Central Perk

miercuri, 8 februarie 2012

The Challenge of Selling SEO & Forgetting the ‘Human Ranking Factor’

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 04:31 AM PST

As with selling any service, selling SEO services is an extremely challenging task. Here are my observations of two opposite ends of the spectrum of what SEO consultants often experience with selling SEO services.

Give me a two day optimisation strategy

We'll often get contacted with the following, "We want a two day web optimisation strategy implemented." Many neophyte consultants lick their lips and pounce on the 'opportunity' with alacrity. They start shooting off proposals, buffing up their hallowed methodology, and more.

A more sane, measured and customer-serving response to the request for a two day optimisation precess is, "Why?"

That always stops people in their tracks. "Why do you want a two day strategy implementation for your website and how do you know that's the right thing for you?"

In the act of asking that question, you start actually consulting. And if you engage in a real dialogue on the basis of those questions you will gain bracing insight into the real issues, challenges and aspirations of the potential client. You may also get a bracing introduction to the assumptions they're making — many of which are potentially untested.

It may well be that a two day implementation process is like a relatively empty vessel, into which (after suitable diagnostics and appropriate design) you can pour content that will actually serve their needs and best interests. But it may also be that a half day audit would suffice, and the real action needs to take place at their organisational levels, or with a different group of people, or may require preliminary contact with customers or other stakeholders. It could be that a six month process is needed.

My recommendation to companies who put out a request like the one above, and get a proposal back in response, is to disqualify the person or agency from further consideration, as the request has no meaning without further exploration.

And if you are an agency or a freelance consultant and receive a request like the above, differentiate yourself meaningfully by helping to get to the core of what's driving the request, rather than getting infatuated by the format proposed.

Avoiding the panacea of empty process

Here's another common challenge. An organisation decides they need to create a SEO strategy or a digital marketing strategy and manage its roll-out. They get an agency with a strategy implementation process, anchored in the balanced scorecard or some other framework. As they proceed, courtesy of this framework, they are deluged with meetings, with process charts, with communiques, and eventually they arrive at what they perceive to be ‘The Holy Grail’. Namely, they have a clear map. All inconsistencies are removed (at least on the charts anyway), and the path forward glitters like a mythical ‘Yellow Brick Road’.

The problem in the map is not the territory, and it never has been. The problem is that underlying the process clarity are dysfunctional relationships, misguided leadership behaviours, poorly aligned teams, social networks that don't operate well, departmental practices that may be out of kilter with strategic aspirations, information hoarded rather than shared, a culture that is ossified with past practices rather than vitalised by future aspirations. And eventually the 'knowing/doing gap' will become that much more profound.

My humble advice is that once you have process clarity, you have to convert that into a more human map: of behaviours-in-action, team composition and alignment, presence of vibrant or nullifying relationships, communication and network effectiveness, leadership role-modeling and relevant efforts at culture-shifting in order to make the processes actually manifest. Until these adaptive elements are infused into the process steps, to humanise and actualise the processes, we run the risk of trying to run the world from an operating manual.

It doesn't work. In fact, most of us don't even run our computers from a manual. We get some hands-on experience while drawing on some guidance, then tinkering and adapting based on results. Alas, in an organisation there are many more moving parts, and my 'tinkering' can have expensive consequences if not synergised with the learnings and efforts of others.

Process clarity and human engagement must march together. You can see an organisation as a collection of processes and plans. Fair enough. But you can even more meaningfully see it pulsating with human performance. In other words, the subtotal of all the actions, interactions, behaviours, collaboration and communication between all the people who make a difference to the success or failure of the organisation. You can see the organisation as a patchwork quilt of teams, conversations and acted upon commitments. These are human dimensions, or as I’d like to call it, the ‘human ranking factor’ and if not addressed, all the gewgaws and trinkets of process clarity will be fallow and leave your strategic marketing vision unfulfilled.

Image credit: mootown

Seth's Blog : How do they know you're not a flake?

How do they know you're not a flake?

Before your link gets clicked or your proposal gets read, a busy person is going to triage it to find out if it's even worth glancing at. Since everyone is now connected, the new permeability has created a deluge of noise, and just about everyone worth contacting is taking defensive measures.

Do I know this person?
Did someone I trust send them over?
Where does she work? (Ideo? the FDA? The New York Times?)
Has she won an award? Is she famous?
Are there typos and is the design sloppy?
Are they pestering me?
Do I already follow this person online?
Does music play when I visit the website?
Will my boss be pleased when I bring this project up?
Who else is pointing to/referencing/working with this person?
Is it too good to be true?

Notice that all of these questions get asked before the idea is even analyzed. Doesn't matter that this might not be fair, it's a hurdle you have to cross.

Not all good ideas are pre-proven, sophisticated and from reliable sources. That's not your fault. Doesn't matter. In a noisy world filled with choices, you can't blame your prospects for ignoring you. I know that you're talented and have a lot to offer, but do they?

• Email to a friend •

marți, 7 februarie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Postponed Due to "Political Suicide"; Flag of Germany Burned, Could This be a Trigger?
Banks Paying as Much as $35,000 Cash to Homeowners in Short Sales; Why and How Many?
Rise of the High Frequency Trading Robots
New Merkozy Proposal "I will Give You Money If You Give It Right Back"; Mathematical Scam to Prevent CDS Triggers

Postponed Due to "Political Suicide"; Flag of Germany Burned, Could This be a Trigger?

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 06:41 PM PST

Greece bailout talks that were postponed on Friday to Saturday, then Saturday to Sunday, then Sunday to Monday, then Monday to Tuesday. They have been postponed again, this time for a reason that makes perfect sense "Political Suicide".

The New Work Times reports Greece Puts Off Decision on Austerity Measures Amid a Strike Protesting Them

As thousands of Greeks walked off the job in a general strike on Tuesday to protest stringent new austerity measures, there was a growing sense that the country was reaching a critical point in its efforts to survive the debt crisis.

Greek political leaders postponed for yet another day a decision on an austerity package — including 20-percent cuts to base pay for workers in private companies and a loosening of public sector job protections — in exchange for the billions in loans Athens needs to prevent a default in March. With elections looming as soon as April, the parties fear that they are essentially being told to commit political suicide to save the country.

If that indeed is the case, analysts here say, it is not clear what will replace them, making Greece a potential laboratory for a volatile mix of austerity, populism and social unrest.

Not that the old order, widely derided as corrupt and inefficient, is likely to be deeply mourned.

For most Greek voters, the two larger parties participating in the fragile tripartite coalition of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos — the Socialist Party and the center-right New Democracy — were already drained of political capital before the debt crisis by decades of self-interest and corruption. That has now been capped by two years of unrelenting austerity that has hurt most Greeks but has ultimately failed to revive the system, or even change it in any significant way.

With unemployment at 19 percent, businesses closing, credit scarce and the proposed new wage cuts expected to further decimate the shrinking middle class, the hard left and extreme right are rising.

With Greek popular anger at the country's foreign lenders rising — a German flag was burned in front of Parliament at a demonstration on Tuesday — the Socialists and New Democracy are treading a fine line: They want to push back against the troika enough to regain some political capital — and keep more Greeks from falling into poverty — but not push hard enough to precipitate a default.

If the Greek political leaders do not agree to accept the new austerity measures in the coming days, Greece will run out of time to complete a broader deal for the voluntary write-down of Greek debt before a bond comes due on March 20. If Greece cannot pay the bond, it will default, which could result in its leaving the euro zone, among other ill effects.

Most Greeks say they have lost what little faith they had in the political system. "None of the parties we've been voting for have anything to offer," said Vassiliki Karanasou, 42, an employee in a biscuit factory north of Athens who was participating in a demonstration outside Parliament on Tuesday.

Eventually, Will Come a Time

I keep repeating Eventually, Will Come a Time When

Eventually, there will come a time when a populist office-seeker will stand before the voters, hold up a copy of the EU treaty and (correctly) declare all the "bail out" debt foisted on their country to be null and void. That person will be elected.

Flag-Burning Trigger

For Greece, "eventually" may be at hand. The only thing missing is a party leader willing to stand up and tell Germany to go to hell.

That is not a comment on the desirability of telling Germany to go to hell, rather a comment that is likely to happen. However, the austerity measures imposed by Germany and the Troika cannot possibly work, even though the worker reforms are badly needed.

What is causing the revolt? The sad irony of this mess is the flag-burning and latest strike is over the one thing that is needed: work rule reform.

The flag-burning incident could easily be a trigger.

All sides handled this very poorly straight from the get-go. Greece would have been better off defaulting 2 years ago and the EMU and ECB much better off to simply let it happen. Now Greece is totally and completely trashed, having agreed to austerity measures that cannot work and resisting work rule changes that can work, but only years down the road.

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

Banks Paying as Much as $35,000 Cash to Homeowners in Short Sales; Why and How Many?

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 10:53 AM PST

In a short sale, banks forgive the difference between what is owed and the sale price of the house. Recently, however, banks have started giving cash back to the sellers. So far, the programs are a drop in the bucket. There are millions of pent-up foreclosures and JP Morgan is doing 5,000 short sales a month, hardly enough to make a dent.

Still, "short sales represented 9 percent of all U.S. residential transactions in November, the most recent month for which data is available, up from 2 percent in January 2008, according to Corelogic."

Please consider Banks Paying Cash to Homeowners to Avoid Foreclosures

Banks, accelerating efforts to move troubled mortgages off their books, are offering as much as $35,000 or more in cash to delinquent homeowners to sell their properties for less than they owe.

Lenders have routinely delayed or blocked such transactions, known as short sales, in which they accept less from a buyer than the seller's outstanding loan. Now banks have decided the deals are faster and less costly than foreclosures, which have slowed in response to regulatory probes of abusive practices. Banks are nudging potential sellers by pre-approving deals, streamlining the closing process, forgoing their right to pursue unpaid debt and in some cases providing large cash incentives, said Bill Fricke, senior credit officer for Moody's Investors Service in New York.

Losses for lenders are about 15 percent lower on the sales than on foreclosures, which can take years to complete while taxes and legal, maintenance and other costs accumulate, according to Moody's. The deals accounted for 33 percent of financially distressed transactions in November, up from 24 percent a year earlier, said CoreLogic Inc., a Santa Ana, California-based real estate information company.

Karen Farley hadn't made a mortgage payment in a year when she got what looked like a form letter from her lender.

"You could sell your home, owe nothing more on your mortgage and get $30,000," JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) said in the Aug. 17 letter obtained by Bloomberg News.

Tom Kelly, a JPMorgan spokesman, declined to comment on the company's incentives.

"When a modification is not possible, a short sale produces a better and faster result for the homeowner, the investor and the community than a foreclosure," he said in an e-mail.

Lenders spend an average of 348 days to foreclose in the U.S. and an additional 175 days to sell the property, according to RealtyTrac. In New York, a state that requires court approval for repossessions, it takes about four years to foreclose on a home and then resell it, the company said.

Lenders can often afford to forgive debt, offer the incentive and still make a profit because they purchased the loan from another bank at a discount, said Trent Chapman, a Realtor who trains brokers and attorneys to negotiate with banks for short sales.

What's Really Going on Here?

If the answer is "it's faster, quicker, cheaper" than foreclosures, then why don't we see more of them, lots more of them?

Could it be these are the real problem loans with clouded titles, questionable practices by lenders, or huge numbers of written complaints by borrowers? Add to that a dearth of willing new borrowers and I think you have the answer.

Addendum:

Reader Bruce comments ...

Hello Mish

The only solution, is as you have said, to speed up the process. Unfortunately, this begs the question, how much more insolvency can the banks sweep under the carpet?

All the best Mish! fight the good fight!

Not to mention the fact that politicians are against foreclosures and have delayed, at great cost, stepping up the foreclosure process.

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

Rise of the High Frequency Trading Robots

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 09:56 AM PST

I do not know enough about algorithm-driven High Frequency Trading to comment intelligently other than to say 100% without a doubt that someone is making a huge pile of cash from HFT or it would not be done.

You can watch an animated GIF that chronicles the rise of the HFT Algo Machines from January 2007 through January 2012 by clicking on the link.

The GIF starts out slow and boring, but watch the progression through the end.

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

New Merkozy Proposal "I will Give You Money If You Give It Right Back"; Mathematical Scam to Prevent CDS Triggers

Posted: 06 Feb 2012 11:59 PM PST

The Merkel proposal for Greece to cede budget sovereignty to a European commissioner has finally been trashed. In its place is a Spaghetti-O loop proposal to give Greece money only if Greece earmarks the funds to immediately pay back bondholders.

Please consider Greece bail-out funds could be split

European officials are insisting any new Greek bail-out programme specifically earmark funds to pay off remaining holders of Greek debt, giving lenders the freedom to withhold aid to Athens without risking a messy default that could reignite panic in financial markets.

Under a new Franco-German plan that senior European officials said is likely to be included in a new Greek rescue, eurozone officials would create an escrow account to accept new bail-out funding instead of paying it all directly to Athens as in the past.

The new fund would then ensure bondholders are paid off, while additional cash to run the Greek government could still be withheld if Athens did not live up to tough new reform demands.

Eurozone officials said they believed the escrow account would give European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders strong control over Greece's use of bail-out funds without stripping Athens of its budgetary sovereignty

"This is a better idea than the proposal of a debt commissar," said the senior French official. "It is more acceptable."

Although the idea originated in Berlin, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, embraced it during a news conference with his German counterpart, Angela Merkel, following a joint cabinet meeting between the two governments in Paris. Ms Merkel also signalled her support, saying it would ensure "this money will be reliably accessible".

Mathematical Nonsense

They give money to an intermediary
The intermediary gives it right back

The proposal is of course mathematical nonsense, at least in regards to the portion of money going straight back to the bondholders (most of it).

In regards to the portion that goes to Greece, I still have to wonder.

Creditors either give Greece the money or don't. Once again, there is little reason for the middleman unless they want the IMF to be the judge as to whether or not Greece is living up to the agreements.

Essentially, the EMU is taking 130 billion out of their wallet, putting 110 billion (or whatever) right back in their wallet and calling it 130 billion in "new funding".

The only thing that can be construed of as "new funding" is the additional amount that actually goes to Greece.

Why the Mathematical Farce?

I suspect the answer is to make it appear as if Greece is paying back debts, when it isn't.

Weren't dotcom and mortgage frauds based on the same methodology? In the case of dotcoms, intracompany arrangements were made to make it appear there were actual revenue flows when there weren't. In the case of housing, such maneuvers could be used to make it appear someone was making payments on their mortgage when they really weren't.

This setup is either mathematical ignorance or a scam to prevent triggering of credit default swaps. I lean towards the latter.

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

Damn Cool Pics

Psycho Siri
Red Bull London Headquarters by Jump Studios
Baby Sleep Positions
10 Most Pirated Movies Of All Time [Infographic]
Russian Kid Climbs Buildings Like A Boss
Most Awkward Cat Sleeping Positions

Psycho Siri

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 05:07 PM PST

We've seen many parodies involving Siri, the personal assistant that comes with Apple's iPhone 4S. But rarely do you see one with special effects. Two brothers, Andrew and Nathan McMurry of andrewmfilms, have created Psycho Siri, a short horror film about an iPhone gone bad. An abandoned iPhone turns out to be a killer of a deal.

Red Bull London Headquarters by Jump Studios

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 04:24 PM PST

The Red Bull headquarters here in London's West End takes the concept of skateboarding a few steps further in the design of their office. This particular office space occupies three separate floors, and was designed by the team at Jump Studios. To make accessing each level of the building a breeze Red Bull implemented a floating staircase, and awesome slide built into the design, which also helps promote a creative, fun environment.

Baby Sleep Positions

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 02:17 PM PST

How To Be A Dad takes a look the nighttime challenges presented by various funny Baby Sleep Positions.

10 Most Pirated Movies Of All Time [Infographic]

Posted: 07 Feb 2012 01:06 PM PST

According to data collected by TorrentFreak, tens of thousands of movies are pirated every day using either BitTorrents or some other type of file sharing. Although the the top 10 movies have been downloaded millions of times they have also done very well in the box-office.

A side-by-side comparison of both lists shows "Avatar" as No. 1 and a couple others appearing in both lists, including "The Dark Knight" and "Transformers." This infographic by Meoble shows the same--major box office success for almost all of the top 10 pirated movies

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Russian Kid Climbs Buildings Like A Boss

Posted: 06 Feb 2012 09:24 PM PST

A hundred feet in the air, this kid jumps to get those last couple inches he needs to reach the roof of the building he's climbing… He does flips on the edges of apartment buildings… He hangs from a crane.

It's terrifying. The music didn't help, either.

Most Awkward Cat Sleeping Positions

Posted: 06 Feb 2012 03:35 PM PST

Do not attempt any of them unless you have professional experience with sleeping and being some kind of a cat. The real reason you should check out this collection of cat pictures is because they are both funny and adorable.

The Full Situp