Central Perk

vineri, 7 septembrie 2012

West Wing Week: Engage!

Your Daily Snapshot for
Friday, September 7, 2012

West Wing Week: Engage!

This week, the President visited Fort Bliss two years after he marked the end of major combat operations in Iraq and visited with victims of Hurricane Isaac. Meanwhile, the White House released its top secret beer recipe and the new White House app, and "We the People" got its three millionth signature.

Be sure to check out this week's behind-the-scenes video.

What SEOs can learn from online journalists

What SEOs can learn from online journalists

Posted: 06 Sep 2012 04:36 AM PDT

Journalists have been frantically learning SEO and social media techniques over recent years, so they can stay ahead online. But now some of them are so skilled that SEO teams could learn a few things from them too. From writing clickable headlines, to using Twitter to network, here are all the journo skills that I've learnt by following (no, not stalking!) some of the best in the business…

Monitoring and Targeting

Like most blogs, news sites tend to cover a number of different subjects. For the main newspapers, these tend to be major topics such as politics, finance, property, jobs and so on. However, within those ‘channels’, similar stories often come up again and again – interest rates, house prices, unemployment figures, that kind of thing.

Journalists and editors use analytics programs to check how many readers are visiting each section and which stories are grabbing their interest. That means that they can give more coverage to the stories that really interest their readers, and move other stories further down the hierarchy. This also allows them to maximise click-throughs from their front pages because they know what stories get readers excited.

You can replicate this on your own blog or corporate site. Work out what content works best for pageviews, CTRs and purchases. Then ensure these most successful topic areas are well optimised, often updated and well positioned on your website.

Massively successful news resources like the Mail Online and the Huffington Post only reached where they are by endlessly testing and never being entirely satisfied with their websites' click-through figures. You should do the same.

Using Twitter and Facebook to Research and Network

Anyone who’s used Twitter to any extent knows its power and reach. You can contact almost any other user, anywhere in the world, with a message of just 140 characters (or fewer) this is genuinely revolutionary. For journalists, it’s a whole new way of researching articles, and the #journorequest hashtag has become a first port of call for many when they’re looking for case studies or quotes from members of the public.

Most online news sites now tweet links to their major stories too. A single headline-worthy article can get a significant number of retweets, helping it to reach readers who might otherwise not have seen it. Add to this the Twitter conversations journalists and press representatives hold with each other on a daily basis. For journalists it’s a quick, easy but powerful way to network with other writers and to engage with their readers.

The lessons to be learnt for other webmasters and SEO teams are simple but worth spelling out – ignore Twitter, and your voice is missing from a global conversation. Make sure your best content is being tweeted, use hashtags to help get the message to people who don’t follow you, and aim to widen that audience still further. And don't allow your Twitter feed to become mundane and overly-corporate. Stay fun and stay engaged. You'll learn a lot about your customers and it could even help you generate ideas for blog posts and other content.

Although I hear a lot of negativity from SEOs about Facebook (some of them have already disabled their Facebook accounts), journalists use Facebook to engage with their audience and to reach out to a wider audience beyond the niche they operate within. Mia Aquino, The Huffington Post's social media editor has set up an 'interest list' on Facebook of all their journalists so people could keep up-to-date with what their journalists write. Journalists such as Craig Kanalley, Jahnabi Barooah and Rosa Golijan engage with their Facebook subscribers almost at a personal level on a daily basis, thereby increasing visibility to their posts on user's Facebook feeds.

Engagement and Relevancy

A good news site will pick out the most headline-worthy articles of the day, and give them pride of place on the front page (or main blog/magazine page). Think about this when updating your site – what belongs on your homepage (or main blog page)? And what can be moved deeper within your site?

It’s a rule of thumb that’s worth applying throughout your content – if a page is irrelevant to what you’ve got to offer, it'd be best to retire it, or update it so that it's relevant to your audience and your business. By keeping a tight focus on the topics you cover, you can demonstrate expertise and relevancy throughout your site to search engines, helping them better understand what your website is about and the industry you operate within.

Make sure all your authors and bloggers have verified authorship on Google Plus. This will help Google's algorithm distinguish the quality and relevancy of the content. If the blogger or author already possesses a high reputational score with Google, you will increase your site's visibility and ranking ability for a greater number of keywords.

Opinion and Controversy

Not everyone can court controversy on their website, but blogs are a good place to express opinion and welcome conflicting comments from your readers. Again, take your inspiration from news sites – while many news outlets have a political agenda to push, they typically don’t do so (well, not too obviously…) in their main articles.

Legitimate news providers distinguish between their journalistic reporting and their editorial columns – and on any website, you can create a similar distinction between static content, opinion-based blogs and self-promotional press releases. It helps your reader to understand where you’re coming from, and why some pages might be more opinionated than others – and a little controversy can help to get some commenting going on your blog posts, too.

There is an important distinction to make between news site comments and those on a less formal blog, however. When somebody comments on your personal blog, it’s common practice to reply to them, to keep the conversation going. In contrast, news sites usually rely on interaction between their readers, rather than with the article’s original author – something worth aiming for on your blog, if you can get your readers’ activity levels high enough.

Catering for Fickle Readers

Online readers are impatient – they won't wade through lengthy prose, even if they're happy reading War and Peace in real life. The internet isn’t the place people settle down to enjoy some timeless literature – in fact, they’re more likely to take ‘timeless’ to the other extreme and spend as little time as possible on your page.

Journalists understand this and are trained to use the ‘inverted pyramid’ model in their articles, with the most important information up top for those who don’t read to the end. For SEO it’s a particularly good approach, as the words and phrases you use up top will be given greater significance in choosing your page’s position in the search results.

The headline is a particularly important part of any page – whether it’s a news article or a static web page – as it highlights the main theme of your content. Make sure you’re picking out the key points in your headline, particularly if it doubles as your page’s HTML title and/or URL, as together these can all contribute towards the words and phrases the search engines associate with your page. Like in a news article, sub-headings also help to signpost readers to the sections of the page that include the information they’re looking for.

Remember, print came first, and while SEO has evolved over time much of it is still inspired by the early, print-like days of the internet. Classic page structures like news articles have left a permanent impression on the things search engines and people value.

Always on the Job

Finally, when you step away from your computer, it doesn’t mean your website ceases to exist. A good journalist will often carry around a notepad and jot down ideas for future articles, or make notes if he or she sees anything that might be worth investigating. You should do the same if you come across a timely and relevant issue that might earn you some extra search traffic if you blog about it or mention it on your website.

Many such ideas ultimately get forgotten by website owners, internet marketers and SEO teams, even if they seem unforgettable when you dream them up. By keeping a notepad – or even a note in your phone – handy, you make sure you remember your ideas. And it's worth it. If you manage to build your online brand successfully enough, you might one day be making a few headlines of your own.

Image credit: Yan Arief

Seth's Blog : A simple truth about photo albums

A simple truth about photo albums

When you hand someone a photo album or a yearbook, the first thing they will do is seek out their own picture.

Knowing that, the question is: how often are you featuring the photo, name, needs or wants of your customers where everyone (or least the person you're catering to) can see them?

• Email to a friend •

joi, 6 septembrie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

New York State Employment Situation in Graph Form
Unlimited Bond Buying "With Strings"; Mario Draghi vs. Randall from Monsters Inc
August Services ISM +53.7; All News Good News
Attention JP Morgan Chase Customers and Credit Card Holders

New York State Employment Situation in Graph Form

Posted: 06 Sep 2012 12:47 PM PDT

With jobs data coming out tomorrow, let's take a look at the current situation in New York, the country's second most populous state.

Here is a chart courtesy of Tim Wallace.

New York State Employment Situation

click on chart for sharper image

The chart shows second quarter data from 2012 vs. prior years. In table form, New York employment looks like this.

Year	Covered	Work Force	Unemployed
2000	8,155,000	8,999,000	390,100
2001	8,515,000	8,929,000	364,200
2002	8,312,000	8,976,000	523,600
2003	8,251,000	9,344,000	550,600
2004	8,217,000	9,273,000	539,700
2005	8,304,000	9,380,000	443,400
2006	8,358,000	9,519,000	430,400
2007	8,460,000	9,424,000	395,900
2008	8,601,000	9,579,000	469,400
2009	8,557,000	9,757,000	782,500
2010	8,306,000	9,675,000	785,000
2011	8,369,000	9,547,000	745,300
2012	8,477,000	9,562,000	824,000

Wallace Writes ...

Hi Mish

Recently we have heard how great the city of New York is doing employment wise.

Suffice it to say if the city of New York is doing so wonderfully, the rest of the state must be hurting for certain.

The data you are going to see on these charts is the foundation for the quarterly covered report. As you are aware covered employees are those with unemployment benefits. A high percentage of workers without benefits are self-employed.

In this chart you will clearly see the impact of both the 2001/2 recession and the more recent recession. The black line is the total unemployed, not just those covered by insurance.

For the past four years, New York State unemployment has remained well above the numbers leading into the recession, and in fact 45.8% on average higher than the 2001/2 recession impact.

Thus, I cannot see where the "recovery" is. In fact, 2012 is the worst year in history for New York.

The red line shows the New York Civilian Work Force, which as you can see has mostly historically trended up, until the Obama presidency.

Since then the trend is downhill, with the workforce now back to levels of 2008, while unemployment is twice the level of 2008. Is this truly a "recovery" and "change" that you can live with?

The blue line shows the number of people actually covered by the state level unemployment insurance. As those benefits ran out, covered employment crashed to a level actually below 2001.

2012 covered employee numbers are below the level in 200, in spite of a huge increase in population. Clearly there has been no recovery in benefits producing jobs.

Tim

Self-Employment Notes

Self-employed are not covered by unemployment insurance.

The "self-employed" group includes all of those selling trinkets on Ebay as a job as well as all of those "working" in their multi-level marketing "business". Others struggle as non-covered employees in family related businesses.

Many of those jobs are not "real" and produce little or no income. However, these people are counted in the workforce if they respond to the BLS in the household survey that they "worked" any hours.

Quick Stats 2001 vs. 2012

In 2001 there were 8,515,000 New Yorkers covered by unemployment benefits. Now there are 8,477,000.

In the same time frame, the work force has grown from 8,929,000 to 9,562,000 while unemployment rose from 364,200 to 824,000.

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

Unlimited Bond Buying "With Strings"; Mario Draghi vs. Randall from Monsters Inc

Posted: 06 Sep 2012 12:10 PM PDT

This post inspired by reader Mark who suggested ECB president Mario Draghi looks likes like Randall from Monsters Inc.

Inquiring minds seeking a humorous time-out from economic news might be interested, so here are some comparative images that I found.

Meet Randall from Monsters Inc.

Meet Mario Draghi, President of the ECB in a Randallian pose.

Image from Bloomberg article Draghi Proposes 'Unlimited' Bond-Buying, With Strings

Meet Mario Draghi, President of the ECB with a Randallian smile.

Image from Hollywood Goodfella

Addendum:

One clever reader suggested Draghi looks more like Sesame Street Count von Count but noted the count was better at math.

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

August Services ISM +53.7; All News Good News

Posted: 06 Sep 2012 09:03 AM PDT

The Non-Manufacturing ISM for August came in positive once again showing a clear divergence between manufacturing and services.

Index	August	July	Change	Direction	Rate of Change	Trend in Months
NMI™	53.7	52.6	+1.1	Growing	Faster	32
Business Activity	55.6	57.2	-1.6	Growing	Slower	37
New Orders	53.7	54.3	-0.6	Growing	Slower	37
Employment	53.8	49.3	+4.5	Growing	From Contracting	1
Supplier Deliveries	51.5	49.5	+2.0	Slowing	From Faster	1
Inventories	52.5	54.5	-2.0	Growing	Slower	7
Prices	64.3	54.9	+9.4	Increasing	Faster	2
Backlog of Orders	50.5	44.5	+6.0	Growing	From Contracting	1
New Export Orders	52.0	51.0	+1.0	Growing	Faster	2
Imports	49.5	44.5	+5.0	Contracting	Slower	2
Inventory Sentiment	67.0	59.0	+8.0	Too High	Faster	183

"The NMI™ registered 53.7 percent in August, 1.1 percentage points higher than the 52.6 percent registered in July. This indicates continued growth this month at a slighter faster rate in the non-manufacturing sector. The Non-Manufacturing Business Activity Index registered 55.6 percent, which is 1.6 percentage points lower than the 57.2 percent reported in July, reflecting growth for the 37th consecutive month. The New Orders Index decreased by 0.6 percentage point to 53.7 percent. The Employment Index increased by 4.5 percentage points to 53.8 percent, indicating growth in employment after one month of contraction. The Prices Index increased 9.4 percentage points to 64.3 percent, indicating substantially higher month-over-month prices when compared to July. According to the NMI™, 10 non-manufacturing industries reported growth in August. Respondents' comments continue to be mixed, and for the most part reflect uncertainty about business conditions and the economy."

All News Good News?

In light of the plunge in manufacturing (see Manufacturing ISM Contracts 3rd Month Led by Declining New Orders; Recession-Type Numbers? You Bet!), this is a relatively strong report. In response, the US dollar index is flat, but the stock market, crude, gold, and silver are all up.

We also had good news (as well as expected news from the ECB today on bond purchases).

Mario Draghi said the ECB will target government bonds with maturities of one to three years, including longer-dated debt that has a residual maturity of that length. Purchases will be fully sterilized, meaning the overall impact on the money supply will be neutral, and the ECB will not have seniority, he said.

Once again, all news seems to be good for the stock market. When the economic news is weak (which it has been for the most part), chatter of more QE holds the day. When the news is stronger than expected or the Fed or ECB toots their respective horns, we see action like this. This action will not last forever, but I cannot tell you when it will end.

Friday's job report could be telling. These opening stock market gaps in either direction seem to fill quickly more often than not, and may do so tomorrow should the jobs report be weak.

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

Attention JP Morgan Chase Customers and Credit Card Holders

Posted: 05 Sep 2012 11:37 PM PDT

Attention JP Morgan Chase customers and those with Chase Credit cards. You have a splendid opportunity at zero cost to raise as much as $250,000 for the charity of your choice.

All you have to do is login to your account online and vote for the charity of your choice. Voting is open only to Chase customers, and begins September 7.

Chase customers who do not have a userid and password, can create one. Instructions how appear below.

The charity of my choice is the Les Turner ALS foundation.

Why Les Turner?

In case you missed it my wife of 27 years, Joanne, passed away on May 16, 2012 from ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. Here is my story: My Wife Joanne Has Passed Away; Stop and Smell the Lilacs.

In July, I submitted the Les Turner ALS foundation to Chase Community Giving and it was approved.

Mish Request

I kindly ask those with Chase Credit Card or Chase accounts of any kind, to please login to your chase account and vote.

Here is the link: Chase Community Giving

You are looking for a button that looks like this.

If you do not have online access, please click on the link to Set Up Online Access.
Otherwise, login.

Next you want to click on the Image to vote. The image looks like this:

Then "Search Charities" as shown in the image below.

As you start typing "Les Turner" a dropdown box will appear as shown below.

Be sure to click on the dropdown box, not simply hit enter with only the words "Les Turner" appearing.

The next image is the voting screen you are looking for.
When you see the symbol below, please click on the Vote button.

Facebook and Twitter users:
After you vote please Click on "Like", Tweet, and Send to Facebook.
The buttons are right on the Voting page as show below.

Contest Rules

The charity with the most votes will receive $250,000!
The next 10 charities will receive $100,000 each.
The next 35 charities will receive $50,000 each.
There are 150 additional awards as per Contest Rules.

My goal is to win one of the top 11 spots, hopefully the top spot.

If you have more than one account, you can vote more than once, but you cannot vote for the same charity more than once.

Thanks
You vote will go to a very worthy cause.

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

vineri, 7 septembrie 2012

West Wing Week: Engage!

What SEOs can learn from online journalists

What SEOs can learn from online journalists

Seth's Blog : A simple truth about photo albums

A simple truth about photo albums

More Recent Articles

joi, 6 septembrie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

vineri, 7 septembrie 2012

West Wing Week: Engage!

What SEOs can learn from online journalists

What SEOs can learn from online journalists

Seth's Blog : A simple truth about photo albums

A simple truth about photo albums

More Recent Articles

joi, 6 septembrie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

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