Central Perk

joi, 2 iunie 2011

How to Use the Hootsuite Bulk Scheduling Tool Graywolf's SEO Blog

How to Use the Hootsuite Bulk Scheduling Tool

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 10:19 AM PDT

The following is part of a series on using the Hootsuite social media tool. In this post we are going to be looking at using the bulk scheduling feature.

First, we are going to take a step back and look at the two basics ways to schedule tweets so you get an idea of how things work before we get into bulk scheduling. Using the Hootsuite dashboard, you can enter a tweet the way you normally would but, instead of hitting “tweet,” you click the schedule button. When a calendar pops up, you click on the date, set the time, click schedule, select the accounts, and you are good to go (see screen shot below).

The next way is to use the Hootlet bookmarklet. If you aren’t familiar with bookmarklets, they are JavaScript bookmarks that you drag onto your browser toolbar that execute code. As you are browsing around and come across something you would like to tweet, you hit the bookmarklet and a dialog box will pop up. Again, choose the account, hit schedule and a calendar pops up that allows you to set the date and time (see screen shot below)

One of the nice things is that, if you copy this bookmarklet into Safari, you can get it to sync with your iPad and schedule tweets. One of the bad things is that it doesn’t work on the iPhone. If you try to use it on the iPhone, you get stuck in a loop suggesting that you download the iPhone app. I have mentioned this to Hootsuite multiple times, but they don’t seem to care …

Now that we have a basic idea of how scheduling in Hootsuite works, we’re going to want to kick it up a notch with bulk tweet scheduling. I haven’t hit an upper limit as to how many tweets you can schedule, but they do have to be different (you can’t retweet the exact same tweet more than once).

You will need a spreadsheet with the following columns:
Date (dd/mm/yyyy format)
Time (hh:mm format)
Tweet

Depending on your spreadsheet program, it may not offer the ability to use the (dd/mm/yyyy) format ( Google docs doesn’t). If that’s the case just force the formatting to be a text format. I like to fill in the tweets first, before the day and time. Throughout the week I will forward myself emails of things I would like to tweet. Google reader, ziteapp, and most newspaper or other apps have an email this story function. Set up a rule to catch these emails. Every few days or at the end of the week, I will go through the folder and put the text and URL into the spreadsheet. Once I have them all there, I will go through and put in the the dates. I like to make sure I have at least one per day. Then I will set up the time: I like 12-5 EST because it gives me the opportunity to reach East and West coast followers. If there are multiple tweets, I will set them to go at different times in that (12-5) time window. Once all the tweets are ready, you can export to a CSV file.

Once you have a CSV file you choose Schedule a Tweet > Bulk Upload, then choose the account and file, and you are good to go. If you haven’t made any mistakes, it will let you know how many tweets were accepted. If you made a mistake, it will spit you out a fairly descriptive, easy-to-understand message.

CSV of Scheduled tweets

IMHO, scheduling tweets is a huge time saving step to take. Many social media experts shy away from it because they think it makes you less authentic; personally, I have better things to do than sit in front of twitter all day (tk). You can schedule out tweets for your campaign, archive tweets to affiliate centric posts, or do anything that you want.

Once you have all your tweets imported, you can check to make sure you don’t have any tweets that step on each other or are scheduled for the middle of the night. You will just need to set up a tab for pending tweets.

What Scheduled Tweets Look Like

IMHO working in batch mode does save you a bit of time as opposed to doing each tweet as you see it, but it does make it one big job instead of 50 little ones. I’d love if Hootsuite added a functionality that would auto schedule the way Bufferapp does (see Bufferapp review) but, for now, it doesn’t. Is this process perfect and hassle free? No. However, IMHO taking an hour a week to schedule tweets across multiple accounts, filling an entire week’s worth of tweets, is much more productive than sitting on twitter all day. As a bonus, you can also schedule updates to Facebook accounts or pages using this method as well.

To be clear, I am a current paying customer of Hootsuite. If you sign up from my link I will get a commission. This is a product I have been using for a few months. I have been happy with it and am comfortable recommending Hootsuite as a social media management tool.

photo credit: Photospin

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How to Use the Hootsuite Bulk Scheduling Tool

Chart of the Day: The Resurgence of the American Automotive Industry

Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, June 2, 2011

Chart of the Day: The Resurgence of the American Automotive Industry

Yesterday, the White House released a report that highlights the resurgence of the American auto industry. The report discusses the jobs created in the sector, the turnaround of the companies that are now turning a profit, and how entire communities have been revitalized by a strengthened auto industry.

In the year before GM and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy, the auto industry shed over 400,000 jobs. Had President Obama failed to intervene, conservative estimates suggest that it would have cost at least an additional one million jobs and devastated vast parts of our nation’s industrial heartland. Since GM and Chrysler Group emerged from bankruptcy in June 2009, the auto industry has added 115,000 jobs – the fastest pace of job growth in the auto industry since 1998.

Seth's Blog : Selling nuts to squirrels

Selling nuts to squirrels

In All Marketers Tell Stories, I argue that most organizations shouldn't try to change the worldview of the audience they're marketing to.

Worldview is a term popularized by George Lakoff. It's the set of expectations and biases that color the way each of us see the world (before the marketer ever arrives on the scene). The worldview of a 45 year old wine-loving investment banker is very different from that of a fraternity brother. One might see a $100 bottle of burgundy as both a bargain and a must-have, while the other might see the very same bottle of wine as an insane waste of money.

Worldview changes three things: attention, bias and vernacular. Attention, because we choose to pay attention to those things that we've decided matter. Bias, because our worldview alters the way we filter and interpret what we hear. And vernacular, because words and images resonate with people differently based on their worldview.

It's extremely expensive, time consuming and difficult to change someone's worldview. The guys at Opus One shouldn't spend a lot of time marketing expensive wine to fraternities because it's not efficient. Sell nuts to squirrels, don't try to persuade dolphins that nuts are delicious.

There's an exception to this rule, and that's the necessity of changing worldviews if you want to become a giant brand, a world changer, a marketer for the ages. Starbucks changed the way a significant part of the world thought about spending $4 for a cup of coffee.

Or consider Facebook. It started by selling nuts to squirrels. At first, Facebook was social crack for lonely (all college students are lonely) college students. Over time, the social pressure it created snuck up on and surrounded those with a different inclination, those that would never have signed up on their own. These folks had a worldview that privacy was valuable and that time was better spent elsewhere. But once a sufficient number of their friends and colleagues were online, they felt they had little choice. Converting those people (often against their short term wishes) is where Facebook's most recent 300 million users came from.

The interesting truth in both the Starbucks and Facebook example is that a different worldview was at work. The latecomers to each company were sold a very different story--the story of, "you need to be here because all your friends are." That worked because it matched the latecomers' worldview, the one that includes an imperative, "don't be left out." Different nut, same squirrel.

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miercuri, 1 iunie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mood Swings: Economists Rush to Lower Payroll Estimates; What to Expect on Thursday and Friday
Debt Ceiling Discussion on Daily Ticker with Mish, Aaron Task, Henry Blodget: Will the Bond Market Eventually Force Congressional Hands?
Mish on Yahoo Finance Daily Ticker on Slowing Global Economy; U.S. Manufacturing ISM Plunge; Order Backlog and New Orders Barely Above Contraction

Mood Swings: Economists Rush to Lower Payroll Estimates; What to Expect on Thursday and Friday

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 09:20 PM PDT

It's a never ending source of amusement that economists can never think in advance. Instead they revise estimates after the fact to be in line with the data.

Weekly Claims Numbers

On Thursday the weekly claims numbers come out. I am writing this Wednesday evening.

The number 4-week moving average of weekly unemployment claims is relatively easy to call. The number to beat is 438,500.

Over or Under?

Expect a drop (an improvement) in that number.

In light of recent data a drop may see counter-intuitive but it is highly likely. The reason is simple. The last four weeks' claims numbers are, in order: 424K, 414K, 438K, and 478K.

478,000 drops off the list. It will be replaced by the numbers for the week ending May 28. Unless that number is greater than 478,000 the moving average will drop. I will take the under on 478,000 and thus the under (expecting a drop) in the moving average.

My guess is the 4-week average will be between 420,000 to 430,000. For an actual guess, I select 427,000.

If the number is lower expect the bulls to trump it up. Instead it will simply reflect an abnormally high number dropping off the average.

Monthly Payroll Report

Gaming the 4-week moving average of unemployment claims is the easy part. The tough part is gaming Friday's monthly payroll report.

Two days ago I would have taken the "way-under" in regards to economic estimate consensus. I meant to mention that in Market Ticker in regards to the Slowing Global Economy, but I forgot. Apologies offered.

However, in light of recent "unforeseen" by economists news, economists' estimates are now far lower.

Economists rush to mark down payrolls estimates

Please consider Economists rush to mark down payrolls estimates

Reflecting one of the largest one-day mood swings in recent memory, the downward revisions now place last month's job growth at 125,000, the weakest since the 68,000 positions created in January and down from the average of 233,000 over the past three months.

As the sun rose on a steamy Wednesday in Washington, economists polled by MarketWatch had been looking for growth of 175,000 in nonfarm payrolls for May, a consensus figure representing a decline from a healthy 244,000 in April but still passing for strength. The nation's unemployment rate was expected to reverse April's slight uptick and fall to 8.9%.

First-time claims for unemployment benefits rocketed to 474,000 in late April — the highest level in nine months — from under 390,000 earlier in the month. Claims have since fallen back, coming in at 424,000 for the latest week.

Analysts tended to dismiss the claims data as an aberration. They saw continued strength in hiring, and some were hopeful that more than 50,000 jobs created by McDonald's Corp. might offset any weakness in other sectors.

But this confidence cracked soon after data based on payrolls handled by Automatic Data Processing Inc. showed that only 38,000 private-sector jobs were created in May — extraordinarily weak given that economists were expecting a gain in the neighborhood of 175,000 jobs.

Adding fuel to the fire, later in the morning, the Institute for Supply Management's May survey of factory supply managers was disappointing. The ISM factory index sank by nearly seven points to a 53.5% reading, the largest drop in nine years.

Who cut forecasts and by how much

"We have no choice but to revise down our payroll estimate" in light of the weak ISM and ADP reports, said the economic team at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, in a note announcing they had sliced their forecast to 125,000 nonfarm payrolls for May from the prior estimate of 165,000.
"We continue to expect a loss of 25,000 public-sector jobs but have reduced our forecast for private payrolls to 100,000 from 200,000," said Julia Coronado, chief economist at BNP Paribas.
Economists at Goldman Sachs cut their forecast for Friday's government employment report to show 100,000 nonfarm jobs added in May, down from 150,000 previously.
LaVorgna trimmed his forecast for nonfarm payrolls to 160,000 in May, down from a prior estimate of 225,000
Stone & McCarthy cut its forecast in half, to 100,000 jobs.
Jim O'Sullivan,chief economist at MF Global, cut his forecast for May jobs growth to 90,000 from 150,000.
IHS Global Insight now expects a gain of 135,000 nonfarm jobs in May, down from a forecast of 175,000 before the day's data were released

Did the Lemmings Overshoot?

It is very difficult to know if the lemmings overshot or not. On one hand McDonald's allegedly added 50-70 thousand jobs and those jobs may affect the establishment survey. However, no one knows because the BLS in its infinite "wisdom" will not confirm who is in the survey.

Moreover, burger-flipping jobs tend to increase in summer months so one has to seasonally adjust. Then again, 50-75K is likely to be in excess of seasonal adjustments.

Finally, I do not know if McDonald's is in the ADP survey either. Regardless, picking a number is a crapshoot. It always is, but particularly true now.

The Real Deal

It really does not matter if McDonald's added 50,000 jobs or not. Flipping burgers will not fuel a recovery. Moreover, even if McDonald's did add that number of jobs, it is a one-time affair.

I wonder how many desperate engineers or recent college graduates took those jobs out of desperation. The sad fact of the matter is that unemployment has been dropping for a year based on burger-flipping jobs, part-time jobs, or people dropping out of the labor force.

Since April 2008 6,484,000 dropped out of the labor force. In the last year alone, 2,916,000 dropped out of the labor force.

For a discussion of exactly what questions the BLS asks to determine the unemployment rate, please see Reader Question Regarding "Dropping Out of the Workforce"; Implications of the Falling Participation Rate

Here's the real kicker. In the last year the number of people employed FELL by 292,000! Yet. miraculously the unemployment rate dropped nearly 1%. On that count, the unemployment rate should have risen at least 1%.

What to Expect on Friday?

Garbage. That's what.

Officially I will take the under on jobs and the over on the expected unemployment rate of 8.9%. For a guess on the latter, 9.2% seems reasonable on the data (and that was my opinion before the ISM and ADP reports). However, Lord only knows how many people the BLS might say dropped out of the labor force.

If burger flipping saves the day, it won't last.

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

Debt Ceiling Discussion on Daily Ticker with Mish, Aaron Task, Henry Blodget: Will the Bond Market Eventually Force Congressional Hands?

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 12:45 PM PDT

In the second of three videos on the Daily Ticker recorded yesterday, please consider Debt Ceiling Vote a "Political Sideshow", Mish Says: Real Issue Is "Govt. Spending Run Amok"

By a whopping margin of 318-97, the House Tuesday evening overwhelming rejected a proposal to raise the debt ceiling without accompanying spending cuts. The so-called "clean" debt ceiling vote was expected to fail and leaves Congress two months to reach a compromise before U.S. government goes into technical default on its debt. (See: U.S. Hits the Debt Ceiling: What Does It All Mean?)

In recent weeks, a growing number of market participants have said a technical default wouldn't be nearly as "catastrophic" as Tim Geithner and others have warned. As Clusterstock's Joe Weisenthal reports, this seemingly "out-there viewpoint" is becoming mainstream and is shared by a number of market notables, including hedge fund legend Stan Druckenmiller, bond fund maven Jeffrey Gundlach and IRA's Chris Whalen. (On Wednesday morning, House Speaker John Boehner released a letter signed by more than 150 economists, including Nobel laureate Robert Mundell of Columbia, supporting his call to only increase the debt ceiling if accompanied by significant spending cuts.)

You can now add Michael "Mish" Shedlock of Sitka Pacific Capital to this growing list.

"I would like to see the implications" of a technical default, Shedlock tells Henry and me in the accompanying video. "I think all of they hype surrounding this…is a political sideshow and nothing more."

As with the others cited above, Shedlock believes "there is no political willingness by either party to address the real issues here, which is government spending run amok."

While the Republicans are positioning themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility and austerity, Shedlock notes Rand Paul's balanced budget amendment only received 7 votes in the Senate last month. And while that was 7 votes more than President Obama's budget received, Shedlock was "quite frankly disgusted" by the lack of GOP support for Sen. Paul's proposal and fears the Republicans will "at some point in this game of chicken…give up and agree to hike the debt ceiling."

Eventually, the bond market will force the politicians to cut spending and Ben Bernanke to tighten monetary policy, Shedlock says. "All it takes is rapidly rising interest rates," he says. "It's going to happen. I would prefer it happen sooner rather than later to force the hands of Bernanke and the politicians."

By his own admission, Shedlock (among many others) has been warning about this scenario for a long time and Treasury yields have been falling of late, not rising. Still, he is steadfast in a view that cutting spending, while painful short-term, is absolutely critical for America's long-term economic viability. "People like Paul Kurgman think we should just continue on the path we're on until the economy recovers," he says. "The economy is not going to recover until you stop throwing money at it — wasting it on projects that don't need to be done."

Small Correction

I need to make a small correction to the text above. Until the official start of QE2 I was generally bullish on treasuries. I called for record all time low yields across the entire yield curve and we got it. Then new record lows in yield came on 2-year, 3-year, and 5-year treasuries just prior to start of QE2.

10-year and 30-year treasures did not come close to new lows.

That was it for me. At the end of October 2010, just before QE2 started I changed my tune and became bearish on all but very short-term treasuries.

However, we might see yet another "flight-to-safety" trade in the long-end of the treasury curve. Indeed, we may already be in one. Yields have come down substantially. This time, I am on the sidelines of that treasury rally.

Will the Bond Market Force Congress to Act?

If Congress and Bernanke continue on the current path, yields are likely to rise unless there is another serious recession, and they may rise regardless.

Spending is unsustainable and everyone but Keynesian clowns realize it. Even Congress realizes it, they just lack political will to do anything about it. Something will give eventually, or ultimately the bond market will force its will. That could be quite a ways off as Japan proves.

Session Video

A few sharp minds may have noticed this was recorded yesterday yet the discussion was on the failure of Congress to raise the debt ceiling, before the vote took place. However, It was widely understood by everyone involved that Congress would not hike the ceiling.

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

Mish on Yahoo Finance Daily Ticker on Slowing Global Economy; U.S. Manufacturing ISM Plunge; Order Backlog and New Orders Barely Above Contraction

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 09:11 AM PDT

I had the pleasure of doing several segments on Yahoo Finance Daily Ticker on the slowing global economy with Aaron Task and Henry Blodget.

Please consider What Recovery? The Economy's Weak And Getting Weaker, Says Mish

This month marks the two-year anniversary of the "recovery" that began in June 2009. But you can easily be forgiven if you haven't noticed.

Why?

Because this recovery doesn't feel like a recovery--in part because it isn't much of a recovery. Normally, after a recession of the depth and length of the one we had in 2008 and 2009, the economy comes roaring back with GDP growth of 5%-7% for a couple of years. In the latest recovery, we've only had one quarter that exceeded 5%, and the growth last quarter was a pathetic 1.8%.

The jobs market, meanwhile, remains weak, with unemployment still at a staggering 9%. Corporate profits are hitting all-time highs, which is helping the stock market, but these profits haven't translated into new hiring.

House prices continue to fall. Wage growth is stagnant. Inflation is picking up. Oil is now back over $100 per barrel. Our debt burden is still massive. And our government is still running shocking deficits of ~$1.5 trillion per year. And the rest of the world is experiencing pretty much the same thing.

Put it all together, says Mike "Mish" Shedlock, an advisor at Sitka Pacific Capital and the author of Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis, and you can draw only one conclusion: The economy's weak and getting weaker.

Mish, in fact, thinks we may be headed for another recession.

Tell us what you think!

The above video was recorded yesterday, well in advance of the just released Manufacturing ISM numbers. If the video does not play, please click on the preceding link.

May 2011 Manufacturing ISM Report

Please consider the May 2011 Manufacturing ISM Report On Business®

"The PMI registered 53.5 percent and indicates expansion in the manufacturing sector for the 22nd consecutive month. This month's index, however, registered 6.9 percentage points below the April reading of 60.4 percent, and is the first reading below 60 percent for 2011, as well as the lowest PMI reported for the past 12 months. Slower growth in new orders and production are the primary contributors to this month's lower PMI reading. Manufacturing employment continues to show good momentum for the year, as the Employment Index registered 58.2 percent, which is 4.5 percentage points lower than the 62.7 percent reported in April. Manufacturers continue to experience significant cost pressures from commodities and other inputs."

Price, Profit Squeeze Coming

Prices plunged this month along with everything else. However, prices are well above contraction. Orders on the other hand are barely above contraction. Either commodity prices plunge, or manufacturers get hit in a price and profit squeeze with falling customer demand.

Which will happen? I think both.

For more on the slowing global economy please see China's Manufacturing Slowest in 9 Months, New Orders Suggest Manufacturing May Have Already Peaked; Australia Biggest GDP Drop in 20 Years

Addendum:

That was the first of three videos. The second video was a discussion on the debt ceiling.

Please consider Debt Ceiling Discussion on Daily Ticker with Mish, Aaron Task, Henry Blodget: Will the Bond Market Eventually Force Congressional Hands?

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

Damn Cool Pics

Very Large Telescope HD Timelapse Footage
Old Photos of Japan
A Rare Glimpse Into Daily Life in North Korea
Epic Fails - Part 14
Where to Hide One Million Dollars
US Navy SEALs Obstacle Course Helmet Cam

Very Large Telescope HD Timelapse Footage

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 02:47 PM PDT

A couple of things I want to point out: at 1:10 into the video, you see the Milky Way rising majestically over the mountains, and you can see a faint, whitish glow stretching diagonally across the field of view, at an angle to the galaxy. That's called the zodiacal light, and is caused by the reflection of sunlight by dust in the plane of our solar system. It's probably due to eons of collisions grinding asteroids into dust; they tend to orbit the Sun in the same plane as the planets. It's actually a disk of dust, but since we're in it, we see it as a line across the sky. It's pretty faint, and you need dark skies to spot it. Read more.

Old Photos of Japan

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 02:35 PM PDT

These are old shots of Japan taken mostly in 1886. These historical photos are magnificent. Very interesting to be able to learn a little about Japan's history. Old photos show us their life, traditions, simply how they used to live. But today there is a lot of weird photos from Japan. Enjoy!

Source: flickr

A Rare Glimpse Into Daily Life in North Korea

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 12:37 PM PDT

North Korea is one of the most secretive countries in the world. Most images of life in this state that are released in the mainstream media display military exercises and grandiose parades.

British photographer Charlie Crane traveled to Pyongyang, the capital city, and obtained permission to photograph daily life in North Korea. As you can see Charlie was accompanied by a guide, so all the photos look like North Korean propaganda posters.

Epic Fails - Part 14

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 11:56 AM PDT

There are so many hilarious and weird moments in our lives that it's impossible to capture all of them. Here is a selection of new funny fails that will make you laugh or wonder why people would do it.

Previous parts:
Epic Fails - Part 1
Epic Fails - Part 2
Epic Fails - Part 3
Epic Fails - Part 4
Epic Fails - Part 5
Epic Fails - Part 6
Epic Fails - Part 7
Epic Fails - Part 8
Epic Fails - Part 9
Epic Fails - Part 10
Epic Fails - Part 11
Epic Fails - Part 12
Epic Fails - Part 13

Where to Hide One Million Dollars

Posted: 01 Jun 2011 11:40 AM PDT

The largest U.S. bill in circulation is the hundred dollar bill, and it takes 10,000 of those to make one million dollars. But it needs also as much space as 10 thousand 1 dollar bills. So here is a little experiment with 10,000 of 1 dollar bill. Let's see how much space would a million dollars take up and where you could hide it.