How many use one of the following: social bookmarking, blogging, search engine optimization, article marketing?
>> Again, everyone raises their hand and nods their head to affirm

How many really understand the true nature of web-based traffic?
>> Some hands raised, some people look to the ceiling as their mind dissects the question, and some people just have no clue.

Understanding the web’s inherent nature
Physorg published an article today suggesting that two electrical engineers have found the answer. (more…)

I attribute our modest success to three things: (1) insights into an opportunity born from efforts tangential to our first, and ultimately failed offering, (2) feedback from industry experts who have been generous enough to improve upon our insights, and (3) our rapid incorporation of feedback into our product.
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Metrics, Metrics, Everywhere, But Which to Use?
MarketingCharts has a good write up on a report issued by Paul Gillin, author of The New Influences. The good news for Social Media Marketers is that SMM tools continue to see strong adoption, with blogs and online video leading the pack. The bad news, however, is that there is little consensus on how to best measure their effectiveness, the absence of which makes calculating consistent, reliable ROI numbers impossible. Rather than questioning whether social media lacks strong metrics, I think we should rephrase the question, beginning with What are my organization’s goals with SMM campaigns? Defining campaign goals upfront can provide the framework needed to effectively measure SMM.

Why Are Organizations Employing Social Media?
*graph is from the report

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Let’s review a few of the reasons Zhivago outlines for conducting customer interviews and frame them in social media marketing terms.

“(Interviews) Are your best source of information”
If you have immersed yourself in business blogging or other social media tools like Twitter, your readers and fellow bloggers (those where you regularly comment on) are indeed your best sources of information. By actively engaging, reading, and writing on subjects similar to your business, they are in a position to provide you with feedback and, if your product/service is good enough, generate buzz by recommending it to their readers. (more…)

The major resource that will need to be tapped in order to be successful with new media is time. This is something that I have said often before. Livingston suggests that a small business should be able to dedicate 8-10 hours a week to their blog or other social network activity. That is the minimum that you will need to be able to develop quality content and make quality contributions to your community. If you can afford that, you can afford to start your new media efforts.

An Approximation of SMM Costs
If as a small business you do engage social media and do follow the resource allocation Livingston suggests, you would have to contribute about 520 man-hours over the course of the year. (more…)

The Federal Reserve announced today an expansion of its securities lending program. Under this new Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF), the Federal Reserve will lend up to $200 billion of Treasury securities to primary dealers secured for a term of 28 days (rather than overnight, as in the existing program) by a pledge of other securities, including federal agency debt, federal agency residential-mortgage-backed securities (MBS), and non-agency AAA/Aaa-rated private-label residential MBS.

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According to proponents of the Austrian School of Economics, boom and bust cycles are caused by inflationary monetary policy; that central banks “create the business cycle by inflating the supply of money in a fiat monetary system.” They argue that policy expanding the supply of money ultimately lowers the cost of borrowing and results in speculative investments and a misallocation of resources. “A correction—commonly called a ‘recession‘ or ‘bust’ — occurs when resources are reallocated to their best uses.” Furthermore, government policies to minimize the impact of a correction only delay and exacerbate the inevitable bust. Austrian economists Hayek and Murray Rothbard, for example, blame the Federal Reserves’ inflationary policies during the Roaring Twenties for the Great Depression. If you follow this school of thought, the current housing and financial crisis should come as no surprise - we are, as they would say, paying the price for Greenspan’s reckless reduction of interest rates. The M3 money supply, which the government now refuses to publish, literally doubled from approximately $5 trillion to $10 trillion between 1998 and 2006, and if the slope of the line remains unchanged, should be well over $11 trillion today. The only ways to correct the imbalances are to either (1) allow deflation to occur, or (2) continue providing cheap credit to stay one step ahead of deflationary pressures and as a consequence, continue expanding fiat money supplies.
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Origins of the Great Depression

While most informational websites or articles attribute the Depression to income inequalities and the maldistribution of wealth, it should be noted that this particular problem was merely symptomatic of other structural economic flaws and was the one that ultimately broke the camel’s back.
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