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vineri, 6 iunie 2014

A Very European West Wing Week

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This week, the President embarked on a four-day tour of Europe, visiting Poland, Belgium, and France. President Obama reaffirmed our alliance with Poland, met with Ukrainian President-elect Petro Poroshenko, attended the G-7 Summit in Brussels, and traveled to France to meet with President Hollande and attend the D-Day ceremonies in Normandy.

Watch this special edition of West Wing Week, featuring highlights from the President's trip:

The year 2030:

Hi, everyone --

This past Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed national limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants for the first time.

Since then, folks across the country -- on editorial boards, in classrooms, on front porches -- have been weighing in on why this is so important. And with that in mind, here's something I want to make clear:

We're already experiencing the effects of climate change today -- but don't just think about this proposed rule in terms of the country we're living in right now. Think about the one we and our children are going to be living in by 2030.

Thanks to these limits, that country will have a 30 percent reduction in carbon pollution from the power sector. It will also have 25 percent less smog and soot, meaning children will have an estimated 150,000 fewer asthma attacks each year -- and they'll miss an estimated 180,000 fewer days of school. Americans across the board will have up to 3,300 fewer heart attacks a year.

And now that the rule has been proposed, you can participate in the process.

Right now, we're accepting comments from the public about the proposed power plant rule.

So if you've got something to say, you can submit a public comment here.

And if you want to get some more details about why this is good for the environment and public health -- or spread the word about why it's a big deal -- you can take a look at this infographic, and then pass it on.

Right now, we're in the process of developing the policies that will keep our planet clean and our kids healthy for years to come.

You can participate in that process right now. So if you've got a comment, you can make it here.

Thanks,

Administrator Gina McCarthy
Environmental Protection Agency

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Targeting Your Audience Earlier in the Buying Process - Whiteboard Friday

Posted: 05 Jun 2014 05:16 PM PDT

Posted by randfish

Bigger audiences and less competition aren't actually that hard to find; we just have to reach a bit farther up the funnel. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains the benefits of this largely unexplored place, showing you how to reach potential customers before they're even aware that they're looking for you.

Here's a still of this week's whiteboard:

Video transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today I'm going to talk a little about targeting your customers and your potential audience earlier in their buying process.

So you're probably familiar and have seen diagrams, maybe even from marketing class if you went to marketing class, about the buying journey. Usually, the buying journey starts somewhere around here. There's awareness, research, establishing criteria, evaluating vendors, and then making a buying decision.

I want to challenge us to think even a step ahead of that. Before we know that we're going to be aware of a potential product, we are pursuing our own interests. We are living our lives. We are maybe trying to chase away boredom or downtime on our mobile phones or browsing random sites on the Internet or following our interests.

Whatever we're doing actively, that's the first place where we usually start to have awareness about something. That awareness of a potential problem or an issue or something that we might want to invest in, a business could have those awareness issues, an individual could, a family could.

Then, once we get to an awareness stage, then we start realizing, "Hey, I have a need. I'm going to start researching this need, this problem, this challenge." Then, after I've researched a little, if I decide to keep going, I'll establish criteria by which I'm going to make a buying decision. I'll evaluate some vendors, and then I'll buy.

As you can see, this is often framed in terms of a funnel because there's usually a lot more people up here than there are down here. Some people decide the problem is just not that big, and they don't need to research it. Some people who research it decide it's too expensive, or they satisfice and do something else. Some people who start to evaluate vendors decide they don't like any of them, and so they never buy anything. And that's fine.

Here's the problem. In the SEO world especially, but even more broadly in Internet marketing, we think about all of our marketing efforts down at the bottom of this process. Even the most broad ones usually think in the awareness and research phase. Very, very rarely does anyone think about that "pursuing interests" phase, but you can do remarkable things here.

For each of these phases, there are questions that you want to ask yourself as a marketer and your team, things like: Where does your audience spend time online, and what are they doing on the Web? Who do they listen to?

Those big broad questions, because that can tell you, "Hey, we can create awareness even before that awareness exists on its own." This is the challenge of overcoming that branding problem that a lot of companies face, especially those who aren't very transactionally focused.

Then, when you get to that awareness stage, what are the earliest questions that your audience has around your topic? Not around the purchase or the criteria or the vendors, but around the broad topic. Then, in the research phase, how would someone discover the potential choices or solutions? What broad resources already exist out there that they might be navigating to in some way already?

Once you get to establishing criteria and evaluating vendors, you know what? Too late. You are too late. This is where everyone is already doing SEO. Every keyword phrase, term, every retarget or every content marketing effort, they're all here. Only a few of them are here, and almost none of them are up here. That's why it's so exciting.

Early means less competition, because there are so few people operating in here. It means more link opportunities, because a lot of the content that you create down in here is going to be very transactional, very promotional, not likely to pull in a lot of links, not reference worthy.

This stuff is super reference worthy. This is where content marketing plus link earning plus social sharing, that's where you really get that wonderful, wonderful effect of earning those links, which gets you more domain authority, which gets you the ability to rank higher for all your content, which then means the next time you produce content, it's easier and easier. That's the boulder rolling down the hill.

Earlier in the process means a bigger audience. A bigger audience, that means this is a great place to build community. This is a tough place to build community, not an impossible place, very tough compared to these.

But there are challenges that come along with this too. This is extremely hard, sometimes impossible to measure. In fact, I would say it is impossible to fully measure the efforts that you put in here and what comes out at the bottom of the funnel. You have to be willing to accept some serendipitous outcomes and some unmeasurable results.

Because of that, there's a lot less competition. By the way, you get a low overall conversion rate. You're going to target a ton of people. Look at Moz. I mean, our audience is 2.5 million, well maybe it's 3 million or more people coming to our website every month. There's not even close to half a percent of those people who are taking their free trial. Our audience, because we're reaching so far up into the phases of pursuing interests and awareness and research, we're not just spending time down here at the bottom of the funnel. For that reason, the overall conversion rate is very, very tiny.

Because of these things, because it's hard to measure, because so many of the results are serendipitous, and because of that low overall conversion rate, it's super hard to get managers or executives or clients to buy into a process like this. A lot of people are just going to say "no," and not do it.

I love marketing opportunities where lots of people are saying "no." You know why I love them? I love them because it means that there's opportunity for me. It means I can make a lot of mistakes, I can not be perfect at it, and I'm the only one there. It's a beautiful thing.

So, I've created a quick example to kind of walk you through this. Here's Rand, and I get an email from Darren Rowse at ProBlogger, and he's inviting me to come speak in Australia. Boy, Australia is a long ways away. But you know what? I want to make the trip. The ProBlogger conference sounds awesome, super cool audience. I love bloggers. I think they're a fantastic group for me to be presenting to. I think I can make a really good deck, and it's a great opportunity.

So all right, I'm going to go, but I'm also going to have three or four extra days in Queensland while I'm there. What should I do with those days? Where should I go? Well, I've already been pursuing some interests, doing things around this. I happen to know some stuff about Australian tourism and particularly one of Queensland's projects.

So I have some awareness preexisting, but the places where I hang out, social networks, technology events, tech and marketing sites have only ever once, once ever seen a company that was smart enough to do marketing alongside an event. It was like a technology search event that I went to in Utah, and a local skiing, snowboarding, slopes company had partnered with the event to run something, an offer, a discount, and this kind of thing. So a ton of people at the conference went to that skiing/snowboarding event, which was very smart because they got a lot of extra rentals. It was kind of off-season for them normally anyway. So very smart.

But these are not places where vacation folks are normally thinking about hanging out. Maybe they should. The questions that I'm asking, those early questions that I'm asking: What time of year? What will the weather be like? What about normal travel things, like adaptors and currency and prices I should expect to pay for all sorts of things? What about tipping customs? All the usual travel questions. Airlines, I'm trying to get from the West Coast of the United States to Australia.

So I have all of these kinds of questions, which a shockingly small number; I think there was maybe one or two hotel websites that I eventually found that offered this type of information. So I had to go research them elsewhere. By the way, those elsewheres were not places where any of those companies were advertising or marketing or had a partnership. What are they doing?

The places that already exist to help me find these potential choices, these are places like the Queensland Tourism Bureau and hotel resort listings and travel aggregators and blogs and forums. This is where I started to see a lot of marketers being intelligent. They had gotten to this research phase already.

But if you can take your marketing efforts and think up the funnel, rather than down, and think about keywords, websites, content, social accounts, potential influencers, all of these types of folks and opportunities, you can have an immense impact on your downstream funnel, and you can do so with far less competition and oftentimes a much larger audience.

So, hopefully, some of you are going to think a little bit earlier in the funnel around your SEO, your social, and your content efforts. We look forward to having you join us again next time for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

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Seth's Blog : The number #1 reason to focus

The number #1 reason to focus

You will care more about the things that aren't working yet, you'll push through the dip, you'll expend effort and expose yourself to fear.

When you have a lot of balls in the air, it's easy to just ignore the ones that make you uncomfortable or that might fall.

Success comes from doing the hard part. When the hard part is all you've got, you're more likely to do it.

And this is precisely why it's difficult to focus. Because focusing means acknowledging that you just signed up for the hard part.

• Email to a friend •

joi, 5 iunie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Oklahoma Recognizes Gold and Silver Coins as Legal Tender

Posted: 05 Jun 2014 12:34 PM PDT

OpenStates.Org notes Oklahoma SB862 was signed by Governor Mary Fallin yesterday.

SB862 recognizes gold and silver coins as legal tender in the state.

Here is the Text of SB862.

Although the bill recognizes gold and silver as legal tender, it also states "No person may compel another person to tender or accept gold or silver coins that are issued by the United States government, except as agreed upon by contract."

Actually, no one should be compelled to take any currency.

Shirley & Banister Public Affairs emailed this statement today:

Oklahoma joins Utah, Texas, and Louisiana, as states that have removed taxes on gold and silver coins, and nearly a dozen other states are currently considering legislation to recognize gold and silver coins as hard money.

The United States Constitution (Article I: Section 10) enables states to declare gold and silver coins as legal tender and gives them the impetus to remove all taxes on gold and silver. APIA is the leading organization promoting sound money and working to uphold this article of the Constitution.

"I commend the people of Oklahoma, particular Senator Clarke Jolley and Governor Mary Fallin, for asserting their state's constitutional right to declare gold and silver legal tender," said American Principles in Action Chairman Sean Fieler. "With the Federal Reserve actively suppressing interest rates and eroding the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar, it is welcome news to see one more state give its citizens tax free access to money that holds its value over time."

American Principles in Action was the leading group promoting this state legal tender bill in Oklahoma and they continue to work to promote sound money legislation across the U.S.

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

ECB Pulls Out Pea Shooter, Fires, Misses Target

Posted: 05 Jun 2014 10:20 AM PDT

In a widely expected move this morning, ECB president Mario Draghi announced negative interest rates, the first-ever move for a major central bank.

The deposit rate in Europe is now negative 0.10%. The ECB also lowered the benchmark rate from 0.25% to 0.15%.

In a display of puffery, Draghi announced "we aren't finished here".

The Financial Times provided a few more details in its report: ECB unveils extraordinary moves to fight deflation, lift economy

The ECB will offer cheap longer-term loans, known as a targeted longer-term refinancing operations, which will resemble the structure of the Bank of England's Funding for Lending Scheme.

There will be four TLTROs, all maturing by September 2018, worth up to €400bn. "A number of provisions will aim to ensure that the funds support the real economy. Those counterparties that have not fulfilled certain conditions regarding the volume of their net lending to the real economy will be required to pay back borrowings in September 2016," Mr Draghi said.

The ECB will also continue to provide shorter-term cheap loans to banks at fixed rates until at least the end of 2016.

Mr Draghi said the ECB had "decided to intensify preparatory work related to outright purchases" of asset-backed securities, a limited form of quantitative easing.

Pea Shooter, Not a Bazooka

The TLRTO refinancing operations will not apply to mortgages out of fear of overstimulating housing.

Although I believe these actions will have the effect of a pea shooter, this is not a call for the ECB to do more.

The ECB has an irrational fear of falling prices and should not have done anything at all. Contrary to popular myth, falling prices do not cause consumers to delay purchases. The problem is debt, not low prices. For further analysis, please see Deflation Theory Reality Check.

We are in this mess because central banks have blown serial bubble after bubble, each with a bigger amplitude.

ECB Goals

The ECB hopes to spur lending, especially to small businesses, stop deflation, cheapen the Euro, increase exports, and improve economic growth.

Will the ECB's Actions Work?

In a nut shell no.

Negative interest rates were tried before and they accomplished nothing. Denmark tried a -0.2% rate in 2012 and it did not spur lending, nor did negative rates cause customers to pull money out of banks as some feared.

As I have noted on many occasions, banks lend if and only if two conditions are met.

Banks are not capital impaired
Banks believe they have credit-worthy borrowers on a risk adjusted basis

What about the housing bubble? Banks knew they did not have credit-worthy customers but they thought they could dump the assets on others. Banks also believed no one would ever walk away from houses. Those were bad assumption and banks seriously misjudged the risks. Banks do see such risks now.

In this case, Draghi's moves will not spur lending because the ECB did nothing to make customers more credit-worthy. To top it off, the ECB is tightening capital requirements.

Instead of lending more, banks will raise fees to make up for the loss they take on parking money with the ECB. And if the ECB make the deposit rate negative enough, there will be a run on the bank by depositors.

All in all, slightly negative interest rates will have a slightly negative impact on lending.

The ECB hinted at QE, but in practice will be unable or unwilling to match the scale of Fed QE actions. And Germany will scream every step of the way on any move.

Thus, there is no reason to believe future ECB actions will substantially cheapen the euro or increase exports.

In short, the ECB's actions cannot possibly accomplish anything except perhaps fuel even bigger asset bubbles in stocks and bonds.

Euro 5 Minute Chart

It is risky to make assumptions based on price movements in a single day, nonetheless, today's action in the euro was interesting.

After opening lower, the euro is now in positive territory. This is arguably an early indication of the Forex market's opinion on the ECB's pea shooter approach.

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

Damn Cool Pics

Florida Woman Bit By Shark, No Big Deal
15 Martial Arts Belt Ranks [Infographic]
What Flight Attendants Won't Tell You About Flying
The Most Epic Fails In The History Of The Human Race

Florida Woman Bit By Shark, No Big Deal

Posted: 05 Jun 2014 06:23 PM PDT

This Florida woman got bit by a shark but to her it's no big deal. Just a little scratch.

Warning: Graphic Images

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15 Martial Arts Belt Ranks [Infographic]

Posted: 05 Jun 2014 12:44 PM PDT

It can be a bit difficult to know all the different martial belts and their meaning. Especially because there is a lot of variation between the different martial arts and sometimes also between the individual clubs.

The website Find Hold have made an awesome infographic with the belts and rankings for 15 different martial arts, which gives us a better view of what the different belts means.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

What Flight Attendants Won't Tell You About Flying

Posted: 05 Jun 2014 11:26 AM PDT

There's a lot you don't know about flying and some of these statistic are pretty terrifying. Buckle up and get ready. Here are the things flight attendants and pilots won't tell you about flying.

The Most Epic Fails In The History Of The Human Race

Posted: 05 Jun 2014 09:14 AM PDT

These epic fails are extremely important because they helped shape history. They also show that if you don't learn from other people's mistakes, history is doomed to repeat itself.