joi, 24 aprilie 2014

The #MozCon 2014 Agenda is Here!

The #MozCon 2014 Agenda is Here!


The #MozCon 2014 Agenda is Here!

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 05:14 PM PDT

Posted by EricaMcGillivray

*drumroll* ... That's right, friends, the MozCon 2014 Agenda is here! You can now show this to your boss to get that final approval and start making plans for how many notebooks you'll be filling with ideas and tips.

But first, I'd be remiss if I didn't remind you to buy your ticket today, as MozCon has sold out the last several years.

Sign up for MozCon Today!

For the best current deal on MozCon, make sure you're a Moz Pro subscriber. If you're not, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial and get the Pro subscriber MozCon price immediately. Cancel your subscription at any time if it's not for you, and we'll see you at MozCon 2014 either way!

Okay, let's talk about just how great this MozCon's going to be. We have topics ranging from technical mobile SEO and A/B testing to "big content" idea generation and getting maximum value from your PR efforts. There is truly something for every type of online marketer. We have returning MozCon favorites such as Wil Reynolds, Dr. Pete Meyers, and Nathalie Nahai, as well as new speakers like Kerry Bodine, Cindy Krum, and Jeremy Bloom. Plus, we're trying a new format—a fireside chat—with our CEO Sarah Bird, so we can really dig into what life at Moz has been like since she and Rand switched places.

Not to mention all the photos with Roger, the wonderful swag, yummy food, and all the other MozCon trimmings you expect. And yes, we're letting Cyrus Shepard emcee again. (I'm pretty sure it's in his Moz employment contract.)


Wil Reynolds at MozCon 2013


The MozCon Agenda


Monday

8:00-9:00am Breakfast


Rand Fishkin

9:00-9:20am Welcome to MozCon 2014! with Rand Fishkin
As our ever-changing industry keeps us on our toes, Rand gives a look at recent changes and where he sees the future of search and online marketing going.

Rand Fishkin is the founder of Moz, and he currently serves as an individual contributor, blogging, speaking, designing tools, and helping marketers worldwide level-up their game.


Kerry Bodine

9:20-10:20am Broken Brand Promises: The Disconnect Between Marketing and Customer Experience with Kerry Bodine
Companies chase the business benefits of customer experience, but advertising and marketing communications that aren't aligned with the true capabilities of the organization foil these efforts.

Kerry Bodine is the co-author of Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business. Her ideas, analysis, and opinions appear frequently on sites like Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Forbes, USA Today, and Advertising Age. She holds a master's degree in human-computer interaction and has designed interfaces for websites, mobile apps, wearable devices, and robots.


10:20-10:40am AM Break

Lindsay Wassell

10:40-11:20am Improve Your SEO by Mastering These Core Principles with Lindsay Wassell
Discover how SEO tactics that win in the long run complement web-friendly business practices and core principles, and how to incorporate this approach into optimization strategies for changes in search results.

Lindsay Wassell is the CEO at  Keyphraseology, an Inbound & Search Marketing agency. Prior to Keyphraseology, she led the Moz SEO Consulting Team.


Richard Millington

11:20am-12:00pm How to Use Social Science to Build Addictive Communities with Richard Millington
Richard will explain how you can use proven principles from community science to build highly addictive online communities for your organization.

Richard Millington is the founder of  FeverBee, an organization which has figured out how to apply proven science to build powerful communities from any group of people.


12:00-1:30pm Lunch


Kyle Rush

1:30-2:30pm Architecting Great Experiments with Kyle Rush
A/B testing will no longer be a mystery after Kyle does a deep-dive on every part of the experimentation process.

Kyle Rush is the Head of Optimization at  Optimizely. He uses a data-driven engineering approach to execute hundreds of A/B tests.


Cindy Krum

2:30-3:10pm Mobile SEO Geekout: Key Strategies and Concepts with Cindy Krum
Learn all the technical nuances necessary to make your websites rank and perform well in mobile and tablet search!

Cindy Krum is CEO and Founder of  MobileMoxie, a mobile SEO consulting and tools provider based in Denver, CO. She is also author of Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are, which is the first book to explain mobile SEO and gets 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon.


3:10-3:30pm PM Break


Mike Ramsey

3:30-4:00pm Local Lessons from Small Town USA with Mike Ramsey
Whether your audience is in one region or thousands of major metros across the world, these small town lessons will guide you through the complex world of local search. 

Mike Ramsey is the president of  Nifty Marketing with offices in Burley and Boise, Idaho. He is also a Partner at LocalU and has an awesome wife and 3 kids who put up with all his talk about search.


Lexi Mills

4:00-4:30pm Top 10 PR Tactics and Strategies of Successful Content and Link Building with Lexi Mills
Everyone's had an outreach pitch rejected, but Lexi will show you that by slicing and dicing your content, you can turn those no's into yes's. 

Lexi Mills is a PR SEO specialist, with over eight years experience working with both small firms and big brands. She has designed and implemented integrated PR, SEO, content, and social campaigns in the UK, Europe, and USA for B2B and B2C clients.


Mike King

4:30-5:10pm Digital Body Language with Mike King
No matter your business goals, Mike will teach you how to harness the power of lead qualification and nurturing through both implicit and explicit user information. 

Currently a consultant,  Mike King has led teams covering consumer insights, content, social strategy, and SEO for Enterprise brands. With working for brands like HSBC, SanDisk, Ralph Lauren, Johnson & Johnson, and Citibank, his breadth and depth of experience continues to fuel game-changing insights. Mike is a frequent speaker, blogger, and a published author that loves to share his insights on how to do better marketing.


7:00-9:00pm #MozCrawl
More details coming soon!


Tuesday

8:00-9:00am Breakfast


Pete Meyers

9:00-10:00am How to Never Run Out of Great Ideas with Pete Meyers
Learn how to stay afloat in the coming flood of content, as Dr. Pete provides concrete tactics for sustainably creating high-value content.

Dr. Pete Meyers is a marketing scientist for Moz, where he works with the marketing and data science teams on product research and data-driven content. He has spent the past year building research tools to monitor Google, including the  MozCast Project, and he curates the Google Algorithm History, a chronicle of Google updates back to 2003.


Stacey Cavanagh

10:00-10:30am Scaling Creativity: Making Content Marketing More Efficient with Stacey Cavanagh
Stacey will talk you through tactics and tricks to help you scale your content marketing efforts without cutting corners on quality.

Stacey Cavanagh lives in Manchester, UK, and works as head of search for  Tecmark. Stacey also blogs regularly on digital marketing, social media, and her favorite TV ads.


10:30-10:50am AM Break


10:50-12:10pm Community Speakers!
While not finalized, community speakers are one of our most popular sessions. Four speakers from our community will give 15 minute presentations on what they're passionate about. This year, Moz's Director of Community, Jen Lopez, will be introducing them. 


12:10pm-1:40pm Lunch


Marshall Simmonds

1:40-2:20pm Keep the Focus on the Doughnuts with Marshall Simmonds
If you're in a time and resource crunch, Marshall will share which tactics you should implement and prioritize, from the basic to the highly technical, based on measured and quantified data from billions of page views.

Marshall Simmonds has been involved in the search industry since it began. Over the past 17 years, he's solidified himself as one of the top consultants in publishing and enterprise audience development. Many of the tactics you continue to employ today as best practices were either developed or refined by this guy; he's "Internet Old."


Jeremy Bloom

2:20pm-2:50pm Dare to Fail: How the Best Lessons Come in the Form of Defeat with Jeremy Bloom
Everyone experiences failure, but Jeremy will share the lessons he's learned from an athlete to start-up CEO in how to leverage adversity and turn it into a road-map for success.

Jeremy Bloom is a world-champion skier, a two-time Olympian, a World Cup gold medalist, and a member of the United States Skiing Hall of Fame. He played professional football in the NFL for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers. In 2008, Bloom founded Wish of a Lifetime, which grants lifelong wishes to 80-, 90-, and 100+-year-old people, and in 2010, Bloom co-founded the marketing software company  Integrate. Integrate has raised over $20M of venture capital from Comcast, Foundry Group, and Liberty Global. It was named "Best New Company" at the 2011 American Business Awards in New York.


Justin Cutroni

2:50-3:30pm Supercharging Your Digital Analytics! with Justin Cutroni
Despite having lots of analytics tools, we too often settle for the default data and reports so let's look at a few ways that you can get more insightful, actionable data to make better decisions!

Justin Cutroni is an author, blogger, father, skier, and the Analytics Evangelist at  Google. He is a long-time fixture in the digital analytics community and has been nominated as the most influential industry contributor for the past four years.


3:30-3:50pm PM Break


Amber Naslund

3:50-4:20pm Developing a Formidable Social Platform with Amber Naslund
Learn what makes for a compelling online presence, balance your personal and professional self, and build a system to keep yourself sane. 

Amber Naslund is a business strategist and the president of  SideraWorks, a social business advisory firm that helps companies adapt their culture and operations to the demands of the social web. She's the co-author of The Now Revolution, and you can find her on Twitter at @ambercadabra.


Elizabeth Marsten

4:20-4:50pm Shop 'til You Drop: Google Shopping PPC with Elizabeth Marsten
If you're wondering what happened to Google Shopping, Elizabeth will explain all, including how to set up PPC the right way and why it matters for your overall marketing.

Elizabeth Marsten is the Vice President of Search Marketing at  Portent, Inc. here in Seattle. She is a PPC person at heart, but also oversees the SEO, Social, Content, and Project Management teams.


Phil Nottingham

4:50-5:30pm YouTube: The Most Important Search Engine You Haven't Optimized For with Phil Nottingham
Phil will take a deep-dive into YouTube, the world's second biggest and most forgotten search engine, looking at the best ways to use the channel on both a strategic and tactical marketing level, no matter your budget.

Phil Nottingham is the video strategist at  Distilled, where he works with businesses of all shapes and sizes to define their approach to video on both a creative and technical level. He joined Distilled in April 2011, after impressing the company founders with his ability to look like a serviceable pirate, following minimal costume changes, and has since spent loads of their money on cameras and lights.


7:00pm-12:00am MozCon Party at Garage Billiards (MozCon badge required!)


Wednesday

8:20-9:20am Breakfast


Wil Reynolds

9:20-10:20am You Are so Much More than an SEO with Wil Reynolds
The label's irrelevant as you have skills, tools, and knowledge to help get rankings and so much more, and Wil will show you the marketing goldmine you've been sitting on.

Wil Reynolds founded  SEER Interactive in 2002, which now employs over 70 people and is among the 100 fastest growing companies in Philadelphia. In addition to digital marketing, Wil is also passionate about giving back to the community and sits on the advisory board of Covenant House.


Paddy Moogan

10:20-10:50am Beyond SEO - Tactics for Delivering an Integrated Marketing Campaign with Paddy Moogan
Everyone talks about the need for SEOs to diversify, but Paddy will give you actionable tips to go away and do it, no matter what your current role is.

Paddy Moogan is Head of Growth Markets at  Distilled, working in their London office. He is a comic book geek and loves Aston Martins. His heart lives with the Hobbits in New Zealand.


10:50-11:10am AM Break


Sarah Bird and John Cook

11:10-11:40am A Mozzy View with Sarah Bird and John Cook
Moz CEO Sarah Bird sits down with GeekWire's John Cook for a candid discussion about risk-taking, thriving with constant change, and the future of Moz.

Sarah Bird serves as CEO and as a member of Moz's board. She loves and welcomes conversations on inbound marketing, business models, entrepreneurship, productivity tips, women in tech, and fostering inspiring company culture. Sarah's sharp business acumen is always paired with her passionate belief in TAGFEE, Moz's core values.

John Cook is the co-founder of  GeekWire, a leading technology news site and community based in Seattle. A long-time tech journalist, John has covered hundreds of startup companies over the years, everything from aQuantive to Zillow.


Richard Baxter

11:40am-12:20pm Developing Your Own Great Interactive Content - What You'll Need to Know with Richard Baxter
Even if you're not a technical genius when it comes to interactive front-end web development projects, Richard will show you how to make something the Internet loves from ideation and conceptualization to rapid prototyping, launch, and huge coverage.

Richard Baxter is founder and CEO of  SEOgadget, a digital marketing agency specializing in conversion rate optimization, large scale SEO, keyword research, technical strategy, and link building in high competition industries, with offices in London and San Francisco. He is a regular SEO industry commentator and proud Moz Associate.


12:20-1:50pm Lunch


Annie Cushing

1:50-2:30pm Demystifying Data Visualization for Marketers with Annie Cushing
We've all been frustrated with not knowing how to corral data into cool, sexy visualizations, but Annie Cushing will pull back the curtain and provide tips, tricks, and hacks to transform raw marketing data into works of art in plain English.

Annie blogs at  annielytics.com, teaching marketers how to scavenge for marketing data and then make it sexy.


Dana DiTomaso

2:30-3:10pm Prove Your Value with Dana DiTomaso
Dana will show you how to report so there's no doubt in your client's mind that they'd be lost without you.

Whether at a conference, on the radio, or in a meeting, Dana DiTomaso likes to impart wisdom to help you turn a lot of marketing BS into real strategies to grow your business. After 10+ years, she's seen (almost) everything. It's true, Dana will meet with you and teach you the ways of the digital world, but she is also a fan of the random fact.  Kick Point often celebrates "Watershed Wednesday" because of Dana's diverse work and education background. In her spare time, Dana drinks tea and yells at the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.


3:10-3:30pm PM Break


Nathalie Nahai

3:30-4:10pm The Psychology of Persuasive Content for "Boring" Industries with Nathalie Nahai
If your content needs a jolt of life, Nathalie will show you how to apply targeted persuasion through psychology.

Nathalie Nahai, also known as  The Web Psychologist, is a best-selling author, consultant, and international speaker who specializes on the psychology of online persuasion. With a background in psychology, web design, and digital strategy, Nathalie coined the term "web psychology" in 2011, defining it as "the empirical study of how our online environments influence our attitudes and behaviours."


Rand Fishkin

4:10-5:10pm Mad Science Experiments in SEO & Social Media with Rand Fishkin
Whether it's anchor text or sharing on Google+ instead of Facebook, Rand's spent the last few months formulating hypotheses and running tests, and now he'll share these fascinating results to help you.

Rand Fishkin is the founder of Moz, and he currently serves as an individual contributor, blogging, speaking, designing tools, and generally trying to be helpful to marketers worldwide.


Now, are you ready to buy your ticket? :) We'll see you there!

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Seth's Blog : How big is your shortcut budget?

 

How big is your shortcut budget?

All of us are willing to spend a little time and a little money looking for a shortcut now and then. A quicker, more effective way to lose weight, make friends, earn money and get clean, fresh breath. Sometimes, one of those shortcuts pays off and it reinforces our belief that there might just be a better way.

It seems, though, that those that spend the most effort in search of shortcuts are often the most disappointed and the least successful.

       

 

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miercuri, 23 aprilie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


French Telecom Company Does Biggest Junk Bond Sale Ever; Bidding Wars for Junk; AOL Flashback

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 05:15 PM PDT

With central bankers globally suppressing interest rates, the search for yield elsewhere is on. One of the places investors have turned is speculative junk bond offerings.

Please consider French Company Does Biggest Junk Bond Sale Ever.
Numericable (NUM), which provides cable and internet service in France and other European markets, sold a record amount of high-yield bonds Wednesday with some priced in dollars and others in euros.

It's sold $7.78 billion and €2.25 billion in notes that yield 5% or more, according to a statement from Altice, the multinational telecom group that owns Numericable. Altice issued $2.9 billion and €2.1 billion in bonds that yield more than 7%.

Numericable will use the proceeds to finance its acquisition of rival cable company SFR.

Overall, the deal represents the largest sale of high-yield debt on record, according to Dealogic. It surpassed Sprint's $6.5 billion debt sale in September.

Dollar Equivalent Junk

All told Altice issued 10.68  billion in dollar denominated bonds and 4.35 billion in euro denominated bonds. The grand total in dollar equivalent junk is an amazing $16.69 billion.

Bidding Wars for Junk

$10.89 billion of that went to buy out a rival company at an undoubtedly absurd price due to bidding wars.

The New York Times has some bidding war info in Numericable Raises $10.9 Billion in Junk Bond Offering.
The battle for SFR pitted two French billionaires against each other: Martin Bouygues, who runs the diversified industrial group that bears his name, and the French entrepreneur Patrick Drahi, who since 2002 has built Altice into a global operation with cable and cellphone assets in Europe and the Caribbean.

Bruno Lasserre, the president of the Autorité de la Concurrence, has said that the French competition watchdog would conduct a "thorough review" of the Numericable-SFR combination, but that review is not expected to preclude the deal.

Altice also raised an additional €4.15 billion in junk bonds to help finance its purchase of a larger stake in Numericable ahead of the SFR merger. Altice is buying an additional 34.6 percent stake in Numericable, giving it a 74.6 percent stake in the unit.
Reflections on AOL

These are the kinds of deals that mark the top of markets. Recall the merger of AOL and Time Warner in 2000.

Check out this New York Times report from January 11, 2000: MEDIA MEGADEAL: THE OVERVIEW; AMERICA ONLINE AGREES TO BUY TIME WARNER FOR $165 BILLION; MEDIA DEAL IS RICHEST MERGER.
America Online, the company that brought the Internet to the masses, said yesterday that it had agreed to buy the largest traditional media company, Time Warner, for $165 billion in what would be the biggest merger in history and the best evidence yet that old and new media are converging.

By agreeing to give up its independence in return for an ample premium on its stock price, Time Warner is acknowledging that the Internet is central to its music, publishing and TV businesses and that its own efforts to create online operations have been lackluster.

The deal, which was negotiated with such secrecy that it took the industry by surprise, also brought a new realization about the extraordinary stock-market values that America Online and other Internet companies have reached the last 18 months. Although analysts have long predicted that the stars among the Internet upstarts would wind up part of larger media empires, the deal indicates that it could be the Internet companies that do the buying and the old media that sell out.

"The dot-com guys have sort of won," said David B. Readerman, an analyst with Thomas Weisel Partners, a San Francisco brokerage firm. "AOL was able to serve up its stock and buy Time Warner, walking away with incredible media assets."

With a market value of $342 billion, based on yesterday's closing stock prices, the combined corporation would be the fourth-most-valuable company in the country, after Microsoft, General Electric and Cisco Systems. And its stock market value would roughly be equal to the gross domestic product of Mexico.

Broken Marriage

Flash Forward January 10, 2012: The New York Times had a Revised Take on the AOL Time Warner Merger.
On Jan. 10, 2000, the Internet service company AOL and the media giant Time Warner announced that AOL would buy Time Warner for more than $160 billion in the largest merger in corporate history.

However, the new company, AOL Time Warner, did not live up to its potential. The merger occurred at the height of the "dot-com bubble," a time when AOL's value was grossly inflated. Its stock price plummeted within a few years of the merger, causing huge losses for AOL Time Warner. Furthermore, the AOL and Time Warner divisions remained at odds with each other and did a poor job integrating their products.

In 2009, Time Warner decided to spin off AOL as its own company again, ending their ill-fated relationship. But, as The Times noted, "the merger between AOL and Time Warner will likely remain a prominent part of both companies' legacies, rather than becoming a historical footnote. After all, more than $100 billion in shareholder value was wiped out."

In 2011, AOL bought The Huffington Post, the news, aggregation and commentary Web site, for $315 million.

"To call the transaction the worst in history, as it is now taught in business schools, does not begin to tell the story of how some of the brightest minds in technology and media collaborated to produce a deal now regarded by many as a colossal mistake," Tim Arango wrote in a New York Times article on the 10th anniversary of the merger.

The merger between Time Warner and AOL was among several examples of increased concentration of media ownership in the first decade of the 21st century — a topic that aroused debate about media deregulation and the impact of conglomerated media on information and entertainment.
The ludicrous bidding war for SFR in which Numericable lost (by winning) will not go down as the worst deal ever, but it may go down as the worst junk bond deal ever.

The bidding war for SFR is exactly the kind of nonsense the easy money policies of the Fed and central banks in general have fostered.

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

New Home Sales Plunge 14.5%; It's Not the Weather; Steen Jakobsen on Consensus vs. Reality

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 10:59 AM PDT

The Census Bureau report New Residential Sales Report shows sales of new single-family houses in March 2014 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 384,000.

  • Sales are 14.5 percent below the revised February rate of 449,000
  • Sales are 13.3 percent below the March 2013 estimate of 443,000
  • Median sales price was $290,000 vs. $260,900 in February, $257,500 in March of 2013
  • Average sales price was $334,200 vs. $318,900 in February, $300,200 in March of 2013
  • Median sales price was up 11.5% from last month, 12.6% from year ago
  • Average sales price was up 4.8% from last month, 11.3% from year ago
  • New houses for sale was 193,000
  • Supply is 6.0 months at the current sales rate

Sales by Region (Month-Over-Month, Year-Over-Year)

Northeast +12.5% MOM, -22.9% YOY
Midwest    -21.5% MOM, -17.7% YOY
South        -14.4% MOM, -03.8% YOY
West         -17.7% MOM, -27.9% YOY
Total         -14.5% MOM, -13.3% YOY

It's Not the Weather

USA Today noted "Harsh winter weather helped hold down sales in February and may have in March as well."

Also note: "Economists had predicted an annual rate of 450,000 for March, according to the median forecast in Action Economics survey."

My question: If sales decline was weather related, then why were sales up in the Northeast?

I suggest the Fed managed to blow another housing bubble, especially in California and the West where sales are down the most. With rising rates, people are priced out of the market.

Steen Jakobsen on Consensus vs. Reality

Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank tweeted "Housing tanks again - according to consensus housing should add 0.5%-0.8% to GDP in the US in 2014"



Steen: "Consensus is looking for 0.5% to 0.8% positive GDP from housing. Pity the opposite is happening ... and that on a day when 100% of economists in recent survey by Jim Bianco see US rates higher in six months! Yes, 100%."

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

Einhorn Shorts "Cool Kid" Bubble Tech Stocks

Posted: 23 Apr 2014 08:20 AM PDT

Greenlight Capital hedge fund manager Einhorn Shorting Tech as 'Cool Kid' Stocks Show Bubble.
Greenlight Capital Inc., the $10.3 billion hedge-fund firm run by David Einhorn, said it was betting against a group of technology stocks as evidence grows of a bubble.

"There is a clear consensus that we are witnessing our second tech bubble in 15 years," the New York-based firm said in a quarterly letter to clients today.

Greenlight said that companies it's betting against may fall by at least 90 percent "if and when the market reapplies traditional valuations," according to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News.

Greenlight cited initial public offerings of technology firms that have "done little more than use the right buzzwords and attract the right venture capital" as evidence of how far along the current bubble is.

Greenlight, best known for wagering on a decline in Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. before the bank collapsed in 2008, said it was betting against a group of stocks because it reduces the potential of a single investment becoming too costly. The firm didn't identify the individual companies.

Greenlight questioned whether technology companies would be able to keep their highly skilled employees if they stopped giving them large amounts of equity. The firm said it was hard to ignore the future dilution of shares that result from paying employees in stock.

"Once again, certain 'cool kid' companies and the cheerleading analysts are pretending that compensation paid in equity isn't an expense because it is 'non-cash'," Greenlight wrote.
Valuations are without a doubt back in bubble land. The only open question is whether the time is finally ripe for shorting.

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