vineri, 17 aprilie 2015

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


6 Unbelievable Coincidences That Actually Happened

Posted: 17 Apr 2015 05:23 PM PDT

Coincidence can be a strange and confusing thing but some of these coincidences are downright scary.

On June 20, 1940, Soviet archaeologists uncovered the tomb of Tamerlane, a descendant of Genghis Khan. A warning inscription read "Whoever opens my tomb will unleash an invader more terrible than I." They opened it anyway. Germany invaded the Soviet Union two days later.



The first British soldier killed in WWII is buried, randomly, next to the last British soldier killed in WWII--A startling coincidence in a war with more than 383,800 British military deaths.



In 1975, a man was killed when he was struck with a taxi in Bermuda. An unlucky passenger had to witness it. A year later, the same taxi driver was driving the same passenger when the taxi struck and killed the original victim's brother.



When designing the landscape scenes for video game Deus Ex one of the artists left out a major landmak of the New York City Skyline: the Twin Towers. To cover the flub, the game made up something about a terrorist attack. This game was made in 2000.



If not for the 200-year difference, Jimi Hendrix and George Handel would have been neighbors. They lived at 23 and 25 Brook Street, respectively, in London.



Edgar Allen Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, tells of an ill-fated Antarctic voyage. In one scene, four shipwrecked survivors, adrift on a raft, decide to eat the cabin boy, Richard Parker, to survive. In 1884, a ship called the Mignonette sank, leaving four survivors. They, too, decided to cannibalize the cabin boy to survive. The cabin boy's name? Richard Parker.

Therapy Dogs

Posted: 17 Apr 2015 02:58 PM PDT

These pictures show the real power of therapy dogs.

















Man Invents Shoes That Grow 5 Sizes In 5 Years

Posted: 17 Apr 2015 10:58 AM PDT

Inventor Kenton Lee has created The Shoe That Grows in an effort to make sure children in impoverished nations don't have to walk about barefoot. His shoes are designed to grow with the person that wears them and can expand up to five sizes over the course of five years. Anyone can purchase these shoes but Kenton is trying to encourage people to buy a pair and help send them to countries where people truly need them.

















Via theshoethatgrows

Comparing PC Graphics To The PS3 And PS4

Posted: 16 Apr 2015 08:36 PM PDT

It's an age old debate that will go on forever. Is the PC superior for to consoles like the PS4. Below is a side by side comparison of PS3, PS4, and PC. Which one do you think looks the best?













How Google's Evolution is Forcing Marketers to Invest in Loyal Audiences - Whiteboard Friday - Moz Blog


How Google's Evolution is Forcing Marketers to Invest in Loyal Audiences - Whiteboard Friday

Posted on: Friday 17 April 2015 — 02:15

Posted by randfish

Given Google's recent changes to SERPs and their April 21 mobile deadline, does SEO still come first? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand walks you through tactics you can use to build a loyal audience before you need to do SEO.

How Google's Evolution is Forcing Marketers to Invest in Loyal Audiences - Whiteboard Friday

For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard.

How Google's Evolution is Forcing Marketers to Invest in Loyal Audiences Whiteboard

Click on it to open a high resolution image in a new tab!

Video transcription

Howdy Moz fans and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting on some of the changes that Google has made that are forcing marketers to invest more and more in building loyal audiences before they do SEO. This is kind of a reverse of years past where we could use SEO as that initial channel where we attracted visits who would become our customers, our email subscribers, our social media fans and followers. All of these things have kind of switched direction.

Why move SEO later in the process?

There are some reasons why. First off, Google has for a lot of broad, head of the demand curve queries, they've taken some of the value and equity away from those with things like instant answers and Knowledge Graph, along with lots and lots of other verticals.

Knowledge Graph

I do a search for "plaid shirts" and I get this instant answer showing me what a plaid shirt looks like and a Knowledge Graph. This is a fake example. I don't think they actually do this for plaid shirts yet, but they will.

Personalization

Personalization by history, we're seeing a ton of personalization. I think history is one of the biggest influencers on personalization. Google+ still is a little bit, but your search history and what you've clicked on in the past tends to be big predictors of this. You can see this in two areas, not just in the results that Google shows, but also in what they're suggesting to you in your Search Suggest as you type.

Now, where Google is trying to predictively say, "Hey, we think you're going to want coffee right now because we see that you stepped out of your office and you live in Seattle, and you are a human being. So you must want coffee." They have these ranking signals, that are relatively new over the past few years and certainly much stronger than in years past around user and usage data, around search volume and what you searched for using quality raters and human and manual controls. Signals that are heavily correlated with brand, even if brand itself isn't necessarily a ranking factor.

Fewer results

Of course, there are fewer results now. I don't know if you guys caught this, but I thought one of the most fascinating things that Dr. Pete showed off recently in his MozCast data set was that it used to be the case that Google would show 10 results even if they had a set of images, a news result, and a local pack. Now basically these count as individual results. So you're not getting 10 results on a page. If you've got images and a couple of news things, you're getting seven results that are web results. Ten domains appear, ten big domains, powerful domains, places like Amazon and Yelp and those kinds of things, at least for U.S. search results, appear on 17% of all page one queries. There are a little fewer results to work with and more results biased to these bigger, better-known sites.

All of these things are contributing to this world in which doing SEO first and then earning loyalty through two other channels through SEO is really, really hard. It's making the value of having a loyal audience before you need to do SEO that much more valuable, which is why I figured we'd run through some of the tactics that you can use to build a loyal audience.

This is actually a question from one of our Whiteboard Friday loyal audience members. Thank you very much. Much appreciated.

How to build a loyal audience

Some tactics to build loyalty, we talked about a few of these, but creating an expectation that you can consistently deliver upon is a huge part of how loyalty is created. Humans love to form habits. Thankfully for marketers, we're terrible at breaking those habits.

Consistency

If you can form a habit, you can create a loyal member of your audience, but this is very challenging unless you deliver consistency. That consistency needs to be created through an expectation. That could be when you publish. That could be what you're going to do. That could be the format of the content that you're providing. That could be how your solution or problem or product is delivered. But it needs to create those things in order to build that loyal audience.

Reach your audience where they are

Secondly, provide your content through the channels, the apps, the accounts, the formats that your audience is already using. If I say, "Hey, in order to get Whiteboard Friday, you need to sign up for a Moz account first," the viewability of Whiteboard Friday is going to go down. If on the other hand, which we don't have this but we really should have it, there was a subscribe on iTunes and you could get each Whiteboard Friday as a podcast, gosh, that is something that many Whiteboard Friday viewers, in fact, many people in the technology and marketing worlds already have access to. Therefore it reduces the friction of subscribing to Whiteboard Friday. We might build more people into our loyal audience.

This is definitely something to think about. You need to be able to identify those channels and then be there.

Where SEO fits

I'm saying don't start with SEO as your primary web marketing tactic anymore. I think we have to build into it. These challenges are too great. Not only are they too great, I think they could be overcome today, but they are growing. All of them are growing so substantially, instant answers and Knowledge Graph are becoming a bigger and bigger part of search results. Google Now is something that Google is pushing on so incredibly hard. I think they're going to be pushing it with new devices. They're clearly pushing it with app results inside of search results. I think these ranking signals are only going to get stronger. I think there's going to be more personalization. I think every one of these you can see an up and to the right trend.

Therefore, when we do SEO, we have to think about it as, "How do I earn a loyal audience and then use their amplification to help me perform in search?" Rather than, "How do I do SEO for my website to earn visitors that I can convert into a loyal audience?" That's a new a challenge, a new paradigm for us.

Be unique and memorable

Craft a stylistically unique and memorable approach to solving your audience's problem. One of the things that I find is challenging in a lot of businesses that we talk to, that I get to interact with is that they think, "Hey, we're the best player in this field. We're the best at doing this. Therefore, we should be able to earn a great customer audience." I think this ignores why marketing exists and ignores the power that marketing has and the power of influencing human beings overall.

The best really is not necessarily enough. We are not perfectly logical creatures where we go, "Hey, I am thinking about a new social media monitoring solution. I need to watch Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Instagram for my business. Therefore I'm going to create my criteria. I'm going to evaluate all 716 providers that are in the market today that fit my price range and those criteria. Then I'm going to choose effectively the best one. No, we're biased by the ones we've heard of, the ones our friends recommend, the ones we stumble across versus don't stumble across, the ones that have a loud voice, the ones that have a credible voice. These things bias us. Therefore, being stylistically unique and memorable have outsized power to determine whether people will become part of your loyal audience.

More isn't necessarily better

I've talked about this a few times, but I'm strongly of the opinion, especially when it comes to loyalty, that more content may actually be worse than better content. Moz publishes between 7 and 10 blog posts a week. That's a lot of content. I think there are weeks where we published 12 blog posts. For me to say this is a little odd. But the challenge here is prior to building a loyal audience. Once you have a loyal audience, you can start to expand that audience by reaching out and broadening the spectrum of content that you create, and you can afford to be a little more risk taking in that. When you are trying to build loyalty early on, you need to have that consistency of quality.

People are going to return because you keep delivering great stuff again and again. When that suffers, your audience will suffer as well. If I watch my first three Whiteboard Fridays and then the fourth one is not great, I expect to lose a ton of those viewers. But if I have tens of thousands of people who are watching Whiteboard Friday and I deliver one bad one out of twenty, maybe I have a little more room to play there.

Focus your efforts

Focus. This is a big challenge because I think a lot of us think very broadly about who we want to appeal to, the types of content we want to create, the types of marketing we want to do. This is very challenging from a loyalty perspective because passionate fans tend to congregate around very, very focused causes and very focused creators of content or focused brands or focused organizations. Its much tougher to build that passion into a group of users if you're trying to appeal to a very broad set. That's just how it is.

Don't forget engagement

Lastly, but not least, this is very tactical, but I found it extremely powerful when a brand is starting out, when a project is starting out, to engage and respond as much as possible with your customers. That could be over social channels, that could be in comments, that could be in emails, that could be directly in outreach, whatever it is. But if you see someone who you can reach out to engaging with you, replying to them, talking to them, conversing with them in some way, forming a connection is extremely powerful. It especially is important for first interactions.

I'm not going to say, "You need to respond to everything all the time, always." If you can identify, "This is the first interaction that we've had with this person," if you interact and if that interaction is positive, it can create loyalty just on its own. That's a lovely way to start scaling up from a small starting point.

All right everyone, hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. We'll see you again next week. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com


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Seth's Blog : What if you stopped?

What if you stopped?

What would happen to your audience if you shut the doors tomorrow? (I know what would happen to you, that's not my question... what would happen to them?)

What would happen to your customers and to your prospects if you stopped doing your work?

If you stopped showing up, if you stopped selling them something, would they miss you if you were gone?

If the airline went away, we'd just find another airline. If the cookie cutter politician went away, we'd just vote for someone else. If the typical life insurance agent...

Does it matter if it's you doing the work?

       

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joi, 16 aprilie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Homebuilding Off to Slow Start in 2015; Starts Miss Expectations; Atlanta Fed GDP Forecast 0.1%

Posted: 16 Apr 2015 12:11 PM PDT

Add home building to the list of disappointing economic reports.

The Bloomberg Consensus for seasonally adjusted starts was for 1.04 million. Instead we saw .926 million.
Highlights

Housing is still sluggish based on the latest starts data which disappointed. Starts in March slightly rebounded a monthly 2.0 percent after plunging a monthly 15.3 percent in February. Expectations were for a 1.040 million pace for February. The 0.926 million unit pace was down 2.5 percent on a year-ago basis.

By region, starts gained 114.9 percent in the Northeast-almost certainly a weather related rebound but in a small region. The Midwest also saw a weather related gain of 31.3 percent. However, the large South region declined 3.5 percent and the West fell 19.3 percent.

Housing permits were a little stronger but still disappointed, falling 5.7 percent after gaining 4.0 percent in February. The 1.039 million unit pace was up 2.9 percent on a year-ago basis. The median market forecast was for a 1.085 million unit pace.

Overall, housing is still soft even with weather improving. The latest data will likely keep the Fed on the loose side in the near term.

Recent History Of This Indicator

Housing starts unexpectedly fell sharply in February. Starts fell a monthly 17.0 percent, following no change in January. The 0.897 million unit pace was down 3.3 percent on a year-ago basis. This was the lowest starts level since January 2014 with a 0.897 million unit annualized pace. Adverse winter weather likely played a role. Single-family units dipped 14.9 percent in February, following a 3.9 percent decrease the month before. Multifamily units dropped 20.8 percent after rising 7.9 percent in January. Housing permits, however, were more positive, gaining 3.0 percent after no change in January. The 1.092 million unit pace was up 7.7 percent on a year-ago basis.
Atlanta Fed GDP Forecast 0.1%



The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow Forecast ticked down to 0.1% growth for the quarter, based on yesterday's poor Industrial Production numbers.

See String of Good News Snaps at One: Industrial Production Down 0.6 Percent, First Quarterly Decline Since 2009

Today's poor showing in the Philly Fed manufacturing survey (see Philly Fed Positive, but New Orders Stall, Backlog of Orders Contracts, Prices Contract; Why the Optimism?) coupled with weakness in housing, I would expect the GDPNow forecast to decline back to zero, if not negative.

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

Philly Fed Positive, but New Orders Stall, Backlog of Orders Contracts, Prices Contract; Why the Optimism?

Posted: 16 Apr 2015 11:10 AM PDT

As typical, there is not much to cheer about in the latest Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Survey.



The index is hovering above zero where it has been for months. That's about as good as it gets.

April vs. March



New orders are weak while shipments dipped into contraction. Prices paid is negative for the second month and prices received has been in contraction for four months.

The number of employees is positive, but that will not last long unless orders pick up. Strength in the US dollar suggests orders, especially export orders, won't pick up.

That said, a special survey question this month shows exports only account for 10 percent of revenue. Thus, weakness in orders is also local.

Special Question on Exports



Approximately what percentage of your total revenues come from exports and what percentage of total nonlabor costs are paid to foreign suppliers?

Expectations Six Months From Now



Why the Optimism?

As is typically the case, firms were optimistic in their forecast six months ahead.

The first chart shows expectations are generally overly optimistic and essentially useless. Expectations rise and fall with current report and are typically higher.

Optimism in the face of mediocre to downright poor economic reports is quite interesting. Does the Fed have everyone believing the economy will  pick up?

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

Another 5.27 Billion in Capital Flight from Greece in March

Posted: 16 Apr 2015 10:07 AM PDT

Data from the Bank of Greece for March shows net Target2 liability for Greece increased by another €5.27 billion in March to €96.427 billion.

Target2 represents capital flight from Greece.



Data for the chart is from Eurocrisis Monitor, with my update reflecting the latest data from the Bank of Greece.

The pace has slowed, but the trend is clear. Capital flight from Greece continues.

For a refresher course on Target2, please see Reader From Europe Asks "Can You Please Explain Target2?"

Eurozone exposure to Greek liabilities is €96.427 billion of Target2 imbalances plus another €14.028 billion net liabilities related to the allocation of euro banknotes.

Thanks to reader Lars who has been following these imbalances. Net liabilities to euro banknotes was about €13 billion last month and €10 billion at the end of 2014.

Yesterday at a press conference Lars informs me Draghi mentioned Eurozone exposure to Greek liabilities was €110. One can arrive at that number by adding €96 and €14.

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