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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Twitter Will Decide the Value of Your Tweets


Twitter Will Decide the Value of Your Tweets

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Twitter is about to start attaching value ratings to users' tweets.
The value judgements will be assigned to the public metadata of tweeters' posts, and used by Twitter's streaming API to help developers more selectively curate massive amounts of status updates.
Designations of "none," "low" and "medium" will most likely debut on Feb. 20, according to a post by developer advocate Arne Roomann-Kurrik on the Twitter developers' blog. A "high" value option will be rolled out sometime after the initial batch.
How exactly tweets will be ranked is not entirely clear, but Roomann-Kurrik says "medium" — and, later — "high" value posts will be roughly analogous to the "Top Tweets" results you get when you search a word or hashtag on Twitter.com. That likely indicates tweets drawing high engagement or coming from users with large followings.
Boiled down, the idea is to make Twitter's streaming API more useful for developers, who can tweak applications to specify what types of tweets they would like surfaced on a given subject or subjects. Roomann-Kurrik gets into more technical specifications of how this will work in his blog post.

That's mostly a positive for users, as the change should help surface better content. It's definitely a positive for Twitter, which will have the power to designate "high" value tweets (in some cases, perhaps, for a price) and possibly experiment with new ways of displaying tweets. On the other hand, judging the value of tweets is a significant and unprecedented step for the company. Some could find it a bit invasive and, well, judgmental.
In the same blog post, Roomann-Kurrik also announces another impeding tweak to the Twitter API that will give developers the option of language-specific tweet curation.
Are value ratings for tweets more useful or annoying? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Image of Twitter CEO Dick Costolo courtesy of Twitter

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Business Negotiations and the Return of the LBO


Business Negotiations and the Return of the LBO

 / BUSINESS NEGOTIATIONS
Computer giant Dell’s potential $23 billion leveraged buyoutcould mark the beginning of a new era of sky-high-priced acquisitions, writes Matt Wirz in the Wall Street Journal.
Dell founder Michael Dell and private-equity from Silver Lake Partners are seeking a reported $15 billion in financing as they shop the company. The last jumbo-sized leveraged buyout – an acquisition with a purchase price financed through equity and debt – took place back in the pre-recession era, when Blackstone Group purchased Hilton Hotels for $26 billion in 2007.
Private-equity firms have stockpiled about $550 billion in cash, reports Wirz, yet have avoided large deals for fear that economic slumps in Europe and the United States could make the deals difficult to finance. However, the firms are starting to think about wheeling and dealing again, given a recent rise in the stock market and record low costs for the debt that backs buyouts. Banks are also recognizing the potential benefits of lending at relatively high interest rates to highly leveraged companies.
In 2012, bankers arranging a deal for Fortescue Metals Group to raise $5 billion to repay existing debt found themselves facing demand for $10 billion from investors. The deal reportedly caused many in the private-equity business to speculate about how large of a deal they could do, Leland Hart, a managing director for the investment management firm BlackRock told Wirz.
Will the Dell deal mark the return to the heady days of big returns to investors and hefty fees for financiers?Some analysts predict Dell’s debt financing will be snapped up, while others are more pessimistic, given that the company has been in a slump due to slow sales in recent years.
High-priced mergers and acquisitions often fail to live up to the initial expectations of those involved. Yet due to the tendency of business negotiators and other decision makers to be overoptimistic and overconfident, it may be only a matter of time before billion-dollar LBOs are commonplace once again.

Dispute Resolution, NHL style


Dispute Resolution, NHL style

 / DISPUTE RESOLUTION
In the early hours of January 6, the National Hockey League (NHL) and the NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA) concluded a 16-hour mediation session by announcing they had reached agreement to end a 113-day lockout. The deal was finalized a week later, and the players returned to the ice for a shortened 2012-2013 season on January 19.
The dispute escalated as the two sides faced the task of negotiating a new collective-bargaining agreement beginning in July 2012. Citing a desire to bring player salaries in line with those of other professional U.S. sports leagues, the NHL opened with an aggressive proposal to reduce players’ percentage of hockey-related revenue from 57% to 43%, among other demands.
Offended by the proposal, the NHLPA held off a full month before delivering a counterproposal. Donald Fehr, the union’s lead negotiator, put forth an offer that separated player salaries from league revenue, slowing the growth of player salaries, and dividing revenues saved among financially struggling teams.
The team owners accused the union of ignoring their demand to greatly reduce player salaries. When the two sides failed to reach agreement by September 15, the expiration date of their existing contract, the league locked out the players and began cancelling games.
Weeks of cancelled game turn into months, and the season threatened to go the way of the NHL’s 2004 labor dispute, which led to the cancelation of the entire season.
The players eventually agreed to a 50-50 split of hockey-related revenue with the NHLPA. But the two sides remained at impasse on other issues, and a breakthrough didn’t come until federal mediator Scot L. Beckenbaugh entered the picture, according to USA Today.
When face-to-face negotiations got heated, Beckenbaugh separated the two sides and engaged in shuttle diplomacy, visiting each side in turn to identify issues where they were willing to be flexible.
The two sides reached agreement on a host of issues, but their deal ultimately hinged on the issue of player pensions. The team owners agreed to establish a pension plan similar to that of Major League Baseball players, with the teams making significant contributions to grow the plan. Previously, players were solely responsible for making voluntary contributions to the league’s retirement plan.
The agreement allowed NHL players, whose careers are often short, to concede on the short-term issue of salary in return for peace of mind regarding their long-term financial future. Winnipeg Jets defenseman Ron Hainsey, a key negotiator for the NHLPA, called the pension plan the “centerpiece” of the deal, reports USA Today.
The deal suggests a valuable way for business negotiators in all realms to break through thorny disputes: expand your focus by looking for tradeoffs that cut across time periods. Specifically, consider offering a long-term gain for the other side in return for a short-term concession that you value highly. By looking beyond the immediate future, you may be able to identify new sources of leverage—and resolve your dispute.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Smart negotiation tactic by musical band to keep their name


Here is the smart negotiation tactics used by the electro-pop duo The Postal Service. After selling more than 400,000 copies of their 2003 album, band members Jimmy Tamborello and Ben Gibbard received a cease-and-desist letter from the United States Postal Service (USPS) citing infringement of its trademarked name. The dispute could have turned ugly. The USPS was concerned about a dilution of its name in the marketplace. Given their recent success, the band members were reluctant to change their name.

Yet during negotiations, the band managed to turn the dispute into a syner- gistic opportunity by identifying the priorities and non-competing preferences of both sides. Tamborello and Gibbard pointed out that the losses the USPS had suffered to Internet and e-mail communication were large, especially among the age cohort of the band’s fan base. The USPS agreed to grant a free license allowing The Postal Service to continue to use its name. 

In exchange, the band agreed to print a trademark notice on its albums, to promote the use of the USPS by its young fans, and even to perform at an annual USPS event. As this story illustrates, when negotiators take stock of each other’s priorities and resources, they often will spot opportunities for wise trades. 

From Harvard's Program on Negotiation,
 Effective Conflict Resolution Strategies to Avoid Litigation
 
www.pon.harvard.edu/publications  

Monday, February 11, 2013

10 Common Link Building Problems


10 Common Link Building Problems

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For a long time many publishers viewed link building as a practice that stood on its own. The purpose was to get links to drive search rankings. It served no other marketing purpose at all.
This has led to large numbers of sites being hit by link penalties or new algorithms like Penguin. Successfully recovering from link related penalties requires a comprehensive approach to link removal. Part of that is understanding what types of links you need to remove.
What follows are 10 of the most common link problems that have resulted in link related penalties or lost rankings due to a Google algorithm update.

1. Article Directories

Article directories were hit in the initial Penguin release on April 24, 2012. If you are currently adding article directory links, then stop the program right away.
In addition, if you have some links that resulted from article directories, then work on getting them removed. If you can't get them removed, then use the Google Disavow Tool to request that they be ignored by Google.
For those who want to debate the merits of this tool, we have used it, and it works like a champ.

2. Low-Quality Directories

There isn't clear evidence that low-quality directories were explicitly punished in a Penguin release as yet, but it does not really matter. The right policy here is clear. Participate in the major directories: Yahoo DirectoryDMOZBest of the Web, and Business.com.
After that, consider a very small number of directories specific to your vertical market. If you find yourself with 10 or more directory links, something is wrong. Directories are not a volume source of links.

3. Low Relevance Guest Posts

relevancy-score-graph
Guest posting on sites that you are truly proud of is a great idea. But this can be overdone too. For example, if the post is not relevant to your site, or the site is not relevant to your post, don't do it.
For your guest posting efforts, shoot for the highest possible targets you can. Would you brag about being posted on a particular target site to your customers? If not, then keep looking for a better target.

4. Low Relevance/Accuracy Infographics

This is a popular strategy many people use to promote their sites. Infographics are cool looking, and they can communicate certain types of information very effectively, which is why they are popular with users and publishers.
However, many people have fallen into cranking out infographics, focusing on volume, not quality. This is another one to stop.
Still need convincing? Here is what Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts had to say in my recent interview with him:
"I would not be surprised if at some point in the future we did not start to discount these infographic-type links to a degree."
I think that low quality infographics (for example, ones with inaccurate information) or low relevance infographics are a natural target for Google, thought these things may be hard for them to detect algorithically. However, infographics may get targeted a bit more broadly as Google has concerns about whether people accepting infographics really care about endorsing the page that they end up linking to.
Important footnote: Algorithmically detecting these types of links is obviously somewhat hard, but when you submit a reconsideration request a human gets involved. Sticks out like a sore thumb to them!

5. Paid Guest Posts

To me, paid guest posts are one of the more obvious ones, but a lot of people still do this. One big flag for this is a site that has a significant number of incoming links from posts that have rich anchor text embedded in the middle of the text.
If you do guest posting work for your clients, you should never pay for any posts. In addition, the links you get your clients should always be simple attribution links at the bottom of the post.
Aim for very high end (brand building caliber) targets. This is the type of branding and link building work a Googler would love.

6. Anchor Text

This one may upset some people. As I predicted in "SEO Revelations for 2013", I believe Google will take action (or more action) against sites that have too much rich anchor text in their backlink profile. You could argue that their EMD update was a step in that direction, but there is much more they can do here.
Some rich anchor text is fine, but when your Reebok ZigNano ProFury sneakers page has 25 links pointing to it, and all the anchor text says "Reebok ZigNano ProFury Sneakers" or some derivative of that it looks a bit manipulated, know what I mean? You might as well paint a bullseye on your back. Human reviewers looking at your reconsideration request will pick this out in a heartbeat.

7. Doorway Pages

doorway-page-illustration
An oldie but goodie! These are thin content pages/sites that exist only to capture search traffic and then to get people to go to another site (in this case the site with the penalty).
This is a practice that can a publisher banned all on it own. You need to dump these as fast as you can!

8. International Sites

I always chuckle when I see a site with lots of links from Polish sites where the page is written entirely in Polish and right in the middle somewhere is this rich anchor text phrases in English. Ouch. You might as well go to building 43 at Google wearing a sign with your URL on one side and the words "I am a spammer" on the other.
More broadly, ask yourself: does that international link have any relevance to your brand at all? If you market a product or service solely in the U.S., why would you have any international links? It just doesn't make sense.

9. Blog Carnivals

Stated with an optimistic eye, blog carnivals are communities where people share content, some editorial review is, or isn't, provided by the person running the carnival, and other publishers can then come find articles for publishing on their site.
Unfortunately, Google doesn't like blog carnivals. Like article directories, they have had way too many problems with them being used as link schemes. Best to stay away from these, and any other "marketplace" for content.

10. Poor Quality Content of Any Kind

You can argue about how this might be measured by a search engine. Here is a place where social media signals may add some real value as a signal.
Does your site, or articles you write, get social love? Or, do they get little attention at all? You could also look at the time on page type signals. Do people spend 2 minutes or more on the page, or do they stop by and run off right away?
The authorship initiative by Google is the start of an overt effort on their part to figure out who is publishing quality content. And, as I mentioned in my SEO Revelations article, they are already measuring and acting on time on site signals.
We don't necessarily make people remove these in the process of moving towards a reconsideration request, but we do press them hard to alter their strategy. Publishing content without regard to its quality is bad for your brand, and it will hurt your search rankings one way or another.

Some Overall Rules of Thumb

There are may other types of bad links we have encountered along the way, that I chose not to highlight above. The above list are the 10 most frequent scenarios we encounter and not an exhaustive list!
Here are a few more questions you should ask yourself to determine whether a link is good or not:
  • Is an argument required for you to prove it's a good link? A good link should not be the subject of an argument. No argument is required with good links, when you see a good linkyou know it right away. Once you start debating whether it could be considered a good link, or justifying it, it isn't.
  • Would you build the link if Google and Bing did not exist? Any good link is something that has value even without search engines.
  • Does the nature of the link enhance your brand in front of your target customers? Would you show it to a target customer as evidence that you are a high-quality, trustworthy business?
  • Did the person giving you the link intend it as a genuine endorsement? If not, Google wants to torch it, and so should you.

Summary

Link building should just be a form of branding and marketing. Reviewing your link profile and identifying the problems is a key part of the process. But, it is only the start. Once you get your penalty removed, you need to adapt your link building efforts to avoid doing these types of things again.