Central Perk

luni, 2 septembrie 2013

Labor Day

Monday, September 2, 2013

Labor Day

As a nation, we celebrate Labor Day to recommit ourselves each year to the idea that everyone who works hard in America has a chance to get ahead.

It's a goal that motivates President Obama every single day. It's why he's fighting for a better bargain for the middle class.

Getting ahead means a good education and a home of your own. It means health care when you get sick and a secure retirement even if you’re not rich. Above all else, it means a good job that pays a good wage.

So this Labor Day, take a moment to watch President Obama talk about why this holiday is so important, then share it with your friends:

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Planning for Success: Three Essential Consulting Project Plans

Posted: 01 Sep 2013 04:13 PM PDT

Posted by Benjamin Estes

Being a consultant can be an intense experience. Every client (and every day!) presents a new challenge. In my experience that isn't a product of the ever-changing state of affairs in SEO or inbound marketing. In fact, I don't lose sleep over every algorithm changeâ€"there are plenty of smarter people from whom I can draw that sort of information.

What keeps me awake at night is how I can shape my projects to make them successful. A lot of people work together with me every day: my clients, my teammates, and teams in other offices. Everyone needs to collaborate to even have a shot at success. How will we pull that off? How will they communicate? What do they need to do this week? Next month? Next quarter?

In short, I focus on planning, and I focus on it in three specific scopes:

Pitching (how do we estimate project size in advance?)
Strategy (how do we know what we are going to do, and when?)
Execution (how do we ensure that these things actually get done?)

Three different tasks with three different plans, each with its own unique purpose. A list of tasks to execute is not a sales pitch any more than it is a high-level summary of the course of a project that helps you decide what to do today. Each of these plans must be treated differently, and with appropriate respect. The most important thing I've discovered as a consultant is this:

You can disagree about what's in a plan, but you must agree about what the plan is intended to accomplish.

Let me walk you through these three types of plans, what the purpose of each is, and what warning signs may crop up if something isn't going smoothly in each stage. I firmly believe that a little conscious effort can improve how we handle each of them, and tune our instincts to spot when something is going wrong. On the other hand, I won't go into techniques for how to create these plansâ€"at that point I'd be writing a book instead of a blog post.

I've definitely not mastered all of this yet, so if you have any lessons of your own to share in the comments I'd love to hear them! All of these planning phases interact with each other, and I can only talk about them from my point of view. In your experience the lines may be fuzzier or more defined. You may treat them very differently. Do share!

Pitching

Why do we have a plan at this stage?

To understand the scope of a project, that we are the right choice for the client, and that the client is the right choice for us.

What should this plan do?

Address the client's needs (as far as they are understood)
Reflect the limitations of what we can offer and what the client can execute
Get the right order of magnitude for project size

What should we watch out for?

Anyone talking about scheduling deadlines for deliverablesâ€""We need the keyword deliverable week one, the technical audit week twoâ€¦"

What I've noticed:

The first time we have to deal with a plan for a new client is when we're trying to convince them to work with us. Obviously we are asking someone to trust us to help them get a good return on their investment, and part of building that trust is to let them know what sort of work we are going to be doing. A good plan during the "pitch" phase helps us do that.

An example plan for a pitch from Distilled. Activities are scheduled chronologically left to right.

You can see from the illustration I've included that for a lot of projects this plan can be quite broad. Basically it amounts to a straightforward summary of what needs to happen and in what order. It's where everything begins, before the engagement has even started.

The other piece of data that is presented concurrently with the plan shown is a budget, which is essentially the size of the project or the proposed bandwidth that Distilled will dedicate to it. To know that a budget should be X dollars per month or that a contract should last for some amount of time seems quite amazing if you think about itâ€"so many variables are involved! But while every project is different, there are a lot of things we can estimate with a good degree of accuracy. The things we have a handle on might be different from yoursâ€"there might be areas where your estimation is a lot better than ours, or vice versa. Consider:

Weekly meetings
Project management (time spent scheduling)
Monthly reports
Some common research reports (this may vary wildly, but it helps to have an average we can point to)

These are all elements which can be used to anchor an estimate. There may also be some other administrative tasks or fixed price elements (tools, copy writing) that can be leveraged as well.

But it is ambiguous. The pitches you deal with might be more or less ambiguous than ours, but there is no possible way that a proposal created in the sales process can accurately reflect what will actually happen. No one can predict the future, and the sales process is too far removed from actual work to be treated as definitive when it comes to planning.

And that's what I watch out for. It's not uncommon for leads to demand that we offer them strict calendars for delivery of reports. It's one thing to build in regular meetings and status updatesâ€"those are great, at appropriate intervalsâ€"but if we are talking about rigorously scheduling deliverables like technical audits, or are devising a content strategy, there are too many variables present to know exactly when all that is going to happen. Demands in the sales process for the abstract to be made concrete should be handled very carefully in the sales process. The needs of the client must be addressed, but acquiescing to unreasonable scheduling is likely going to hurt your relationship with a client rather than help it. In other words:

A prospective client can disagree with what is included in the proposed project, but they can't insist on a level of detail that is inappropriate.

In my own experience, there have been a couple of clients in particular who needed help with website redesigns or complete domain migrations. One insisted on an extremely delineated schedule provided in the pitch, with arbitrary deadlines for various deliverables and a project duration which would coincide with the launch of a new site. The justifications for this (on the client's end) were both to get a better understanding of the work being done and to make sure that we would be around to monitor the site's launch. Needless to say, the site didn't launch on timeâ€"few websites ever do. And because of the strict language of our arrangement, we had no flexibility to adapt our strategy or extend the duration to accommodate. I didn't feel good about that outcome.

If I were put in the same position again, working with our sales team on the pitch for this project, would I take a hard line against this style of planning? It's hard to say. But I would be very aware of the potential risks, and at the very least make sure that there were contingencies in place if the scheduling of work turned out to be inappropriate.

Fortunately, we only have to deal with this sort of ambiguity once or twice in each projectâ€"once the engagement has begun, things become more tangible. Once the project has kicked off, we don't talk at such a general level. It's time to take charge, get more information, and figure out how to make things happen. It's time for proper strategy.

Strategy

Why do we have a plan at this stage?

To figure out what work should be done and when it should be done.

What should this plan do?

Prioritize work
Defer work that can't be done within time constraints

What should we watch out for?

Big chunks of time that don't have any tasks assigned to them
Too many tasks to accomplish in the time available

What I've noticed:

Once a client has retained our services we need to figure out what we're going to do. Consider: there are a tremendous number of constraints on the work we commit to doing every day. We have a finite number of working hours in a day, week, or month. We may be dependent upon other projects finishing in a timely mannerâ€"will the client's website launch in time? Will the team working on the content finish?

In the face of that uncertainty we still manage to accomplish something. We just have to limit the scope of what we do. Estimate the amount of time various elements of the projects will take, decide what will fit into this month, and commit to executing them. It's that commitment and specificity that distinguishes this phase from the sales pitch phase. And that's why we can't start thinking at this level before we've engaged a clientâ€"we need more information from them, we need their commitment to a project, and we need to know as much as possible about our own bandwidth in a given month.

A screenshot of Distilled's internal scheduling system. The "size" of tasks is defined by how many hours they are anticipated to take. These tasks are kept fairly broad: project management, weekly meetings, etc.

This plan is the response to those needs. We know we need to do keyword research, a technical audit, and Analytics implementationâ€"how long will each take, approximately? Which will we do this month? Which have to wait for information from the client? We answer these to the best of our ability and that becomes our roadmap.

The facts and the constraints that become apparent also become the boundaries of what we can sensibly plan. It's in this boundary that I've noticed most problems crop up. Some clients will present a barrage of questions that threatens to undermine the rest of the scheduled work you're trying to do. In the worst cases, results might be demanded when what you're trying to prioritize is which work should be done. So let's adjust the axiom above for the "strategy" phase:

A client can adjust the priorities of elements within this strategy, but they can't insist that you do more work than there are hours available.

Unless they give you a bunch of money. Just kidding. Sort of.

Consider the alternative to using this sort of strategic scheduling: Every month that a client has you on retainer, you just do whatever they ask until you use up the budget in week two and just stop for the rest of the month. Or you keep working and effectively cut your hourly rate in half. Neither of these solutions sound great, do they?

It took a while for me to get the hang of this "strategy" stuff. Early on in my tenure at Distilled, this manifested in projects that were extremely productive early on. There were tons of technical things to fixâ€"so much low hanging fruit that we at Distilled seemed like miracle workers. No strategy needed, pure actionâ€"for a couple of months. But once that stuff dried up, the relationships sputtered out. I was so enthusiastic about those quick wins that I didn't establish a rapport with the client. I didn't figure out how to work together with them to make their business better. I just told them what to do.

Talking about strategy gave me a language I could speak with my clients that helped improve our relationship and has been much more effective in the long run.

Eventually, you'll work out a sequence of work that fits your schedule and addresses the needs of the client. Once you get to that point, you need to figure out how to execute the work.

Execution

Why do we have a plan at this stage?

To figure out how we're going to do the work that needs to get done.

What should this plan do?

Lay out exactly what actions need to be taken
Let everyone know who is accountable

What should we watch out for?

Tasks that aren't well-defined
Tasks that are defined by outcomes (e.g "get 10 links")

What I've noticed:

At this point we're finally we're dealing with something that actually looks like a proper scheduleâ€"a real to-do list. Tasks need to be chunked into pieces that are clearly delineated and actionable. The image below actually reflects a list of tasks for one of my clients.

An activity schedule in Google spreadsheet form from one of my projects.

The biggest problem that I've observed in working with clients in "execution" mode â€"one that consultants often bring upon themselvesâ€"is the tendency to create tasks that aren't well-defined. For instance, if I have "keyword research report" as a line item in my to-do list, I know I'm doing it wrong. Get more specific: Pull data from Searchmetrics, the Google Keyword tool, and Analytics; do analysis in Excel; and so forth.

On the other hand, the issue that has arisen through my interaction with clients is not recognizing when something is being put in this "to-do" list that is outside the scope of what we laid out in the strategy. Once you know what you are doing in a given month, and you have broken that down into individual tasks, you have to be careful about committing to other things. It's very common to field random questions from a point of contact or their teammates, and it is usually best for the relationship for you to answer them. In order to do that, it is smart to schedule extra time for this kind of ad hoc support questionâ€"and if you starting going over that time you should be seriously concerned. To wit:

A client can negotiate the tasks in this schedule to complete the work you're setting out to do, but they can't add unrelated elements (i.e. change the strategy).

There are as many methods of keeping track of to-do lists as there are people doing to dos. How you actually accomplish these tasks is up to youâ€"I prefer OmniFocus, while I know some at Moz have a bit of an Asana obsession. The important thing as that at some point, in order to go from a "strategy" phase to actually accomplishing something, you have to come up with a list of actions.

I know I've talked a lot about high-level planning in the "pitch" and "strategy" phases, but I should note that at the end of the day, getting better at scheduling the actual work is the most important element of the process. You can meditate all day on the structure of a perfect project, but unless you actually do something there is no chance for success. I consider it the Minimum Viable Plan, so to speak.

Review

Planning isn't easy, but it gets better with practice. And that will, in turn, have a positive effect on all the projects you work on. Let me say it once again:

You can disagree about what's in a plan, but you must agree about what the plan is intended to accomplish.

This rule is something I intuitively use more and more when planning a project and when issues arise over the course of a project. Once you start thinking about these things in increasingly conscious ways, their value becomes exponentially more obvious in ways you can't anticipate.

Do you think about projects in these three phases? If so, what are the warning signs that you've spotted in your experiences?

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Seth's Blog : Scuff-proof shoes

Scuff-proof shoes

There are two ways to make your shoes scuff-proof:

1. You can invest in a chemical process that involves an impermeable shine and be on high alert to avoid anything that might be damaging to that shine

2. You can wear well-worn, authentic shoes that are already scuffed

When we know and understand you and your brand, warts and all, it's really unlikely that a new scuff is going to change our opinion of who you are and what you do.

• Email to a friend •

duminică, 1 septembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

India in Serious Trouble (and Gold at the Heart of It)

Posted: 01 Sep 2013 11:09 PM PDT

Last week India's trade minister, Anand Sharma, came out with a laughable suggestion: RBI should consider monetizing gold.

India's central bank should look into the possibility of monetizing gold holdings, trade minister Anand Sharma said on Thursday, in the latest proposal aimed at combating a yawning current account deficit that has hammered the rupee.

It was not immediately clear whether Sharma was referring to the 557.7 tonnes of gold the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) holds in its own reserves, or gold in private hands. He did not give more details of how the proposal would work.

India has the world's third largest current account deficit (CAD), which is approaching nearly $90 billion, driven in large part by a huge appetite for gold imports. The deficit has helped undermine the rupee, the worst performing major currency since May.

Any talk of using the country's gold to help meet India's international obligations revives memories of a 1991 balance of payments crisis—when India flew 47 tonnes of gold to Europe as collateral to avoid a sovereign debt default.

In comments published by The Hindu newspaper last week, David Gornall, chairman of the London Bullion Market Association, said India could raise $23 billion by swapping gold for a payable currency for a period of its choice, while remaining the long-term holder of the gold.

Free Money?

I am not sure which is sillier 1) proposing selling gold or 2) Proposing India could get $23 billion in free money by swapping gold while retaining ownership.

India Might Buy Gold From Citizens to Ease Rupee Crisis

Reuters picked up on this story in an equally convoluted report India Might Buy Gold From Citizens to Ease Rupee Crisis

India is considering a radical plan to direct commercial banks to buy gold from ordinary citizens and divert it to precious metal refiners in an attempt to curb imports and take some heat off the plunging currency.

A pilot project will be launched soon, a source familiar with the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) plan told Reuters, although the idea was met with some scepticism.

India has the world's third-largest current account deficit, which is approaching nearly $90 billion, driven in a large part by appetite for gold imports in the world's biggest consumer of the metal. That has played a major role in driving the rupee to a record low.

"We will start a pilot project among some banks where we will allow them to buy back gold from individual households," the source, an official familiar with the central bank's plan, said. "This will start soon, we have discussed (it) with banks."

Radical Plan With Scant Details

Somehow India wants to buy gold from citizens, and it also wants to sell it (or sell gold bonds supposedly backed by gold). Details are scarce but it safe to conclude that the scheme is preposterous no matter what it is.

Pater Tenebrarum at the Acting Man blog pinged me with this comment "The Indian government is instituting one stop-gap measure after another. Buying gold from its citizens? For rupees? Don't make me laugh...Indians buy gold to get out of the rupee"

Stop-Gap Measures

In his post covering Stop-Gap Measures by India's Government, Tenebrarum stated ...

It also seems likely to us that some traders are worrying that India's government might do something stupid about its gold reserves or the gold held by its citizens. This worry is definitely justified, as India's government has so far done nothing but institute stop-gap measures to halt the slide of the rupee and the deterioration of the country's current account. Not a single step has been taken that would actually be required: bold reform is needed, but it is politically unpopular. And so the government takes one useless emergency measure after another – and it is definitely eying gold as the next vehicle to do something stupid with.

Should India try something with gold, it is perfectly safe to conclude no matter what the plan is, the plan will fail.

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

Terrorists Won the War on Terror; 74% of Pakistanis View US as Enemy, 60% Have No Confidence in Obama

Posted: 01 Sep 2013 11:16 AM PDT

Eric Tillberg, writer on Policy Mic says The War On Terror is Over, and the Terrorists Won.

After the first two shots of the War on Terror on September 11, 2001, the first major battle of the war occurred, and was lost, on October 26, 2001. This was the day the PATRIOT Act was signed into law by President Bush.

Terrorists, by killing 3,000 people in a spectacular fashion, goaded the United States into compromising its values and betraying its citizens.

As a followup, the terrorists won another victory with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security on November 25, 2002. This department gives a much more menacing facade to the federal government and proved to be the moment when American citizens got the idea that they were viewed as the enemy by their own government.

Defeats continued with the establishment of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), representing an increase in funding for an already bloated (and misnamed) Department of Defense. By this point, the American idea was on life support with little hope of reversal. The final blow that rang the bell of defeat for our nation was PRISM. Although PRISM began in 2007, we have only recently learned of its existence thanks to Edward Snowden.

The defeat of America in the War on Terror provides an excellent explanation for the resurgence of libertarian politics at home. It is a natural reaction, when one no longer trusts the government, to demand the right to keep and use arms and to demand that the government extract itself from most if not all aspects of our lives.

We don't only have to look internally to see that the terrorists have won. Al-Qaeda has not gone away and has not been obliterated. In this grand game of whack-a-mole, the moles see our weakening resolve to preserve ourselves and are encouraged by it. The passage of these laws must be seen as propagandistic victories to the terrorists and undoubtedly help in their recruitment. We must rediscover the American idea and begin living by it once again. This would be the best way to turn the tide on the War on Terror.

Pakistan and US Drone Policy

Shortly after 911, the US had support of the vast majority of Pakistani citizens. Polls now show only 55% unfavorable attitude towards Al Qaeda even as support dwindles elsewhere.

74% of Pakistanis View US as an Enemy

A PEW Research survey on Global Attitudes shows 74% of Pakistanis Call America an Enemy.

Roughly three-in-four Pakistanis (74%) consider the U.S. an enemy, up from 69% last year and 64% three years ago. And President Obama is held in exceedingly low regard. Indeed, among the 15 nations surveyed in both 2008 and 2012 by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, Pakistan is the only country where ratings for Obama are no better than the ratings President George W. Bush received during his final year in office.

Moreover, roughly four-in-ten believe that American economic and military aid is actually having a negative impact on their country, while only about one-in-ten think the impact is positive.

Only 17% back American drone strikes against leaders of extremist groups, even if they are conducted in conjunction with the Pakistani government.

Pakistani Views of US, OBama

Unwinnable War

Terror is a method. It is not possible to win a war on a method.

And because US drone policy kills many innocent people as did senseless invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, more people resent US aggression now, than before 911.

Place yourself in the shoes of the average Pakistani who has lost a friend or family member in drone attacks. Would you think the US was an enemy? Of course you would.

Would you view those drone attacks as an act of terror? Of course you would. The US is making enemies hand over fist with its drone policy (which itself is an act of terror killing innocent civilians along the way).

How can you when a war on method, especially when you use the method yourself?

Is Obama another Bush Clone?

Please also see Is Obama Another Bush Clone? Another Nixon Clone?

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

6 Google Analytics Filters I Couldn’t Live Without!

6 Google Analytics Filters I Couldn’t Live Without!

Posted: 28 Aug 2013 03:54 AM PDT

I have been using Google Analytics for a long time now, and every week it continues to change and improve, which is great. During that time, I have constantly kept and updated a library of filters, advanced segments and dashboards that I can call upon when the time is right to allow me to do what is required. Recently it occurred to me that it might just be me who does this (I hope not!), so I wanted to provide you with a list of filters that I use on a regular basis. This may turn into a series depending on the success of this post, but let’s start with those filters.

IP Exclusion

This is a filter that I rarely see used when I dig into a pre-existing Analytics account, yet it’s one that could skew your data the most.

Generally, the majority of your workforce will visit your website whilst in the office, and if some people are working on it all day, they definitely need to be removed from the profile.

How do you filter out your IP Address in Google Analytics? Well, Google has created a handy online tool to help make the process really easy.

First you need the start of the IP range, which could look like this: 63.212.171.1. You also need to have the end of the range, for instance 63.212.171.254. Now you want to exclude any visits to your website from an IP address within the range shown above. Now you have that data, go over to Google’s handy IP Address Range Tool and generate the RegEx that you need. It should look something like this:

^63\.212\.171\.([1-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1([0-9][0-9])|2([0-4][0-9]|5[0-4]))$

The next step is to create a filter within Google Analytics:

Custom Filter
Exclude
Filter Field > IP Address
Filter Patter > Add your RegEx
Case Sensitive > No

Hit save, apply it to the relevant profiles, and you will have removed all visits from those IPs. If you haven’t already done this, then I would highly recommend that you go and implement it.

Handling Webmail

If you have been looking through your GA account, you might have seen that some of your referral traffic is coming from Webmail. Ideally, you want all your email traffic to be consolidated as an email referrer.

We can do this using a 2-step filter process. The first step is to consolidate all the webmail providers to a campaign source using the filter below.

Custom Filter
Advanced
Field A -> Extract A > Campaign Source > mail.*\.(.+)\..{2,4}|mail-|inbox\.
Field B -> Extract B > Campagin Medium > ^(referral)$
Output To -> Constructor > Campaign Source > webmail
Field A Required > Yes
Field B Required > No
Override Output Field > Yes
Case Sensitive > No

Now that we have consolidated all the webmail to a specific output (webmail), we take that and add it to the email Medium using the filter below.

Custom Filter
Advanced
Field A -> Extract A > Campaign Source > ^(webmail)$
Field B -> Extract B > Campagin Medium > ^(referral)$
Output To -> Constructor > Campaign Medium > email
Field A Required > Yes
Field B Required > No
Override Output Field > Yes
Case Sensitive > No

Using these filters together will attribute all email traffic received to a single email medium, making it easier to analyse your data traffic.

Sub-Folder Profiles

Most of us like to look at certain sections of a website in more detail, especially if that is your area of interest within the business.

Using a sub-folder filter, this can be done easily and for as many folders as you feel are necessary.

Custom Filter
Include
Filter Field > Request URL
Filter Pattern > ^/folder/$|^/folder
Case Sensitive > No

Regional Domain Profiles

I have used this recently, where we have been using a single GA code across multiple international websites. With this implementation, it was imperative that we had separate profiles for specific regions to ensure granular reporting. To do this, each profile had to have a filter applied that only tracked traffic from a specific hostname.

Custom Filter
Include
Filter Field > Hostname
Filter Pattern > ^domain\.at|\.domain\.at
Case Sensitive > No

Add a trailing slash

This filter might not be used in all cases, and I am sure could be modified to your needs, but I have used it recently and thought it would be a good one to provide you with.

On some websites, you are able to access a page from multiple versions of the same URL /example or /example/ or even /example/index.html. All of these URLs are showing the same content and GA code. Ideally these would be resolved to show a single URL, which would help from a user perspective, but also from an SEO perspective. Sometimes this is not possible, so we need to be able to consolidate these URLs to provide amalgamated data. This can be done using the following filter:

Custom Filter
Advance
Field A -> Extract A > Request URL > ^(/[a-z0-9/_\-]*[^/])$
Field B -> Extract B > -
Output To -> Constructor > Request URL > /$A1/
Field A Required > Yes
Field B Required > No
Override Output Field > Yes
Case Sensitive > No

Force Lowercase

Similar to the previous filter, this may not be required in all instances, but is another way of combining data from multiple URLs for the same page. This filter will amalgamate all data from those URLs that have both upper and lowercase variations into a single lowercase version. This allows ease of reporting as well as consistent data.

Custom Filter
Lowercase
Filter Field > Request URL

Do you use any of the filters that I have mentioned above? What filters do you use on a regular basis? Any that I have missed out that you feel would be a good addition? Do you have a go-to list of Google Analytics filters you use? I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts in the comments below or on Twitter @danielbianchini.