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Hillary Clinton has declared that "the future is female" and applaudedlast month's women's marches inthe first video statement she's made since Donald Trump's inauguration.

The former Secretary of State spoke of the need for "strong women to step up and speak out" and applauded those who did so over the inauguration weekend.

"Just look at the amazing energy we saw last month as women organised a march that galvanised millions of people all over our country and across the world," Clinton said in the video, which was created for the 2017 MAKERS conference.

The MAKERS is a storytelling platform that promotes and celebrates women. This year,its conference has the theme "be bold," and includes speakers such as Patricia Arquette, Sophia Bush, Gloria Steinem and Sheryl Sandberg among other excellent women. Topics covered will include "changing perspectives" and "a bold you."

In her video message Clinton took the opportunity to encourage others to help shape the world to be better -for women now and future generations.

"We need you to dare greatly and lead boldly. So please, set an example for every women and girl out there who's worried about what the future holds and wonders whether our rights, opportunities and values will endure."

She also echoed her famous Children's Defense Fund Gala speech, saying, "And remember, you are the heroes and history makers, the glass ceiling breakers of the future. As I've said before, I'll say again, never doubt you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and every opportunity in the world."

Clinton has shown her support for women since conceding to Donald Trump in the presidential race in other ways too. Last month she tweeted this message in solidarity with those involved in the Women's Marches.

And she added her voice to the condemnation of Donald Trump's travel ban.

Meanwhile yesterday Clinton voiced her approval of Lady Gaga's performance at the Super Bowl.

Earlier this month it was announced that Clinton is working on a book of personal essays and her favourite quotes.

Excerpt from:
Hillary Clinton applauds the Women's Marches, declares 'the future is female' - The Age

Nilhan Osmanoglu, who claims to be a direct descendant of Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II and has pledged to vote yes in an upcoming Turkish referendum on adopting a presidential system of governance, is pictured in an undated photo.(photo bysultandan.com)

Author:Amberin Zaman Posted February 6, 2017

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan makes no secret of his yearning for the Ottoman Empire that was abolished by Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern republic, with the stroke of a pen. Critics say this nostalgia and Erdogans seeming unquenchable thirst for powerindicate he wants to become a latter-day sultan with all the positions glory and accoutrements.

His campaign to endow himself with constitutionally enshrined executive authority many call it one-man rule is being cheered on by a real Ottoman princess. But Nilhan Osmanoglus blessing has had unintended effects, signaling that it wont all be smoothsailing for Erdogan.

A referendum on the package containing theconstitutional amendmentthat is meant to clear Erdogans path to an executive presidency is due to be held in early April. But some recent opinion polls put the no votes, albeit narrowly, ahead of the yes.Thismay explain why Erdogan has yet to approve the package, which has been sitting on his desk for several days after being rammed through the parliament. There is speculation that he may tweak it in the hopes of winning more support.

At any rate, he already enjoys that of the princess. Osmanoglu, who claims to be a direct descendent of Ottoman SultanAbdulhamid II, declared that she would naturally vote yesin a planned referendum on Erdogans long coveted superpresidency.

In an impassioned speech during a conference devoted to her forebears, Osmanoglu railed against what she called the injustices inflicted by Turkeys current parliamentary system. It was, she asserted, to blame for the execution of former Prime Minister Adnan Menderesand the ill-treatment of female students who wear the Islamic-style headscarf that was oncebanned on university campuses. Weve had enough of the parliamentary system, the sultana huffed. Her comments unleashed a furor.

Ozgur Ozel, a member of parliament for the main opposition Republican Peoples Party, led the charge, reminding the princess that the empire had lost more territory under Abdulhamid II than under any of his predecessors. If it werent for Ataturk you would undoubtedly still be alive, but in which room of whichpalace, in what cage and as which wife of some pasha your grandfather orfather deemed you fit for? Just think about it, Ozel stormed.

Others observed that the 29-year-old has usedher imperial credentials to turn a profit with her line of Ottoman-style jewelry, home decorand shawls, alleagerly lapped up by a rising conservative elite enriched under 15 years of Justice and Development Party rule.

Their increasingly ostentatious lifestyle,mirrored by the 1,100-room Ottoman-style presidential complex that Erdogan built for himself in Ankara, has drawn sharp criticism amid allegations of massive government corruption that erupted in 2013 and were hastily quashed. Osmanoglus endorsement helped to revive the debate allowing the opposition to cast the referendum as a fight between secular constitutionalists and reactionary monarchists.

Much like Erdogan, Abdulhamid II, who reigned from 1876 until 1908, when he was deposed by the Young Turk revolutionaries, is a divisive figure, both great and harmful.As Ottoman historian Caroline Finkel notes in her compelling Osmans Dream, there are two competing views of Abdulhamids reign. His Kemalist denigrators see the last years of the empire as an obscurantist and somewhat shameful past from which their country was delivered by the leadership and vision of Ataturk. To his far-right and Islamist fans, however, Abdulhamid is a hero re-emphasizing the Islamic character of the Ottoman state and championing Muslims against other peoples of the empire.

But as Finkel points out,neither version is completely accurate. The sultan, like Erdogan, used Islam to unite his crumbling empire. Unlike Erdogan, he appreciated European music and enjoyed nothing more than having the detective adventures of Sherlock Holmes read to him before going to bed.

Osmanoglu may have inherited some of his paranoia. In a Feb. 5 statement, she declared that she was perfectly aware of the ugly plan and thesystematic attack to discredit me.

The commotion may have cost Erdogan more votes, but it will have surely attracted more attention to the princess products.

Read More: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/02/erdogan-ottoman-empire-sultan.html

Read more:
Ottoman princess stumps for Erdogan - Al-Monitor

Recently, I attended Baidus annual search conference for agency partners in Beijing. One of the premier search events in China for SEO professionals, the conference was hosted by engineers from Baidus core search and Webmaster Tools teams.

The agenda covered Baidus eco-empowerment strategy, its Mobile Instant Page (MIP) project and a wrap-up of the 2016 algorithm updates. The event made it clear to me that 2016 was the year Baidu SEO came into its own. If you arent already investing in Baidu SEO, 2017 is your year to start.

The concept of eco-empowerment was introduced by Dai Tan, Baidus Chief Architect of Search. With search, Baidu wants every practitioner in the internet ecosystem to have better efficiencies in production, execution and monetization. In order to fulfill eco-empowerment, Baidu needs to provide relevant technology and form a mechanism for the ecosystem, supported by two pillars: page load speed and HTTPS.

Every half-second delay in page loading will cost you 3 percent of user visits. This is why Baidu moved quickly to follow Googles Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) feature with the MIP project (Chinese language). At the same time, security is a critical factor to an engines reputation in a market where site hijacks, spams and PII data leaks are rampant. In May 2015, Baidu launched Not Set, which is its own version of Not Provided.

The main accomplishment in the mechanism of Baidu Search is in the release of Spider 3.0 (Chinese language), which was launched in early 2016, dramatically increasing the speed of URL discovery and indexing. As a result, crawl speed has increased by 80 percent, and Baidu is now capable of indexing trillions of web pages in real time. The Divine Domain project planned for mid-2017 promises to further boost indexing speed.

Mobile Instant Page is a bold name. Even Googles AMP only claims to be accelerated. The results speak for themselves.As reported in the Conference, more than 2,800 sites have implemented MIP, reducing load time by 30 to 80 percent and subsequently increasing landing page clicks from 5 to 30 percent.

The technology and structure of MIP are very similar to Googles AMP; even the page code is virtually identical. And just as AMP has been a controversial idea in the SEO world since its launch, so is Baidus MIP within the Great Firewall of China. Convincing webmasters to adopt this new technology has been a challenge, given the sacrifice of page flexibility in favor of improved loading speed and ranking signals.

Baidu has been fighting its way through obstacles, having learned valuable lessons from AMPs rollout. A channel has been added in Baidu Webmaster Tools for page submissions. An open-source project is now on GitHub. A tutorial provides quick training for programmers. An integrated development environment (IDE) and an online validator are published. Themes are available for popular content management system (CMS) platforms like WordPress. Most importantly, the Flashy icon is now attached to all MIP results on the Baidu mobile search engine results page (SERP).

By December 2016, three months after MIPs release, Baidu had already indexed more than 900 million MIP pages.

An MIP result entry with the MIP icon on the mobile SERP of Baidu

The anniversary of the MIP Project

You may see Baidu MIP as a copycat of Google AMP. But there are nuances. First, Baidu MIP is using scripts to maintain compatibility with mobile browsers other than Chrome or Safari in China. In addition, MIP pages put JavaScript before the ending tag, while in AMP, you still put scripts between and . Both MIP and AMP only allow asynchronous scripts, but it doesnt make a big difference, because neither approach will delay the page rendering.

Since Google retreated from China in 2006, the only two G-products that remain functional in that market are Google Maps and Google Translate. Mobile internet users are unable to access the AMP in mainland China.

Many people believe that if Google hadnt been expatriated, Baidu would not have its dominant power in the search market. However, even when Google search was still in China, its market share never exceeded Baidus. And Bing, which is still in China, isnt challenging Baidu at all.

When it comes to other players like QQ and MSN Messenger, only those engines that are customized for local markets (or work with the government) will have the chance to win the battle against Baidu.

A map of the world showing the real-time activity of Baidu search, on a screen in the lobby of Baidu Building in Beijing

Baidus ambition is not confined to China. Alliances with partners like Merkle in other regions are helping Baidu to learn about other markets and expand business reach. If you still see Google as a threat to Baidu, you may be wrong. A better term, frenemy, may better describe their relationship.

Now, through Googles DoubleClick for Search, you are able to bid for Baidu pay-per-click (PPC) ads. On the other side, Baidu is actively working with Google on the alignment of AMP-MIP and developing standards for Progressive Web Apps. And finally, Baidu intends to adopt the Schema.org data structure in 2017, having already documented the Schema.org markup support in the MIP specification.

Anti-app-fraud, Ice Bucket, Skynet and Blue-sky are the four main algorithm updates made by Baidu in the second half of 2016, and in almost every month, there was a negative update.

While the Chinternet environment is getting more complicated, Baidu is investing a significant amount of effort to protect and improve the ecosystem they have defined:

In late 2016, there has been a drop in discussions around indexing in the Chinese webmaster communities. This seems to signal that Baidu can now better identify pages with low quality.

From the other angle, it is evident that Baidu has a clear view that the mobile-first web is transitioning into a mobile-only web. Apart from the core project of MIP, three out of four algorithm updates are aiming for mobile pages.

Historically, SEO strategies and investments were second-tier priorities for brands in China. Too many paid ads appeared on the SERP, where organic links had limited exposure, leaving little opportunity for SEO. Additionally, leadership had no idea of how long they would be in their roles. They wanted quick success and shortcuts, suggesting paid search is the best way out.

Things are changing. Due to regulations and the release of Chinas Internet Ad Law, Baidu cut down the number of sponsored results in the main column of the SERP from up to 10 to no more than 5. With some exceptions where larger ad formats are served, users will see a much cleaner SERP with fewer ads.

Obviously, it is a positive change for SEOs because paid traffic and organic traffic play a zero-sum game. Organic results now have more viewability with fewer sponsored links overhead.

As my colleague, Adam Audette, wrote in Merkles Dossier, your SEO effort is critical and will account for 3050 percent of traffic online. As such, I offer the following recommendations for your 2017 SEO strategy in China.

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

Read the rest here:
2016 was a coming-of-age year for Baidu SEO; why you should invest in 2017 - Search Engine Land

PR Daily (registration)

Six Social Media Marketing Trends To Stay On Top Of In 2017 Forbes As a marketing director, I've been focused on planning our company's social media marketing strategy for 2017. In doing so, I've been paying attention to areas of social media marketing that are trending for the upcoming year. Here's what I've gathered ... 5 top social media trends to watch in 2017PR Daily (registration) How to Protect Your Company's Reputation on Social MediaBusiness 2 Community all 11 news articles »

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Six Social Media Marketing Trends To Stay On Top Of In 2017 - Forbes

Abercrombie & Fitch Co. had a rough 2016. The company watched as its stock declined from a high of more than $32 to a low of just over $11. Why?

One reason may be that the company has done a poor job in managing its TotalSocial brand[TotalSocial is a proprietary metric developed byFays firm, Engagement Labs]. Literally, they have not been able to manage how people talk about it either on or offline.

Retail and apparel brands are dependent on social influence, as it drives sales and what consumers say about your brand is at the core of who you are. Whether it is conversations that are taking place off-line IRL (in real life) or online, these conversations are greatly influenced by what is being worn by those we admire and know personally. Thats why its fairly surprising to learn Abercrombie & Fitch, a brand that has undergone a major transformation in the last two years with a new lead designer and overhaul of its brand marketing campaign has been floundering for a while, and has yet to figure out how to effectively manage its social marketing strategy.

According to a TotalSocial analysis, which looks at the full social impact of a marketing strategy, both online and off-line, Abercrombie & Fitch is performing well for off-line consumer conversations, but not at all well for social media. This is probably related to the social media ire A&F drew by stating its refusal to make merchandisefor large women because the brand didnt want overweight peoplewearing the clothing. That attitude didnt fit with an Internet culture that celebrated warts-and-all acceptance of ones flaws, and one that holds disdain for bullying.

Whatever the cause, the consumer influence mismatch this brand has between online and off-line performance represents a key opportunity to turn the good conversations happening in real life into the social media world and its story can be used as a canary in a coal mine for other retailers trying to serve a similar audience.

The below quadrant chart plots the retail landscape by levels and types of consumer conversations according to TotalSocial. The farther to the right and higher in the quadrant, the better the brand performs for overall consumer influence.

The largest number of brands in the category is clustered in the lower right quadrant, performing well offline but not at all well online. Department stores such as Macys and Kohls are joined by specialty retailers like Old Navy, American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch. The inconsistency between the brands online and offline performance represents an opportunity to move the positive conversations happening offline into the social media world.

Do Youth-Focused Retailers Harness the Power of Social Influence?

Overall, youth-oriented brands like H&M, Charlotte Russe and Hot Topic earn rather low scores for social engagement. Doesnt it seem counterintuitivethat brands aimed at the youth market arent leveraging the power of their target audiences desire to share? There is a lot of room for improvement.

To improve social performance, the retail and apparel category as a whole can look closely at the two strongest performers in their own category Nordstrom and Amazon.

Lessons From the Leaders

Nordstrom earns its success with phenomenally positive conversations, both online and off-line, and has succeeded in connecting with the influencers who give the most frequent and persuasive advice, both online and off-line. It is clear that Nordstrom thrives with the quality of its conversations.

On the other hand, mass online retailer Amazon achieves success with quantity. In fact, about 170 million times every week, somebody is exposed to a conversation about Amazon nearly one time for every two living Americans. In addition, the brand gets a lot of sharing of its content, particularly in off-line discussions referring to its marketing. One thing that both brands have in common is that they have taken a holistic approach to consumer influence leveraging social conversations about their brand on and off-line.

To be a successful social marketer, use the following strategies:

It is a social gaffe for any of us to be awkward IRL or too often humble-brag on Instagram. Yes, that can be embarrassing. For brands, the stakes are much higher than for people. How your brand lovers and haters talk and share about you online and off-line can either drive or harm sales. To harness the lovers and keep the haters at bay, embrace a holistic approach. Thriving for a retail brand in 2017 is all about directing the right conversations and sharing and letting your brand be styled in part by consumer social interactions.

Brad Fay is chief research officer of Engagement Labs.

Original post:
Think Tank: How to Avoid Being a Socially Awkward Retail Brand - WWD