data released Monday by the Ministry Finance and Public Administration.

The odds of meeting the deficit target, barring last-minute window dressing is quite low.

Total government debt is €947.184 billion, a new record. The ratio of public debt to GDP level is 92.6%, according to the Bank of Spain.

Recall that in September 2012, the government forecast for year-end 2013 was debt-to-GDP ratio 90.5%. Unless miracles, we will be well above that figure.

By the way, the total debt of €87.660 billion in short-term securities matures within one year.
Is Spain going to meet even four-times reduced targets? I highly doubt it.

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

Closer Scrutiny of Participation Rates by Sex and Age

Posted: 18 Sep 2013 02:53 AM PDT

Mainstream media and bloggers have noted the declining participation rate. Few provide much detail. Those who did provide detail, primarily looked at broad categories such as 16-19, 20-24, 25-54, and 55+.

There is plenty of ground between age 25 and 54. And what is happening at retirement age and beyond? Lumping everyone 55 and older into a single bucket is problematic.

I gave a call to the BLS and found a wealth of information on finer breakdowns that merits a closer look.

I passed the data on to reader Tim Wallace who produced the following charts.

Notes:

  1. Data is not seasonally adjusted.
  2. Comparison is August of 2013 to August in prior years.
  3. Some of the age groups do not have data for the early years. This explains sharp vertical lines for some years. 
  4. These charts are for males. I will provide a look at female participation rates in a second post.
click on any chart for sharper image

Male 16-29



Overall, this group is about 25% of the male population.

The decline in age group 16-17, 18-19,  and 20-24 can be reasonably explained as an increasing number of kids going to college.

There is only a minor decline in the participation rate of those aged 25-29.

Male 30-49



Overall, this group is about 33.5% of the male population.

30-49 should be prime working years. Some people might be able to retire after 20 years of service,  but that does not apply to anyone under the 40.

Some people may have dropped out of the labor force by going back to school, but disability fraud and welfare likely explains some if not most of this decline.

Male 50-64



Overall, this group is about 25% of the male population.

This is where the charts get interesting. At age 60-64 the participation rate ticks back up.

Fewer people are able to retire at age 60 than 20 years ago.
Fewer people are able to retire at age 62 than 10 years ago.

You can see this in the age of workers at many fast food restaurants.

Male 65+



Overall, this group is about 13% of the male population.

Men in all of these age groups are increasingly reluctant to retire, especially those aged 65-69.The participation rate in the 65-69 age group is up from 25% to about 38%.

Incentive For Fraud

I noted in detail how disability fraud works in States Have an Incentive to Promote (Not Stop) Disability Fraud; So How Much Fraud Is There?

As a followup, also see Want to Get on the Disability Gravy Train? There's an App For That!

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