Spencer's Desk

Socialism vs. Capitalism

2012-02-15T07:35:00.000-08:00

Here is an old video clip very much worth watching. It is a brief excerpt from an interview of the economist Milton Friedman by Phil Donahue. What is expressed by Friedman is so very true yet today. Click here.

Protests and Movements

2012-02-14T12:41:00.000-08:00

In reading about "occupy wall street" and "occupy SEC" I was moved to write that anarchy by any other name is anarchy. That really is what those movements are. What strikes me is that they and other "movements" seek to change the world, or make it into what they think it should be. Mostly, they simply want to do away with the present having no solutions for going ahead. I believe, in the world of Ivan Turgenev and Dostoevsky, it was known as nihilism.

Michelle Obama said something like this when she delivered her speech at the Democratic National Convention in support of her husband. Here is what she said:

"She said, 'Barack stood up that day,' talking about a visit to Chicago neighborhoods, 'and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about 'The world as it is' and 'The world as it should be…' And, 'All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won't do – that we have an obligation to, fight for the world as it should be." Emphasis is mine.

Sounds wonderful doesn't it? A new world and Barack issuing in "hope and change". But, what Ms Obama and those involved in movements fail to tell us is, "who -- or whose values -- should determine what "the world... should be?"

That is the age old question of whose world it really is and should be. My world would look drastically different from her world. Someone else would have an entirely different view than mine or her's. So, in the end, we have to ask what their definition of the world is and how they want to achieve it. Then, we (the electorate) must decide whose world view we want and vote for them. That is what an election is really about, not the politics, but the world view. Does it fit my world.

Have a wonderful Valentine's Day.

JS

How the Stimulus Really Works

2012-01-30T10:03:00.000-08:00

OK, everyone. Here is a very clear explanation of just how the stimulus packages work in our economy. This is not my work, but was passed along by several, none of whom will lay claim.

So, here goes.

The truth about the stimulus package -

I'm paying you the $100.00 I owe you

It's a slow day in the small town of Pumphandle and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit.

A tourist visiting the area drives through town, stops at the hotel, and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs to pick one for the night.

As soon as he walks upstairs, the hotel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

(Stay with this..... and pay attention)

The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill to his supplier, the Co-op.

The guy at the Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her "services" on credit.

The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel Owner.

The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the traveler will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up the $100 bill and leaves.

No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town now thinks that they are out of debt and there is a false atmosphere of optimism and glee.

And that, my friends, is how a "stimulus package" works!

Something to Live By

2012-01-10T09:42:00.001-08:00

Today's thoughts come from the book of Lamentations (of Jeremiah) in the Old Testamaent.

Chapter 3:21-26

21But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:

22 The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;

23they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

24 "The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him."

25The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

26 It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

Basic Plans for 2012

2011-12-30T09:23:00.000-08:00

Here is it almost a new year - 2012. Gets me to thinking, of course, about how to approach business for the year. Can't help but think back to the "basics".

Marketing 101 - remember the first premise of marketing to the web?

What is it we are touting?

A Brand?
A Company?
A Product?
A Corporate Image?

Before we can consider how to achieve our goal, we must know what we want/intend to do. That is called a marketing plan, oddly enough.

Remembering basic Marketing 101 - think in terms of the 4 Ws.

Who - who are we trying to attract to our site (the customer/visitor) ?
What - what pages do we want them to see?
Why - why are we bringing them here (sell, educate, promote, etc.) ?
Where - where do they go from here (webform, log-on, action item, share, etc.) ?

With that in mind, we can then approach the plan to develop a strategy and within that strategy, tactics to achieve our goals. Did I say goals??? Yes, we need measurable goals to achieve and mark our progress in achieving our major goal, whatever that might be.

So, before rushing off to do a lot of research and develop tactics, think about revisiting your reason for internet marketing in the first place.

And, have a very Happy New Year!!!

2011-12-21T06:51:00.000-08:00

My encouragement of the day is from a quote by Teddy Roosevelt in a speech at the Sarbonne in 1910.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

There is also a quotation from the Holy Bible that parallels this.

James 1:22

"But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves."

Peace and blessings,

Social Media and Disaster Planning

2011-10-18T07:49:00.000-07:00

In the event of a disaster; e.g. terrorist attack, grid failure with long outage, and the like; will you be dependent upon your computer and other electronic devices?

What happens if you can't charge your laptop battery, or cell phone battery? What if the networks are down long term? How can/will you conduct business? Even if you have a back up generator, what if you can't get petrol to run it? (A possibility in the event of severe situation.)

The same applies to those dependent upon the social media for communication. Without the means, how then do you communicate?

Tough questions. Over the course of the next few days, we will take a look at possible contingency plans, some of which might even take you back to the days of (horror or horrors) pen and paper.

Think about this and we will discuss further.

Peace,

How is your business using Social Media?

2011-10-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

According to Social Media Today,

In a recent study of high-level marketing executives, 70% plan new social media initiatives in 2010. 92% said they personally use LinkedIn, 56% use Facebook. While 28% planned to use internal resources to launch new initiatives, 25% turn to social media marketing consultants.
Twitter is the best place to share news: 47% of the outbound traffic from Twitter goes to news sites, vs. 28% from Facebook, 18% from Digg and an imperceptible share from MySpace. Digg is the most technical; 12% of its outbound traffic goes to technology sites, vs. 10% from Twitter and 7% from Facebook.
Nearly 50% of all Americans are now members of at least one social network… While social network use is highest among the young, 66% of people 25-34 years old and 50% of those aged 35-44 years have personal profile pages. 30% of social media users access a social media site “several times a day,” up from 18% in 2009.
80% of Twitter use is on mobile devices
YouTube now hosts more than 100 million videos and is the second largest search engine.
78% of consumers trust peer recommendations when making purchase decisions; just 14% trust advertising. (peer offer recommendations on social media, blogs and review sites)
More than 1.5 million pieces of content (videos, photos, blog posts, links etc.) are shared on Facebook daily.
Twitter demographic: 44% are between the ages of 18-34 years. 31% are 35-49 years old. 74% of twitterers have no kids at home. 50% are college graduates and 17% have post-grad degrees. A slight majority are female.
A HubSpot study of more than 2,000 companies showed that, for businesses of all sizes, companies that have blogs have 79% more Twitter followers than those that don’t. Blogging “increases Twitter reach by 113% for B2B companies and 30% for B2C companies.”
While many executives still dismiss Twitter as a waste of time, recent research suggests it is one of the most valuable social networks for business.
A recent study concluded that almost 7% of all business web traffic goes to Facebook, twice as much as Google (3.4%) and well ahead of Yahoo! at 2.4 percent.
Facebook demographic: Men are more likely to be single while women using Facebook are more likely to be married, engaged or in a relationship. The fastest growing segment in Facebook are FEMALES, aged 55-65 years.
68% of small to midsized business plan larger expenditures for social media. According to a HubSpot study, “not only can inbound marketing bring leads for less money but it can also double average monthly leads for small and medium-sized businesses.” Twitter reach is critical for increased lead generation: “Companies with 100 to 500 followers generated 146% more median monthly leads than those with 21 to 100 followers.”
THIS INFORMATION GATHERED FROM THE BLOG OF POWDERCOATING ZONE'S MARCH 9, 2011 POST.

Top 10 Most Frightening Mistakes SEOs Will Make This Halloween

2011-10-08T10:40:00.000-07:00

Hope you enjoy this very timely repost of the Vertical Measures Blog by

Michael Schwartz

Halloween is the time of year when people dress up as ghosts, ghouls, goblins and other malevolent creatures that patrol the streets in search of candy and a good scare or two. In the SEO world, terrors lurk behind every corner of the web on a daily basis, pitfalls that can cause your site to fall in the rankings – or even worse, drop from the SERPs altogether. While the spooky side of Halloween lasts just one night, a penalty from a search engine can affect you for years. Here are the top 10 SEO problems an Internet marketing services company can help you prevent this Halloween:

Cloaking:

Cloaking is a black hat search engine optimization technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the user’s browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP address or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page. The purpose of cloaking is to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed.

Broken Links/404 Errors:

From a search engine spider standpoint, when a broken link is found, that equates to a dead end. If the missing page returns a 404 error, the search engine will identify the page as non-existent and catalog the pages linking to it. If the page linking to the 404 error remains on this list for too long or has too many links to 404 errors, in all likelihood this would have a negative effect on the “Quality Score” of that page.

Keyword Stuffing:

Keyword stuffing is considered to be an unethical search engine optimization technique. Keyword stuffing occurs when a web page is loaded with keywords in the meta tags or the content. The repetition of words in meta tags may explain why many search engines no longer use these tags. Keyword stuffing had been used in the past to obtain maximum search engine ranking and visibility for particular phrases. This method is completely outdated and adds no value to rankings today.

Buying Links:

Paid links can land you in a lot of hot water with the search engines, so be smart about how you handle them. The types of link buys that Google has a distaste for are the links that are exchanged directly for cash. Modify your way of thinking just a little and there are a wide array of easy to obtain, high value links out there for you to get. The key to having a low risk profile is to make the link appear indirect.

Hidden Text:

Hiding text from the visitor is done in many different ways. Common techniques include creating text colored to blend with the background, CSS “Z” positioning that places text “behind” an image — and therefore out of view of the visitor — and CSS absolute positioning that positions text far from the page center. By 2005, many invisible text techniques were easily detected by major search engines. “Noscript” tags are another way to place hidden content within a page. Although this is a valid optimization method for displaying an alternative representation of scripted content, these tags may be abused, since search engines may index content that is invisible to most visitors.

Frequent Server Downtime:

When a website is offline the impact that it has on your SEO can be bigger than you think. If Google accesses your website while your website is down, Google could classify your site as being untrustworthy. The more often your site is offline, the more Google will think your site is not to be trusted, thus Google will position you lower in the listings.

Link Farms:

A link farm is any group of web sites that all link to every other site in the group. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services. A link farm is a form of spamming the index of a search engine. Search engines recommend that webmasters request relevant links to their sites (conduct a link campaign), but avoid participating in link farms. According to Google, a site that participates in a link farm may have its search rankings penalized. Links from related sites carry more weight than those from irrelevant sites.

Excessive URL Parameters:

In truth, search engines don’t wish to crawl websites with too many parameters in the URL. Search engine software engineers have a considerable amount of search data. They recognize URL patterns that are potentially problematic, and content management systems often generate problematic URLs. Additionally, search engines limit the number of characters they’ll crawl in a URL. This is partially due to known problems in URL structures and partially to Web site usability.

Bad Linking Neighborhood:

Bad link neighborhoods, to search engines, are typically identified by spammy on-page ‘SEO‘ techniques and dubious backlink and interlink profiles. They also refer to the dreaded PPC sites: porn, pills and casinos. You do not want to link to these neighborhoods, because who you link to matters. By linking to them, your site can be grouped along with these less than desirable sites, which can in turn lower your rankings.

Optimizing for Too Many Keywords:

Keyword dilution is a very common SEO mistake. Each page of a website should target 1-3 keyword phrases max, and even less if the keyword phrases are extremely competitive. Targeting too many keywords on a page detracts from the overall topical relevance and reduces the importance of your REALLY important keywords.

The Berlin Wall of Shame

2011-08-13T07:08:00.000-07:00

August 13, 1961...the day the East Germans began construction of a "wall", essentially consisting of barbed wire to start. This was not so much to keep people out as to keep people in. East Germans were fleeing via East Berlin into West Berlin at an alarming rate. To stem this flow the East German government closed the frontier between East and West in 1958. By July 1961, 30,000 East Germans were fleeing each month. Most of these refugees were young skilled workers whom the East could not afford to lose. The survival of East Germany was threatened and the solution to this problem was the Berlin Wall.

East German (GDR) leader Walter Ulbricht determined to put a stop to it and ordered the wall constructed to prevent the exodus.

When I arrived a few days afterward, there was a great air of uncertainty in the West as to what to do or what might occur.

For the part of the US Army there, orders had come from the White House to do nothing of an aggressive nature. We were in a "wait and see" mode. Over the next 2 and a half years we were to experience a lot of anxious moments as the US played "cat and mouse" with the Soviets and GDR.

During that particular time, our strength consisted of a unit of the 2nd BG 6th Inf. and 3rd BG, 6th Inf., support troops of the headquarters garrison and various rotating infantry units from the Western Zone, primarlily the 18th Inf. and 26 Inf (Blue Spaders) of the 1st Inf Division.

The Russians or rather Soviets, had 7 complete divisions surrounding our small "island" in the East. Essentially, according to our battle plan, in the event of an outbreak of hostilities, we would be able to hold out for 72 to 96 hours while it would take the 7th Army up to 7 - 9 days to fight their way through the 100+ miles from the West to relieve us. Quite obviously, we were "dead" and expendable.

Our job was to give hope and strength to the West Berliners, now isolated from their families and friends. We also were to show resolve in standing up to the GDR/Soviets much as had happened during the Berlin Airlift some 13 years before.

There was a feeling of finality, of fate decreed as any time the alert alarm sounded, you never knew if it was the real thing or just a readiness drill. You knew that if it were real, it could be the end. And, the people of West Berlin felt it as well. There was an air of frivolity most all the time.

And, now, 50 years later, I am an old man with children and grandchildren, the Soviet Union no longer exists and the wall is gone leaving a united Germany once again. Absolutely amazing!!!

Cheers,

What Should a Person Do in this Economy?

2011-08-08T08:53:00.001-07:00

Wow, thinking about the current mess, the downgrading, the falling stock markets, what should the average person be doing, if anything?

Mulling this over the past few days, I have alternately thought of:

Buying Gold coins (see meritfinancial.com)
Moving to another country. Where, I do not know.
Begin hoarding, cashing out all my money and burying it.
Just sitting tight, hoping all will work out OK.

Whether for good or bad, I probably will just opt to option 4 and sit still. Sort of like the ostrich, I guess. How about you???

JS

The Economic Morass of the US

2011-08-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

Pondering the terrible economic mess this country is in brings many remedies to mind. However, one piece of advice that is 2,066 years old is still a sound, sage remedy for us today.

Here it is, from

Marcus Tullius Cicero. (Jurist, politician, philosopher, writer and Roman orator)

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury must be replenished, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of public officials should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to other countries must be removed so Rome does not go bankrupt. People must learn to work again, instead of living off the state. "

Year 55 B. C.

And, so, I say to the politicians running this country, "put that in your pipe and smoke it".

Contest for web site name

2011-07-28T07:51:00.001-07:00

I am in the process of developing a women's fashion clothing and accessories web site representing a retail store group. In developing a URL (web address) I am interested in what women online shoppers find easiest to remember and/or enter in the browser to shop. Do you prefer something easy to remember regardless of length? Perhaps you prefer something short and easy to enter quickly. Or, maybe you always have it bookmarked so it doesn't make any difference. Site recognition is the main thing.

For instance, let's say the store name is The Fashion Place. would you prefer thefashionplace.com, or fashion.com (probably not a good example as that would obviously be taken). How about yourplaceforfashion.com?

I'm sure you get my drift. So, here's the deal:

The Store name is: The Sail Loft and Bermuda Bay Apparel

What are your suggestions for a web address? To get your ideas, I'm running a little contest. Selected winner gets a $25 gift certificate to the store nearest you or online.

Submit your entries to: contest@jspencerdirect.com

Contest ends August 7, 2011

Good Luck!!

Proud Grandparent

2011-07-19T09:59:00.000-07:00

Well, it happened!!! My son and daughter-in-law made me a "grandpa" this morning with the birth of a beautiful baby Girl! Both mother and child are doing wonderfully.

Can't tell you how excited I am. WOW!!!

First Post - Enjoy the Weekend

2011-07-15T06:40:00.000-07:00

An old friend of mine (highly successful marketing consultant) taught me a method years ago that I've employed whether running a company or even now consulting from my home office. Here is the gist of it.

When I come in on Friday, I dress casually. Only emergency calls are taken and no meetings whatsoever. If you have a secretary or admin assistant, let them be the gatekeeper. Staff are aware. The morning hours are spent determining just what activities, contacts and meetings are required for the week relative to project (I used PERT charts) deadlines.

With that charted on my day timer, I would then begin calling those with whom I needed to speak and set appointments for conference calls, sending meeting reminders/memos, all the while noting my calendars. Later, with the advent of Email, that was incorporated into the plan.

That done, whatever time of the day, it was time to have a week ending, recap meeting (if necessary) with staff, lasting no longer than 30 minutes.

Mission complete, week settled, go home or to wherever and begin a relaxed weekend.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!!!