Central Perk

vineri, 21 septembrie 2012

Your Peek Inside the President's Week

Your Daily Snapshot for
Friday, Sept. 21, 2012

Your Peek Inside the President's Week

This week, the President, Vice President, and Secretary of State attended the Transfer of Remains Ceremony for the four Americans killed in Libya, while the White House welcomed Olympians and Paralympians, WNBA champions the Minnesota Lynx, new foreign Ambassadors, and the Children's Miracle Network.

Watch this week's behind-the-scenes look at the White House.

How to find blogging inspiration & 20 blogging ideas

How to find blogging inspiration & 20 blogging ideas

Posted: 20 Sep 2012 05:34 AM PDT

Even if you have the best intentions in the world, coming up with a constant stream of new ideas for blog posts can be pretty intimidating. All too soon, the corporate blog lies empty because the company has run out of ideas. Don’t let that happen to you! From company brainstorms to new ways of planning copy, we are going to provide you with some great tips on how to generate ideas for blog content.

WARNING: This is a long post, but we think it's worth the read (and hopefully you'll agree). If you really don't have time then there's a list of our top tips at the end!

Use your colleagues

Brainstorms can be a brilliant way to come up with interesting blog ideas. Don't limit yourself to asking only the PR or SEO teams though, invite people from across your business to contribute to a brainstorming session. They might not have the skills needed to write good content, but they may have insights and opinions that will help you generate great ideas.

Speak to your partners, colleagues, and employees, and listen to them to decide what would best suit the needs of your company. Then, come up with something you can write about which takes this on board.

You might even want to talk to some of your regular and trusted customers, to find out what they’re interested in, as there’s a good chance other potential customers will share those same interests.

Remember why you’re blogging. In the case of a corporate blog it’s usually to generate business – so put your audience first and write for them, not for your own interests. You might be delighted to finally have a platform to rave about your travels, but your corporate clients won't care.

One key consideration is to make sure everything you write is both useful and interesting. That's the best way to maintain a high standard for your blog.

Become a Serial Killer

Serialising your blog posts can be a great way of producing killer copy over the medium term, rather than putting all of your eggs in one basket. By producing a series of posts on the same topic, you increase the apparent relevance of your site for that subject – and give your readers some other pages to click onto.

Serial articles can help keep people interested in your blog and encourage them to return for more useful content on a relevant subject. You could consider writing a series of how-to articles, or reviews of products, industry publications, or even Twitter accounts from within your sector.

At its best, this approach can encourage readers to come back for the next instalment, creating a steady flow of visits. So, if you’re relying on serial posts to get people back to your site, you might want to stick to a regular schedule for maximum effect.

One caveat – don't flog a subject to death. There is nothing worse than reading a series of posts which do nothing but re-iterate the same ideas over and over again. If you have nothing new to say on a topic then it's time to find something new to write about.

Read

Simple enough to be summed up in a single word, ‘read’ is one of the best pieces of advice that can be given to any writer. The more you read other people’s blogs – even if they’re not relevant to your industry – the more you’ll understand what makes for engaging content.

You also need to read people's blog comments and take on board what they're saying, both on your blog and other people's. This will help you to understand which sort of posts are good and which aren't.

Once you’ve gained this understanding, as well as gathering some new ideas, the trick is to turn them into something that is not only engaging and entertaining, but which also meets your marketing or lead-generation needs.

Remember, it’s not just new ideas that you can pick up by reading other blogs – you might also improve your grammar and style along the way.

Invite guest bloggers

Consider asking an industry influencer if they'd like to contribute to your corporate blog. They are likely to be flattered, so it could be good for networking, and they will publicise it to all their Twitter followers and online circle, which can lead to some new traffic for your blog.

Just one word of warning: agree how you'll edit their copy in advance. People can be very protective of their work and may not be happy if you've gone through it with a red pen. Edit their work lightly and send it back to them for approval before publishing.

Break the Rules

Finally, a fallback option is to go out and break all the known rules about corporate blogging. But, if you take this option, on your own head be it! Every so often you will find a corporate blog that has almost nothing to do with the company that publishes it, but focuses on something like environmental sustainability or charity work instead.

You might also see ‘corporate’ blogs that are purely for entertainment purposes, filled with jokes, or comic strips, or pictures of cats. When you’re this far outside of the box, there are very few hard and fast rules left to break, but get it right and you could give your brand a huge boost in positive perception as a result.

The only caveat to this is that it’s always wise to have plenty of plain text along with any images, infographics, videos, and so on. If you can get some relevant language into it then so much the better, even if it's just 'After a hard day working on our new landlords' insurance document, we've been relaxing with some lolcats. Enjoy!'

That way, even if you’re giving your visitors something fun to look at, you’re still delivering the search-visible text content that will help to get you into the search engine results.

However, I wouldn't recommend this as a good way to write a corporate blog. Nine times out of 10 it's not a clever quirky marketing strategy, it's down to ego, and it brings little benefit to the business.

Five golden rules

Ultimately, there are just five things you need to consider when writing corporate blogs.

Your posts need to be:

Relevant
Timely
Frequent
Personable
Useful

These are the golden rules for great blog content so never publish anything without considering those first.

Top 20 Tips

If you're still struggling for blog ideas, try some of these top tips:

Look at current trends, extrapolate them, and make a prediction for the future of your industry.
Do an introduction to 10 of the best up-and-coming bloggers in your field.
Find a current topic of debate and express your own, new, different view on the issue.
Make a list of common myths and misconceptions about your industry and then debunk them.
Satirise a well-known personality – it can be someone inside or outside your industry.
Look at a big brand, and analyse both their good and bad points – show where they're using best practise techniques and where they're making mistakes.
Find a recent piece from a high-level personality in your industry, disagree with it, and prove them and their opinions wrong.
Do a case study of something that went wrong in your business. Analyse the mistakes and explain how you fixed them.
Break some news about your company, e.g. revealing a new product.
Write a list of the vital web tools and software people in your industry can't do without.
Compare the old and new ways of conducting your business.
Write an allegory about your idol doing your business e.g. "How Steve Jobs Would've Done SEO" or "The Bruce Lee Approach to Marketing".
Go to a trade fair or industry event and report on it.
Do a comparison of your national market to markets abroad.
Review a book which deals with your industry – particularly if it contains some interesting outside the box thinking.
Find out about something new for your industry – a tool, a website, a method etc. – and write about it.
Identify industry leaders in your area and ask them to do a guest post.
Write a code of business ethics for your industry.
Conduct an interview with a prominent or rising industry figure and write it up.
Check Digg, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and Quora to find out what's most popular right now, and what questions people are seeking answers to. Then provide the information they want on your blog.

(These tips come from a previous blog post of ours written by Tad. He had 50 ideas, but here we've just picked our favourite 20).

Image credit: owenwbrown

Seth's Blog : The worst kind of clock

The worst kind of clock

...is a clock that's wrong. Randomly fast or slow.

If we know exactly how much it's wrong, then it's not so bad.

If there's no clock, we go seeking the right time. But a wrong clock? We're going to be tempted to accept what it tells us.

What are you measuring? Keeping track of the wrong data, or reading it wrong is worse than not keeping track at all.

• Email to a friend •

joi, 20 septembrie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Help Stop Special Interest Groups and Unions From Buying Politicians; Vote Yes On Proposition 32
Greek State Tries to Stem Neo-Nazi Rise; True Finns Surge in Election Polls
Eurozone Steepest Contraction Since June 2009; Unwarranted Hope and Reflections on Panic! Economists Can Neither Think Nor See
Japanese Exports Sink 3rd Month; Flash China Manufacturing PMI Shows Output down at Sharpest Rate in Ten Months

Help Stop Special Interest Groups and Unions From Buying Politicians; Vote Yes On Proposition 32

Posted: 20 Sep 2012 06:09 PM PDT

In general, if union leaders and organizers are raising money for some political purpose, I am against the proposal (and vice versa).

In the case at hand, public unions are raising money to defeat proposition 32, so it is nearly automatic that I would be for it. And I am.

But what is California proposition 32?

Proposition 32

Vote Yes on Proposition 32 if you want to ...

Prohibit corporations and unions from giving to candidates
Prohibit the deduction of political money from worker paychecks, making all political contributions truly voluntary
Prohibit contractors from giving to politicians who approve their contracts

Please consider the following You-Tube video on prop 32.

Unions of course are fighting this tooth-and-nail. In general that is all you need to know.

Opponents claim there are loopholes that allow contributions to super-PACs. If so, it is relatively even-handed although arguably not perfect. Nothing stops unions or corporations or anyone else from voluntarily giving money to PACs.

The biggest gripe of the SEIU and unions is point number two. Point number two is thus the biggest strength of the proposal.

It is long past the time to rein in public unions and I look forward to the time the entire notion of collective bargaining for public unions goes into the ashcan of history where it belongs.

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

Greek State Tries to Stem Neo-Nazi Rise; True Finns Surge in Election Polls

Posted: 20 Sep 2012 02:17 PM PDT

Euroskeptics have surged once again in Finland according to reader JT who writes ...

Hello Mish

The message of the True Finns, the Finnish anti-bailout, anti-euro party in the local elections is crystal clear: They do not think it makes any sense to cut local services due to budget deficits and at the same time, shovel billions to bail out Southern Europe.

That message is resonating. According to the latest poll, True Finns are going to more than triple their support, going from about 5% to at least 17%. Final numbers could be even higher due to the fact that the polling company, Taloustutkimus Oy, is owned by a member of the largest party, Kokoomus (National Coalition in English), and his polls have consistently underestimated True Finns popularity.

Will anything change even if True Finns win big? Probably not. The six other governing parties have not changed their policies at all despite the popularity of True Finns.

Here is the link to the surge of the True Finns. You can probably google translate it.

http://yle.fi/uutiset/perussuomalaisille_tulossa_jattivoitto_kuntavaaleissa/6303417 JT

True Fins Become Giant in Municipal Elections

Via Google Translate of the link sent by JT, please consider True Finns Become Giant in Municipal Elections

Yle News fresh municipal election survey, the basic Finnish vote for 17.2 percent of the respondents, and the party treble the last municipal elections, voting prey. The biggest loser would be center, but would have to lose all the other parties except the Greens.

The True Finns has risen from the previous, August AWARD measurement of almost one and a half percentage points.

The National Coalition Party is still the most popular by 21.5 per cent. SDP was measured at 19.9 and 15.9 per cent in the center of the readings. August SDP has risen by 1.2 percentage points. The Conservative Party's popularity has dropped to 1.2 and 0.7 percentage points of the city center.

Finland Polls

KOK - National Coalition Party
PS - True Finns
SDP - Social Democrat Party
KSEK - Centre Party

Support for True Finns dropped as low as 5% but is now back to being the third largest party again, with a good shot at moving higher.

Rise of Neo-Nazis in Greece

Things of a far more ominous nature are picking up steam in Greece. The Raw Story reports Greek State Tries to Stem Neo-Nazi Rise.

Following its unprecedented election to parliament, Greece's neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn has been engaged in 'law and order' crackdowns and solidarity gestures that have boosted its popularity, alarming the state.

Tightly regimented and dressed in black T-shirts stamped with the meander, an ancient Greek motif, Golden Dawn is also suspected of orchestrating a rising trend of racist violence against foreigners, legal or otherwise.

The group's ratings have risen to over 10 percent in recent opinion polls.

"It's a strategy reminiscent of Italian neo-fascism in the '70s," she said. The self-styled nationalist party, which campaigned in June elections with pledges to "scour the country clean", has capitalised on the perception that undocumented migration has been allowed to run rampant.

It has benefited from judicial inertia and a suspiciously soft-handed response by police, who usually fail to arrest Golden Dawn members even when under direct attack by them.

And it has exploited anger towards Greece's political system which is blamed by most people for the country's economic ills.

"It's a new phenomenon that is very dangerous for the parliamentary system," said Yiannis Mavris, a political analyst whose polling institute Public Issue recently recorded the party's rating at "nearly double" its score at the last election, where it picked up over 425,000 votes.

Golden Dawn "is here to stay," Mavris said.

A former police unionist who is now a lawmaker recently warned the ruling coalition that planned pay cuts to police "would send 300,000 families directly to Golden Dawn."

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

Eurozone Steepest Contraction Since June 2009; Unwarranted Hope and Reflections on Panic! Economists Can Neither Think Nor See

Posted: 20 Sep 2012 11:00 AM PDT

The global recession which started in Europe, is strengthening led by further declines in the eurozone. Markit reports Eurozone sees steepest contraction since June 2009 despite downturn easing in Germany.

Key Points

Flash Eurozone PMI Composite Output Index at 45.9 (46.3 in August). 39-month low.

Flash Eurozone Services PMI Activity Index at 46.0 (47.2 in August). 38-month low.

Flash Eurozone Manufacturing PMI at 46.0 45.1 in August). Six-month high.

Flash Eurozone Manufacturing PMI Output Index at 45.5 (44.4 in August). Five-month high.

The Markit Eurozone PMI® Composite Output

Index fell from 46.3 in August to 45.9 in September, according to the preliminary 'flash' reading, based on around 85% of usual monthly replies. The index therefore signalled that the private sector economy contracted for the twelfth time in the past 13 months, with the rate of decline accelerating slightly to reach the fastest since June 2009.

The September reading rounds of the weakest quarter since the second quarter of 2009, with the average PMI reading for the third quarter at 46.2, down from an average of 46.4 in the second quarter.

Markit (Flash) Eurozone PMI and GDP

Manufacturing and services saw similarly steep rates of decline in September. However, while manufacturing output fell at the slowest rate since April, the service sector saw the largest drop in activity since July 2009. The faster rate of decline in output reflected an accelerated rate of loss of new business – the largest monthly fall since May 2009.

France saw output and new orders both fall at the fastest rates since April 2009, with rates of decline accelerating markedly in both manufacturing and services.

Employment fell for the ninth consecutive month across the Eurozone, dropping at the fastest rate since January 2010. The rate of job losses in services was the highest since November 2009 and steeper than the cut seen in manufacturing, which was the lowest for five months.

While only a marginal fall in employment was seen in Germany, French payroll numbers were cut at the fastest rate since November 2009, and elsewhere across the region employment showed the largest monthly fall since July 2009.

Unwarranted Hope

Markit senior economist Chris Williamson was hoping moves by the ECB would spur confidence: "We had hoped that the news regarding the ECB's intervention to alleviate the debt crisis would have lifted business confidence, but instead sentiment appears to have taken a turn for the worse, with businesses the most gloomy since early-2009 due to ongoing headwinds from slower global growth.
This gloom is clearly reflected in headcounts falling at the fastest rate since January 2010 as companies seek to adjust to weaker demand."

The recent moves by the ECB and Fed were hardly confidence-inspiring. Rather, they were a sign of Panic!

Things are deteriorating rapidly, more austerity is coming to Spain and Italy. France is hiking taxes and fees like mad, as well as considering plans to prohibit businesses from firing employees, and economists are expecting or hoping interest rate cuts will inspire confidence!

Economists Can Neither Think Nor See

Not only are such economists unable to think, they cannot even see what 20 years of monetary and fiscal stimulus did for Japanese "confidence", which is to say nothing at all. However, lower interest rates and fiscal stimulus did leave Japan a confidence-eroding mountain of debt in its wake.

Japan is now hooked on low interest rates, a mere rise of one percentage point would consume all revenues. Is that supposed to inspire confidence?

Nonetheless, Bernanke and Draghi have vowed to keep doing what they are doing until it works, and economists are hoping it will. It's pure insanity.

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

Japanese Exports Sink 3rd Month; Flash China Manufacturing PMI Shows Output down at Sharpest Rate in Ten Months

Posted: 20 Sep 2012 12:28 AM PDT

As the global recession deepens, bad news in Asia continues to mount. China and Japan are leading the Asia-Pacific decline.

The HSBC Flash China Manufacturing PMI™ is negative once again with Output down at Sharpest rate in Ten Months.

Key Points

Flash China Manufacturing PMI™ at 47.8 (47.6 in August). 2-month high.
Flash China Manufacturing Output Index at 47.0 (48.2 in August). 10-month low.

PMI

Production

Japanese Exports Sink 3rd Month

The Financial Times reports Japan suffers steep fall in exports.

Japan recorded another steep fall in exports in August, highlighting the vulnerability of the nation's finances amid persistently high imports of fuel.

Thursday's government data showed that shipments slipped almost 6 per cent from a year earlier to Y5tn ($64bn), the third monthly fall in a row, while imports were 5.4 per cent lower at Y5.8tn. The resulting trade deficit of Y754bn was among the widest since last March, when the Fukushima crisis led to the staggered closure of the country's nuclear reactors.

Adjusted for seasonal variations, Japan has recorded trade deficits in each of the 18 months since the earthquake and tsunami, after decades of more or less uninterrupted surpluses.

Now, as the government edges towards a gradual phasing-out of nuclear power, increasing its reliance on imported fossil fuels, many expect these deficits to linger.

Provisional data from the ministry of finance showed that in August shipments to western Europe fell by 28 per cent from a year earlier, thanks to big falls in exports to Germany (18 per cent) and the UK (42 per cent). Exports to China, meanwhile, posted their third successive decline. August's 10 per cent fall was only slightly better than a 12 per cent slump in July.

Trade Deficits for 18 Months

Japan has been in a trade deficit position, seasonally adjusted, for 18 months. Territorial disputes with China are likely to cause further economic damage. Should China withhold rare earth elements from Japan, the result could be crippling.

Rare earths are used in cell phones, computers, bombs, DVD, batteries, catalytic converters, and numerous other devices.

For now, Japan still has a current account surplus in spite of an ongoing trade deficit, but that situation will not last forever. When it ends, Japan will need external financing of its mountain of debt, or it will end up turning to the printing presses.

I remain bearish on the Yen, but I am not able to put a specific time frame on when Japan's serious issues start to matter.

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

vineri, 21 septembrie 2012

Your Peek Inside the President's Week

How to find blogging inspiration & 20 blogging ideas

How to find blogging inspiration & 20 blogging ideas

Use your colleagues

Become a Serial Killer

Read

Invite guest bloggers

Break the Rules

Five golden rules

Top 20 Tips

Seth's Blog : The worst kind of clock

The worst kind of clock

More Recent Articles

joi, 20 septembrie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

vineri, 21 septembrie 2012

Your Peek Inside the President's Week

How to find blogging inspiration & 20 blogging ideas

How to find blogging inspiration & 20 blogging ideas

Use your colleagues

Become a Serial Killer

Read

Invite guest bloggers

Break the Rules

Five golden rules

Top 20 Tips

Seth's Blog : The worst kind of clock

The worst kind of clock

More Recent Articles

joi, 20 septembrie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

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