Central Perk

joi, 12 septembrie 2013

Marking September 11th

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Yesterday, President Obama honored the memory of the victims of September 11th by participating in a moment of silence at the White House, attending a memorial ceremony at the Pentagon, and volunteering in a service opportunity with a Washington-area organization providing meals to people living with life-challenging illnesses.

Click here to read more.

President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Dr. Jill Biden listen with White House staff as a bugler plays "Taps" on the South Lawn of the White House after a moment of silence to mark the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Sept. 11, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Five Steps to Finding (the Right) Guest-Blogging Opportunities

Posted: 11 Sep 2013 04:18 PM PDT

Posted by MackenzieFogelson

Guest blogging isn't just a link building tactic (that has been spammed and abused). It's an excellent way to build your credibility, your community, and your customer base.

But you have to be strategic about it and put some quality effort into it.

When you guest blog, you've been provided the opportunity to leverage someone else's audience, someone else's brand, and someone else's established forum.

That means, if you're doing it right, guest blogging should be some of your best work. Think of it as a speaking engagement. You wouldn't get up in front of a group of people unprepared. You would take the time to carefully craft your message in order to make the biggest impact on your audience.

And when you're putting in all of that hard work, you don't just want to guest blog anywhere. You want to strategically put your effort into blogs that are a match for your values, philosophies, and company. Because ultimately, you're using guest blogging as a tactic to attract customers to your business.

Finding a guest-blogging matchâ€¨

So let's say you want to use guest blogging as a tactic for your business development and community building efforts. How would you find those opportunities?

How about these five simple steps:

[1] Determine goals and key performance indicators (KPIs)

Success in anything, but especially in guest blogging, starts with identifying goals. What are you trying to accomplish? What are you expecting to gain from it? And, also very significant: How will you measure success?

Let's say I'm looking for blogging opportunities. There are three things that I would like to accomplish:

Become part of new communities and build relationships with people outside of SEO. (Not that there's anything wrong with SEOs. It's just an example, folks. Carry on).â€¨
Attract business that is a match for Mack Web's culture and values.â€¨
Find new information sources (blogs) where I can learn, teach the team, and better serve our clients.â€¨â€¨

I would measure success in connections made, qualified leads generated, and new quality blogs to read.

[2] Define your audience by developing personas

â€¨In order to determine the right guest-blogging opportunities, you've got to identify your target audience. One way to do that is to develop personas. This will help you define the specific people you want to attract to your community and your company through your guest-blogging efforts.

For example, if I'm looking to attract people who are curious about social media marketing, possibly community building, and how that can help them build their business, one of my personas may look like this:

Name: Joanna
â€¨Title: CMOâ€¨
Company: A small SaaS startupâ€¨
Desires: Rapid growth, increased revenue generation
â€¨Goals: Drive ROI through social and community building

â€¨â€¨Having an understanding of who you're targeting will assist you in filtering guest-blogging prospects later.

[3] Find some targets in your niche â€¨

Now that you've figured out who in general you want to target, you'll want to actually find the specific people that you want to reach out to for guest-blogging opportunities. You can start by looking for influential people and then determining whether they have blogs to which you could contribute.

Using myself as an example, I would go to Followerwonk and do some searching. I'm going to start with the phrase "social media marketing" and then sort the results by Social Authority.

After sifting through just the first page of results, I recognize Jeff Bullas as a possible guest blogging target. He's not the CMO I'm looking to attract, but I'd be willing to bet there are CMOs that read his blog. So let's work with him as a possible target in the social media marketing niche.

[4] Qualify the sourceâ€¨

Once you've found some possible targets in your niche, you'll want to do a little legwork to make sure they're the right fit. You may want to keep track of this stuff in a spreadsheet so that you can organize and filter your results later.

There may be bunch of things that you investigate with these opportunities, but if you're trying to do this quickly, try some of these:

1. Check for a blog

Clearly you cannot guest blog for someone who does not in fact have a blog, so that's step number one.

On Jeff Bullas's blog, I can conduct a simple search for [guest post]:

By clicking on these results, it's clear that he allows guest submissions (and, in fact, that he allows them quite frequently). So if this ends up being a good fit for me, I may have a greater chance of getting a spot.

2. Check for domain authority and link profile

â€¨You'll want to make sure that you're putting all of the hard work of your quality content on a blog that has strong credibility.

You can type the URL of the blog into Open Site Explorer to check their domain authority and link profile. You will certainly be earning a link from this blog, so even if it is nofollow, you want to ensure that you're being associated with a quality site. Not that a low DA is always an indication of a poor blog; some are just new and haven't yet built their authority. You just want to make sure you're building trust and not hurting your reputation, your brand, or your own link profile. In addition to DA, then, you'll want to check their profile:

At a quick glance, Jeff Bullas's link profile looks pretty swell; he's earned links from some reputable places. I would say he passes the domain authority and link profile check.

Just make sure when you're qualifying blogs that are not as established or well known that you're picky about this stuff so that you don't pay for it later. You want to be associated with high quality, so that's what you're looking for.

â€¨â€¨3. Check for engagement

You also want to make sure you've qualified this guest-blogging opportunity on the social side. What kind of engagement does the blog get? What does its community look like? What is its reach?

Looking at both Jeff Bullas's posts, and especially at his guest authors' posts, you can see that there's quite a bit of engagement. Not only do they get shared, but they even elicit comments:

Another way to look for engagement is to search for the URL of the guest blog post in Twitter. This will allow you to investigate the people who have actually tweeted this guest blogger's post:

Chances are many of the same people who read and tweet these posts are the same ones that may read or share mine (if I were given the opportunity, of course). Based on who is tweeting these posts, I can determine whether that audience is a match for the persona I've defined.

[5] Check yes or no

Once you've worked through each of the steps above, you're probably ready to make a decision about the guest-blogging opportunity that's in front of you. But before you check "yes" or "no" (and ask for the opportunity), I'd highly recommend asking yourself one final question:

Is this guest blogging opportunity a culture and value fit for your business?

Ultimately, if your guest blogging is a success, you will attract customers from this blog to your website and blog. So, most importantly, you've got to make sure the people who are part of this community are in alignment with your brand.

Go read the entries on the blog. Is the content of good quality? Do the posts resonate with your philosophies? Are the other contributors to this blog reputable? Would you hang out with them? If you were to guest on this blog, would it speak well of your brand?â€¨â€¨ Are you going to want any of their readers as your customers? Would you spend time with their community?

Just some important things to think about before you spend a whole lot of time on guest blogging. Make sure it's a match for your business.

Time well spent

Guest blogging is a really powerful way to connect with people, build relationships, and find qualified leads for your business. If you take the time to strategically seek and qualify the right opportunities, it will be time well spent.

Have you had success in finding quality guest blogging opportunities? Share your successes and techniques in the comments below.

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Just For Laughs Gags: "Just for Laughs Gags - Season 1 Episode 9" and more videos

Mihai T, check out the latest videos from your channel subscriptions for Sep 12, 2013. Play all »

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Seth's Blog : Edgecraft instead of brainstorming

Edgecraft instead of brainstorming

One of the challenges of brainstorming a new idea is that there's too much freedom. With too many possibilities, we can seize up, unable to think of much of anything.

In established organizations, this is particularly difficult, because the first thing the lizard brain says to you is, "don't say that, because if they like it, you're going to be the one who has to build it."

Instead, consider the notion of edgecraft:

1. Find an edge… a free prize that has been shown to make a product or service remarkable.
2. Go all the way to that edge—as far from the center as the consumers you are trying to reach dare you to go.

You must go all the way to the edge… accepting compromise doesn’t make sense. Running a restaurant where the free prize is your slightly attractive waitstaff won’t work—they’ve got to be supermodels or weightlifters or identical twins. You only create a free prize when you go all the way to the edge and create something remarkable.

The cheapest, easiest, best designed, funniest, most expensive, most productive, most respected, cleanest, loudest...

Before you begin to do edgecraft, you must accept the fact that the edges of the problem aren’t always obvious. Because the edge you’re seeking is not the primary reason for being, you’ve got to see it out of the corner of your eye. It’s not always clear exactly what would make your product or service significantly more remarkable, until you embrace the fact that the problem you’re trying to solve isn’t the problem you think you have. It's also quite possible that your edge will merely be stupid, not effective.

Sometimes you don’t discover the problem you’re solving until after you’ve solved it—it’s not always a top-down process. Someone creates something weird or neat or quirky or fun and the marketplace embraces it. You don’t often create a more popular restaurant by serving better food. You can do it by serving remarkable food, or having a remarkable location or a remarkably famous chef. You don’t often build a better car by building a faster car. You do it by building the most beautiful car, or the least polluting car, or the biggest car. At least for a while.

Instead of slogging your way through incremental improvements in the core element of your offering, then, the edgecrafter seeks out another element and pushes it so far it becomes remarkable.

• Email to a friend •

miercuri, 11 septembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

AFL-CIO Lays Out "Laundry List" of Formal Complaints Regarding Obamacare; The Bright Side of Obamacare
Obamacare Fraud Free-For-All Now Underway; "ObamaMarket" Enrollment Starts October 1
States Have an Incentive to Promote (Not Stop) Disability Fraud; So How Much Fraud Is There?

AFL-CIO Lays Out "Laundry List" of Formal Complaints Regarding Obamacare; The Bright Side of Obamacare

Posted: 11 Sep 2013 07:30 PM PDT

On February 19, I wrote Opting Out of Obamacare (the Unaffordable Health Care Act); Not Even Labor Unions Want It.

The issue has now come to a head as the AFL-CIO Lays Out "Laundry List" of Formal Complaints Regarding Obamacare.

The Hill reports AFL-CIO nearing formal criticism of ObamaCare

Unions, after a contentious and difficult process, are on the cusp of issuing formal criticism of ObamaCare at the AFL-CIO convention.

Council is expected to consider a resolution, subject to fierce internal debate, that will call for changes to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — setting up a potential floor vote this Wednesday before the convention closes. Frustration has grown within labor as the Obama administration has failed to offer a fix to temper union worries over the law.

A copy of the draft resolution, obtained by The Hill, praises aspects of ObamaCare and states that the AFL-CIO supports the law's goal of providing healthcare coverage for all. But the four-page document lays out a laundry list of complaints against ObamaCare — at times taking aim at the administration.

The draft resolution says that "federal agencies administering the ACA" are "threatening the ability of workers to keep health care coverage through some collectively bargained, non-profit health care funds" under their interpretation of the law.

In addition, the resolution claims "some workers might not be able to keep their coverage," and the law will be "highly disruptive" to union members' health plans, known as multi-employer or Taft-Hartley plans. ObamaCare "will effectively use taxpayer dollars to subsidize employers that refuse to take responsibility for providing their employees health care" while taxing nonprofit plans to benefit insurance companies.

The measure also states that "the ACA should be administered in a manner that preserves the high-quality health coverage multiemployer plans have provided to union families for decades and if this is not possible, we will demand the ACA be amended by Congress."

Obamacare For Dummies: The "Affordable Care Act" In One Chart

I picked up the link to The Hill from ZeroHedge who also posted this amusing chart of Obamacare.

Fraud Free-For-All

One look at the above chart easily explains what I wrote earlier today: "Obamacare Fraud Free-For-All Now Underway"

The Bright Side

But please look on the bright side: the fraudsters, the insurance companies, and the 1% who represent the fraudsters and insurance companies should make out like bandits.

If that's not enough to give everyone who voted for Obama a warm, glowing feeling, what is?

Change You Can Believe In

Sarcasm aside, please recall that Obama did not promise change. He only promised "change you could believe in".

People believed, but as I see it, the fraudsters, the war-mongers, and the 1% are still in control.

To be perfectly fair, there is a legitimate "bright side" for some small set of disadvantaged souls who are better off with this plan. Rest assured that's an accident.

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

Obamacare Fraud Free-For-All Now Underway; "ObamaMarket" Enrollment Starts October 1

Posted: 11 Sep 2013 12:26 PM PDT

Rick Newman, writing for Yahoo!Finance Exchange says Obamacare Could Be a Fraudsters' Free-For-All

Have any idea where to find a health insurance exchange? Up to speed on what a healthcare "navigator" is? Know whether you'll need a new government-issued ID card to qualify for Obamacare when it goes live on October 1?

Scam artists hope you're as clueless as possible, because they're counting on widespread confusion about the Affordable Care Act to tap fresh opportunities for milking the unwary.

Scams are nothing new, but three factors make the Affordable Care Act a uniquely rich opportunity. First, the law affects nearly every American in some way, since it requires most people to have health care coverage. Second, it won't be standardized nationwide, the way Medicare and Social Security are, since states have the freedom to administer the law in different ways. Third, the law is brutally complex, which has sown confusion even among health care experts. The result is a sweeping new law that's shrouded in confusion and varies based on where you live, which is an invitation for abuse.

The proper response to fraudulent marketing, of course, is to hang up, delete or slam the door and then contact the FTC. But Obamacare comes with a few wrinkles that make it a bit harder to tell who's legit and who's bogus. The law, for instance, requires each health-insurance exchange to develop a network of "navigators" whose role is "to educate the public about qualified health plans, distribute information on enrollment and tax credits, facilitate enrollment, and provide referrals on grievances, complaints, or questions." Among other things, navigators will make sure people know they need insurance, and help enroll them in Obamacare if necessary.

Network of "Navigators" = Network of Fraud

Newman cited several instances where "navigator" had an icon for "healthcare.gov" that instead landed on a page where people could get "navigator help" for $40.

One site was shut down, two others changed the logo following complaints. But $40 is small potatoes compared to those out to steal your personal information and credit cards.

Overseas operators have already started their phone calls.

HealthCare.Gov

For those interested, here's the real link to HealthCare.Gov. Plan and cost information will be available October 1.

I went through a series of questions that I answered honestly. Here was the bottom-line result for me: Don't expect to save any money.

Specifically ...

"You may be eligible to get quality health insurance through the Health Insurance Marketplace. But based on the information you provided, you probably won't qualify to save money on your monthly premiums or out-of-pocket costs. You'll find out for sure when you apply for coverage starting October 1, 2013."

Pre-Existing Conditions

I do not have Pre-Existing Conditions. For the purpose of this article, however, I checked a a box stating that I wanted information about them.

Here are some snips:

Being sick doesn't keep you from getting coverage
Starting in 2014, being sick won't keep you from getting health coverage. An insurance company can't turn you down or charge you more because of your condition.
Once you have insurance, the plan can't refuse to cover treatment for pre-existing conditions. Coverage for your pre-existing conditions begins immediately.
This is true even if you have been turned down or refused coverage due to a pre-existing condition in the past.

The Pre-Existing Condition Exception

Grandfathered individual health insurance plans--the kind you buy yourself, not through an employer, do not have to cover pre-existing conditions. And I suspect they won't.

ObamaMarket Insurance

People with pre-existing conditions and their own healthcare plans will be forced into "ObamaMarket Insurance" either because of rising costs or because the plans will drop people with pre-existing conditions.

ObamaMarket Open Enrollment

You can apply for Health Insurance Marketplace insurance when open enrollment starts on October 1, 2013. Coverage starts as soon as January 1, 2014.
Open enrollment ends on March 31, 2014. Outside of open enrollment, you can't enroll in Marketplace coverage unless you have a qualifying life event.

Qualifying Life Event

The ObamaMarket glossary defines "Qualifying Life Event" as follows:

A change in your life that can make you eligible for a Special Enrollment Period to enroll in health coverage. Examples of qualifying life events are moving to a new state, certain changes in your income, and changes in your family size (for example, if you marry, divorce, or have a baby).

Curiously, the QLE glossary says nothing about change in job status by you or a significant other, self-employment changes, massive hikes in insurance rates, or other such events.

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

States Have an Incentive to Promote (Not Stop) Disability Fraud; So How Much Fraud Is There?

Posted: 11 Sep 2013 12:21 AM PDT

In response to Just How Distorted is the U.S. Unemployment Rate Number?, reader Bjorn asked "care to take a guess on the percentage of fraud among the population receiving disability compensation?"

Fraud Incentive

My Reply Follows:

I suspect fraud is in the neighborhood of 25-50% (and higher would not surprise me one bit). The reason is that States Have an Incentive to Promote (Not Stop) Disability Fraud.

This all goes back to 1996 when president Bill Clinton promised to "end welfare as we know it". He did indeed do just that, and fraud is the result.

Why?

The federal government pays disability, but states pay part of welfare costs. This creates a huge incentive for states to actively promote disability fraud (simply to get people off state-sponsored welfare programs).

Fraud escalated dramatically in the wake of the housing crash as jobs became scarce.

I discussed this previously in Unwilling to Work; 25% in Hale County AL Collect Disability, 14 Million Nationwide; A Simple Solution

Here is the key snip.

Clinton Ends Welfare As We Know It

In 1996 Bill Clinton signed a welfare reform act, that he proclaimed to be the "End of Welfare As We Know It". It was. People moved off welfare on to even easier to get disability programs.

Part of Clinton's welfare reform plan pushed states to get people on welfare into jobs, partly by making states pay a much larger share of welfare costs.

The incentive "worked" using the term loosely. Welfare rolls shrank but disability rolls soared.

Welfare Costs States Money Disability Doesn't

[From the NPR report "Unfit For Work" - Please read this snip. It's key to understanding the fraud promotion claim]

A person on welfare costs a state money. That same resident on disability doesn't cost the state a cent, because the federal government covers the entire bill for people on disability. So states can save money by shifting people from welfare to disability. And the Public Consulting Group is glad to help.

PCG is a private company that states pay to comb their welfare rolls and move as many people as possible onto disability. "What we're offering is to work to identify those folks who have the highest likelihood of meeting disability criteria," Pat Coakley, who runs PCG's Social Security Advocacy Management team, told me.

The company has an office in eastern Washington state that's basically a call center, full of headsetted women in cubicles who make calls all day long to potentially disabled Americans, trying to help them discover and document their disabilities:

"The high blood pressure, how long have you been taking medications for that?" one PCG employee asked over the phone the day I visited the company. "Can you think of anything else that's been bothering you and disabling you and preventing you from working?"

The PCG agents help the potentially disabled fill out the Social Security disability application over the phone. And by help, I mean the agents actually do the filling out.

There's a reason PCG goes to all this trouble. The company gets paid by the state every time it moves someone off of welfare and onto disability. In recent contract negotiations with Missouri, PCG asked for $2,300 per person. For Missouri, that's a deal -- every time someone goes on disability, it means Missouri no longer has to send them cash payments every month. For the nation as a whole, it means one more person added to the disability rolls.
Disability Fraud

Who is making the case for the other side? Who is defending the government's decision to deny disability?

Nobody.

And that in a nutshell explains soaring disability roles and massive fraud.

When Jobs Are Plentiful

When jobs are plentiful, most people would prefer to work. But, when jobs are scarce, and welfare pays more than a minimum wage job, many would prefer not to work.

I wrote about this aspect on August 20 in Why Work for $7.25 When Welfare Pays $15.00 in 12 States and $8.00 in 33 States? Is a Low Minimum Wage the Problem?

When states come in and actively promote fraud as a means to get people off welfare, guess what happens?

Disability fraud is the answer.
Thank Bill Clinton!

Key Stats

Here are some stats from "Unfit for Work"

Every month 14 million Americans receive a disability check.
In 1961 the leading cause of disability was heart disease and strokes, totaling 25.7% of cases. Back pain was 8.3% of cases.
In 2011 the leading cause of disability was a hard to disprove back pain, totaling 33.8% of cases. The second leading cause was an equally difficult to disprove "mental illness" at 19.2%. Strokes and heart disease fell to 10.6%.
In Hale County Alabama 1 in 4 receive disability checks.
One thing nearly every case in Hale County Alabama has in common is Dr. Perry Timberlake who defines disability in a rather creative way.
Once people go onto disability, they almost never go back to work. Fewer than 1 percent of those who were on the federal program for disabled workers at the beginning of 2011 have returned to the workforce.

Quantifying the Fraud

Fraud varies state by state with welfare benefits and by how aggressive states are in pushing people off of welfare on to disability programs.

Given the incentive of states to push people into disability programs, and for people to never leave disability once in the program, a reasonable person would expect fraud to be rampant.

I guess 25-50% of disability claims are fraudulent, but higher would not surprise me in the least given back pain has soared from 8.3% to 33.8% and "mental illness" is at 19.2%. Combined, that is whopping 53% of disability claims!

Unemployment Numbers

Inquiring minds are asking "how does this affect unemployment numbers?"

That's a good question, so let's crunch some numbers.

With 14 million collecting disability benefits ...

25% Fraud would add 3.5 million to the Labor Force
33% Fraud would add 4.7 million to the Labor Force
50% Fraud would add 7.0 million to the Labor Force

Let's assume 25% fraud, a rather modest assumption given the incentives for states to promote fraud coupled with the fact that a whopping 53% of disability claims are for suspicious reasons.

The examples below assume use of my practical definition of unemployment: Those who want a job, but do not have one. I also assume those fraudulently collecting disability payments would want a job if the payments stopped.

Base Numbers (from the latest jobs report - see BLS in Wonderland)

Civilian Labor Force: 155,486
Unemployed: 11,316,000

To the base numbers we need to add those not in the labor force but want a job.
That number is 6,285,000 (for a chart and further details, see Just How Distorted is the U.S. Unemployment Rate Number?)

Calculation Assuming 25% Fraud

Labor Force: 155,486,000 + 6,285,000 + 3,500,000 = 165,271,000
Unemployed: 11,316,000 + 6,285,000 + 3,500,000 = 21,101,000
Unemployment Rate: 21,101,000 / 165,271,000 = 12.77%

Calculation Assuming 33% Fraud

Labor Force: 155,486,000 + 6,285,000 + 4,700,000 = 166,471,000
Unemployed: 11,316,000 + 6,285,000 + 4,700,000 = 22,301,000
Unemployment Rate: 22,301,000 / 166,471,000 = 13.40%

Calculation Assuming 50% Fraud

Labor Force: 155,486,000 + 6,285,000 + 7,000,000 = 168,771,000
Unemployed: 11,316,000 + 6,285,000 + 7,000,000 = 24,601,000
Unemployment Rate: 24,601,000 / 168,771,000 = 14.58%

That is the disability fraud angle. It does not include those fraudulently receiving standard welfare (nor does it include those working part-time but want a full-time job).

The welfare fraud calculation is complicated by the fact that many on welfare work. Nonetheless, it's reasonably safe to add another 0.5% to 1.0% to account for welfare fraud (for those not yet pushed into disability fraud).

Comparison to BLS

Using my practical definition of unemployment, and factoring in disability fraud (but not welfare fraud), a realistic unemployment rate ranges from 12.77% to 14.58%.

For comparison purposes, the BLS has a base unemployment rate of 7.3% and a U-5 Rate of 8.7% (supposedly counting those who want a job but did not look).

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

Fake Pregnancy Prank [Video]

Posted: 11 Sep 2013 03:21 PM PDT

With a fake baby bump under her shirt, prankster Andria approached complete strangers and accused them of being responsible for her child.

Floyd Mayweather's Luxurious Lifestyle

Posted: 11 Sep 2013 03:16 PM PDT

The life of Floyd "Money" Mayweather.

This Girl is Good at Makeup

Posted: 11 Sep 2013 02:53 PM PDT

She wants to become a special effects makeup artist.

Via reddit

Brothels of Jakarta

Posted: 11 Sep 2013 02:23 PM PDT

Prostitution is illegal in Indonesia but because it is one of the main tourist attractions, the local police doesn't care much about it. The girls, 30% of whom are underage, are working in terrible conditions. A photographer Ed Wray visited Jakarta's red light district.