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Was going to ring but thought this might be a little less intrusive into what I can imagine is a busy day.

If this is of no interest to you, then please accept my thanks and apologies...but if you (or know of someone) that needs a website...

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Facebook posts.
Look for articles to re-publish.

Seth Godin

https://www.thebalance.com/low-cost-marketing-ideas-2948325

https://www.thebalance.com/how-to-create-a-social-media-plan-2948529

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/10/01/marketing-ideas-for-small-businesses

https://thrivehive.com/10-low-cost-marketing-strategies-for-your-business/

https://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/News/Marketing/10-affordable-small-business-marketing-strategies.html

https://www.turfmagazine.com/business-management/low-cost-effective-marketing-tactics/

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/zak-mustapha/5-low-cost-marketing-stra_b_11887448.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertadams/2016/12/31/7-cost-effective-ways-to-market-your-business-online/#2bd2853262d6

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For Sale Around The Illawarra:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/249336611848128/

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BUSINESSES, SERVICES & HOBBYISTS AROUND THE ILLAWARRA NSW AREA:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/illawarrabusiness/
Notes: Rule 2: State your product or service, and the location.

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Illawarra Business/Services:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/175493522570848/

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Hair & Beauty Services - Illawarra:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/342569992495049/

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Budget Bastards Wollongong:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/budgetbastards/

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Shellharbour Buy & Sell
https://www.facebook.com/groups/166037263519246/?ref=br_rs

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Rules

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Wollongong & Surrounds Markets Buy and Sell:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/188280781345040/?ref=br_rs

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For sale shellharbour - No Rules:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/602660329767941/?notif_id=1507533729055273&notif_t=group_r2j_approved

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TRADES PEOPLE IN THE ILLAWARRA:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/174565479331251/admins/

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Rules

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Buy, sell, swap and wanted in Wollongong and surrounding areas

https://www.facebook.com/groups/174788105944744/
Rules

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Items  for sale; Wollongong and surrounds
https://www.facebook.com/groups/238911509500600/
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Pending:

Wollongong Buy & Sell (No Rules)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/823543441048817/

Sydney to Wollongong Everything Sales and Swaps
https://www.facebook.com/groups/255580834574332/

Warilla, Shellharbour, Flinders, Blackbutt & Shellcove for sale site
https://www.facebook.com/groups/208741215858241/?ref=br_rs

Shellharbour and Kiama Area - For Sale/Wanted/Trade
https://www.facebook.com/groups/384155218363978/?ref=br_rs

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Ads
Videos
Concept ads
Blogs
QR Codes - link to special offers etc

Research all possible groups - local, Sydney and NSW etc

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hello@dogbluemedia

Find different themes to blog about on dbm social media

tradiepacks.com.au

# data[].attributes.body
Menu
Outside (location)
Inside
Salads
Chips
Burgers
Schnitzels
Drinks
Meal Deals
Contact Details
Opening Hours
Fried Food
BBQ - Chicken etc
Owner/Staff

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Over the years, Trump and his sons would try and failfive times to build a new Trump Tower in Moscow. But for Trump, what mattered most were the lucrative connections he had begun to make with the Kremlin-and with the wealthy Russians who would buy so many of his properties in the years to come. "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets," Donald Trump Jr. boasted at a real estate conference in 2008. "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

The money, illicit and otherwise, began to rain in earnest after the Soviet Union fell in 1991. President Boris Yeltsin's shift to a market economy was so abrupt that cash-rich gangsters and corrupt government officials were able to privatize and loot state-held assets in oil, coal, minerals, and banking. Yeltsin himself, in fact, would later describe Russia as "the biggest mafia state in the world." After Vladimir Putin succeeded Yeltsin as president, Russian intelligence effectively joined forces with the country's mobsters and oligarchs, allowing them to operate freely as long as they strengthen Putin's power and serve his personal financial interests. According to James Henry, a former chief economist at McKinsey & Company who consulted on the Panama Papers, some $1.3 trillion in illicit capital has poured out of Russia since the 1990s.

At the top of the sprawling criminal enterprise was Semion Mogilevich. Beginning in the early 1980s, according to the FBI, the short, squat Ukrainian was the key money-laundering contact for the Solntsevskaya Bratva, or Brotherhood, one of the richest criminal syndicates in the world. Before long, he was running a multibillion-dollar worldwide racket of his own. Mogilevich wasn't feared because he was the most violent gangster, but because he was reputedly the smartest. The FBI has creditedthe "brainy don," who holds a degree in economics from Lviv University, with a staggering range of crimes. He ran drug trafficking and prostitution rings on an international scale; in one characteristic deal, he bought a bankrupt airline to ship heroin from Southeast Asia into Europe. He used a jewelry business in Moscow and Budapest as a front for art that Russian gangsters stole from museums, churches, and synagogues all over Europe. He has also been accused of selling some $20 million in stolen weapons, including ground-to-air missiles and armored troop carriers, to Iran. "He uses this wealth and power to not only further his criminal enterprises," the FBI says, "but to influence governments and their economies."

In Russia, Mogilevich's influence reportedly reaches all the way to the top. In 2005, Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian intelligence agent who defected to London, recorded an interview with investigators detailing his inside knowledge of the Kremlin's ties to organized crime. "Mogilevich," he said in broken English, "have good relationship with Putin since 1994 or 1993." A year later Litvinenko was dead, apparently poisoned by agents of the Kremlin.

Mogilevich's greatest talent, the one that places him at the top of the Russian mob, is finding creative ways to cleanse dirty cash. According to the FBI, he has laundered money through more than 100 front companies around the world, and held bank accounts in at least 27 countries. And in 1991, he made a move that led directly to Trump Tower. That year, the FBI says, Mogilevich paid a Russian judge to spring a fellow mob boss, Vyachelsav Kirillovich Ivankov, from a Siberian gulag. If Mogilevich was the brains, Ivankov was the enforcer-a vor v zakone, or "made man," infamous for torturing his victims and boasting about the murders he had arranged. Sprung by Mogilevich, Ivankov made the most of his freedom. In 1992, a year after he was released from prison, he headed to New York on an illegal business visa and proceeded to set up shop in Brighton Beach.

In Red Mafiya, his book about the rise of the Russian mob in America, investigative reporter Robert I. Friedman documented how Ivankov organized a lurid and violent underworld of tattooed gangsters. When Ivankov touched down at JFK, Friedman reported, he was met by a fellow vor, who handed him a suitcase with $1.5 million in cash. Over the next three years, Ivankov oversaw the mob's growth from a local extortion racket to a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise. According to the FBI, he recruited two "combat brigades" of Special Forces veterans from the Soviet war in Afghanistan to run the mafia's protection racket and kill his enemies.

Like Mogilevich, Ivankov had a lot of dirty money he needed to clean up. He bought a Rolls-Royce dealership that was used, according to The New York Times, "as a front to launder criminal proceeds." The FBI concluded that one of Ivankov's partners in the operation was Felix Komarov, an upscale art dealer who lived in Trump Plaza on Third Avenue. Komarov, who was not charged in the case, called the allegations baseless. He acknowledged that he had frequent phone conversations with Ivankov, but insisted the exchanges were innocent. "I had no reason not to call him," Komarov told a reporter.

Trump Taj Mahal paid the largest fine ever levied against a casino for having "willfully violated" anti-money-laundering rules.

The feds wanted to arrest Ivankov, but he kept vanishing. "He was like a ghost to the FBI," one agent recalls. Agents spotted him meeting with other Russian crime figures in Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, and Toronto. They also found he made frequent visits to Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, which mobsters routinely used to launder huge sums of money. In 2015, the Taj Mahal was fined $10 million-the highest penalty ever levied by the feds against a casino-and admitted to having "willfully violated" anti-money-laundering regulations for years.

The FBI also struggled to figure out where Ivankov lived. "We were looking around, looking around, looking around," James Moody, chief of the bureau's organized crime section, told Friedman. "We had to go out and really beat the bushes. And then we found out that he was living in a luxury condo in Trump Tower."

There is no evidence that Trump knew Ivankov personally, even if they were neighbors. But the fact that a top Russian mafia boss lived and worked in Trump's own building indicates just how much high-level Russian mobsters came to view the future president's properties as a home away from home. In 2009, after being extradited to Russia to face murder charges, Ivankov was gunned down in a sniper attack on the streets of Moscow. According to The Moscow Times, his funeral was a media spectacle in Russia, attracting "1,000 people wearing black leather jackets, sunglasses, and gold chains," along with dozens of giant wreaths from the various brotherhoods.

Throughout the 1990s, untold millions from the former Soviet Union flowed into Trump's luxury developments and Atlantic City casinos. But all the money wasn't enough to save Trump from his own failings as a businessman. He owed $4 billion to more than 70 banks, with a mind-boggling $800 million of it personally guaranteed. He spent much of the decade mired in litigation, filing for multiple bankruptcies and scrambling to survive. For most developers, the situation would have spelled financial ruin. But fortunately for Trump, his own economic crisis coincided with one in Russia.

In 1998, Russia defaulted on $40 billion in debt, causing the ruble to plummet and Russian banks to close. The ensuing financial panic sent the country's oligarchs and mobsters scrambling to find a safe place to put their money. That October, just two months after the Russian economy went into a tailspin, Trump broke ground on his biggest project yet. Rising to 72 stories in midtown Manhattan, Trump World Tower would be the tallest residential building on the planet. Construction got underway in 1999-just as Trump was preparing his first run for the presidency on the Reform Party ticket- and concluded in 2001. As Bloomberg Businessweek reported earlier this year, it wasn't long before one-third of the units on the tower's priciest floors had been snatched up-either by individual buyers from the former Soviet Union, or by limited liability companies connected to Russia. "We had big buyers from Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan," sales agent Debra Stotts told Bloomberg.

Among the new tenants was Eduard Nektalov, a diamond dealer from Uzbekistan. Nektalov, who was being investigated by a Treasury Department task force for mob-connected money laundering, bought a condo on the seventy-ninth floor, directly below Trump's future campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway. A month later he sold his unit for a $500,000 profit. The following year, after rumors circulated that Nektalov was cooperating with federal investigators, he was shot down on Sixth Avenue.

Trump had found his market. After Trump World Tower opened, Sotheby's International Realty teamed up with a Russian real estate company to make a big sales push for the property in Russia. The "tower full of oligarchs," as Bloomberg called it, became a model for Trump's projects going forward. All he needed to do, it seemed, was slap the Trump name on a big building, and high-dollar customers from Russia and the former Soviet republics were guaranteed to come rushing in. Dolly Lenz, a New York real estate broker, told USA Today that she sold some 65 units in Trump World Tower to Russians. "I had contacts in Moscow looking to invest in the United States," Lenz said. "They all wanted to meet Donald."

To capitalize on his new business model, Trump struck a deal with a Florida developer to attach his name to six high-rises in Sunny Isles, just outside Miami. Without having to put up a dime of his own money, Trump would receive a cut of the profits. "Russians love the Trump brand," Gil Dezer, the Sunny Isles developer, told Bloomberg. A local broker told The Washington Post that one-third of the 500 apartments he'd sold went to "Russian-speakers." So many bought the Trump-branded apartments, in fact, that the area became known as "Little Moscow."

Many of the units were sold by a native of Uzbekistan who had immigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1980s; her business was so brisk that she soon began bringing Russian tour groups to Sunny Isles to view the properties. According to a Reuters investigation in March, at least 63 buyers with Russian addresses or passports spent $98 million on Trump's properties in south Florida. What's more, another one-third of the units-more than 700 in all-were bought by shadowy shell companies that concealed the true owners.

Trump promoted and celebrated the properties. His organization continues to advertise the units; in 2011, when they first turned a profit, he attended a ceremonial mortgage-burning in Sunny Isles to toast their success. Last October, an investigation by the Miami Herald found that at least 13 buyers in the Florida complex have been the target of government investigations, either personally or through their companies, including "members of a Russian-American organized crime group." Two buyers in Sunny Isles, Anatoly Golubchik and Michael Sall, were convicted for taking part in a massive international gambling and money-laundering syndicate that was run out of Trump Tower in New York. The ring, according to the FBI, was operating under the protection of the Russian mafia.

The influx of Russian money did more than save Trump's business from ruin-it set the stage for the next phase of his career. By 2004, to the outside world, it appeared that Trump was back on top after his failures in Atlantic City. That January, flush with the appearance of success, Trump launched his newly burnished brand into another medium.

"My name's Donald Trump," he declared in his opening narration for The Apprentice, "the largest real estate developer in New York. I own buildings all over the place. Model agencies. The Miss Universe pageant. Jetliners, golf courses, casinos, and private resorts like Mar-a-Lago, one of the most spectacular estates anywhere in the world."

But it wouldn't be Trump without a better story than that. "It wasn't always so easy," he confessed, over images of him cruising around New York in a stretch limo. "About 13 years ago, I was seriously in trouble. I was billions of dollars in debt. But I fought back, and I won. Big league. I used my brain. I used my negotiating skills. And I worked it all out. Now my company's bigger than it ever was and stronger than it ever was.... I've mastered the art of the deal."

The show, which reportedly paid Trump up to $3 million per episode, instantly revived his career. " The Apprentice turned Trump from a blowhard Richie Rich who had just gone through his most difficult decade into an unlikely symbol of straight talk, an evangelist for the American gospel of success, a decider who insisted on standards in a country that had somehow slipped into handing out trophies for just showing up," journalists Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher observe in their book Trump Revealed. "Above all, Apprentice sold an image of the host-boss as supremely competent and confident, dispensing his authority and getting immediate results. The analogy to politics was palpable."

Russians spent at least $98 million on Trump's properties in Florida-and another third of the units were bought by shadowy shell companies.

But the story of Donald Trump, self-made business genius, left out any mention of the shady Russian investors who had done so much to make his comeback narrative possible. And Trump's business, despite the hype, was hardly "stronger than it ever was"-his credit was still lousy, and two more of his prized properties in Atlantic City would soon fall into bankruptcy, even as his ratings soared.

To further enhance his brand, Trump used his prime-time perch to unveil another big project. On the 2006 season finale of The Apprentice, as 11 million viewers waited to learn which of the two finalists was going to be fired, Trump prolonged the suspense by cutting to a promotional video for his latest venture. "Located in the center of Manhattan's chic artist enclave, the Trump International Hotel and Tower in SoHo is the site of my latest development," he narrated over swooping helicopter footage of lower Manhattan. The new building, he added, would be nothing less than a "$370 million work of art ... an awe-inspiring masterpiece."

Trump SoHo was the brainchild of two development companies-Bayrock Group LLC and the Sapir Organization-run by a pair of wealthy émigrés from the former Soviet Union who had done business with some of Russia's richest and most notorious oligarchs. Together, their firms made Trump an offer he couldn't refuse: The developers would finance and build Trump SoHo themselves. In return for lending his name to the project, Trump would get 18 percent of the profits-without putting up any of his own money.

One of the developers, Tamir Sapir, had followed an unlikely path to riches. After emigrating from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, he had started out driving a cab in New York City and ended up a billionaire living in Trump Tower. His big break came when he co-founded a company that sold high-tech electronics. According to the FBI, Sapir's partner in the firm was a "member or associate" of Ivankov's mob in Brighton Beach. No charges were ever filed, and Sapir denied having any mob ties. "It didn't happen," he told The New York Times. "Everything was done in the most legitimate way."

Trump, who described Sapir as a "great friend," bought 200 televisions from his electronics company. In 2007, he hosted the wedding of Sapir's daughter at Mar-a-Lago, and laterattended her infant son's bris.

Sapir also introduced Trump to Tevfik Arif, his partner in the Trump SoHo deal. On paper, at least, Arif was another heartwarming immigrant success story. He had graduated from the Moscow Institute of Trade and Economics and worked as a Soviet trade and commerce official for 17 years before moving to New York and founding Bayrock. Practically overnight, Arif became a wildly successful developer in Brooklyn. In 2002, after meeting Trump, he moved Bayrock's offices to Trump Tower, where he and his staff of Russian émigrés set up shop on the twenty-fourth floor.

Trump worked closely with Bayrock on real estate ventures in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. "Bayrock knew the investors," he later testified. Arif "brought the people up from Moscow to meet with me." He boasted about the deal he was getting: Arif was offering him a 20 to 25 percent cut on his overseas projects, he said, not to mention management fees. "It was almost like mass production of a car," Trump testified.

But Bayrock and its deals quickly became mired in controversy. Forbes and other publications reported that the company was financed by a notoriously corrupt group of oligarchs known as The Trio. In 2010, Arif was arrested by Turkish prosecutors and charged with setting up a prostitution ring after he was found aboard a boat-chartered by one of The Trio-with nine young women, two of whom were 16 years old. The women reportedly refused to talk, and Arif was acquitted. According to a lawsuit filed that same year by two former Bayrock executives, Arif started the firm "backed by oligarchs and money they stole from the Russian people." In addition, the suit alleges, Bayrock "was substantially and covertly mob-owned and operated." The company's real purpose, the executives claim, was to develop hugely expensive properties bearing the Trump brand-and then use the projects to launder money and evade taxes.

The lawsuit, which is ongoing, does not claim that Trump was complicit in the alleged scam. Bayrock dismissed the allegations as "legal conclusions to which no response is required." But last year, after examining title deeds, bank records, and court documents, the Financial Times concluded that Trump SoHo had "multiple ties to an alleged international money-laundering network." In one case, the paper reported, a former Kazakh energy minister is being sued in federal court for conspiring to "systematically loot hundreds of millions of dollars of public assets" and then purchasing three condos in Trump SoHo to launder his "ill-gotten funds."

During his collaboration with Bayrock, Trump also became close to the man who ran the firm's daily operations-a twice-convicted felon with family ties to Semion Mogilevich. In 1974, when he was eight years old, Felix Sater and his family emigrated from Moscow to Brighton Beach. According to the FBI, his father-who was convicted for extorting local restaurants, grocery stores, and a medical clinic- was a Mogilevich boss. Sater tried making it as a stockbroker, but his career came to an abrupt end in 1991, after he stabbed a Wall Street foe in the face with a broken margarita glass during a bar fight, opening wounds that required 110 stitches. (Years later, in a deposition, Trump downplayed the incident, insisting that Sater "got into a barroom fight, which a lot of people do.") Sater lost his trading license over the attack, and served a year in prison.

In 1998, Sater pleaded guilty to racketeering-operating a "pump and dump" stock fraud in partnership with alleged Russian mobsters that bilked investors of at least $40 million. To avoid prison time, Sater turned informer. But according to the lawsuit against Bayrock, he also resumed "his old tricks." By 2003, the suit alleges, Sater controlled the majority of Bayrock's shares-and proceeded to use the firm to launder hundreds of millions of dollars, while skimming and extorting millions more. The suit also claims that Sater committed fraud by concealing his racketeering conviction from banks that invested hundreds of millions in Bayrock, and that he threatened "to kill anyone at the firm he thought knew of the crimes committed there and might report it." In court, Bayrock has denied the allegations, which Sater's attorney characterizes as "false, fabricated, and pure garbage."

By Sater's account, in sworn testimony, he was very tight with Trump. He flew to Colorado with him, accompanied Donald Jr. and Ivanka on a trip to Moscow at Trump's invitation, and met with Trump's inner circle "constantly." In Trump Tower, he often dropped by Trump's office to pitch business ideas-"just me and him."

Trump seems unable to recall any of this. "Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it," he told the Associated Press in 2015. Two years earlier, testifying in a video deposition, Trump took the same line. If Sater "were sitting in the room right now," he swore under oath, "I really wouldn't know what he looked like." He added: "I don't know him very well, but I don't think he was connected to the mafia."

Trump and his lawyers say that he was unaware of Sater's criminal past when he signed on to do business with Bayrock. That's plausible, since Sater's plea deal in the stock fraud was kept secret because of his role as an informant. But even after The New York Times revealed Sater's criminal record in 2007, he continued to use office space provided by the Trump Organization. In 2010, he was even given an official Trump Organization business card that read: FELIX H. SATER, SENIOR ADVISOR TO DONALD TRUMP.

In 2013, police burst into Unit 63A of Trump Tower and rounded up 29 suspects in a $100 million money-laundering scheme.

Sater apparently remains close to Trump's inner circle. Earlier this year, one week before National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was fired for failing to report meetings with Russian officials, Trump's personal attorney reportedly hand-delivered to Flynn's office a "back-channel plan" for lifting sanctions on Russia. The co-author of the plan, according to the Times: Felix Sater.

In the end, Trump's deals with Bayrock, like so much of his business empire, proved to be more glitter than gold. The international projects in Russia and Poland never materialized. A Trump tower being built in Fort Lauderdale ran out of money before it was completed, leaving behind a massive concrete shell. Trump SoHo ultimately had to be foreclosed and resold. But his Russian investors had left Trump with a high-profile property he could leverage. The new owners contracted with Trump to run the tower; as of April, the president and his daughter Ivanka were still listed as managers of the property. In 2015, according to the federal financial disclosure reports, Trump made $3 million from Trump SoHo.

In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called "the world's largest sports book," was run out of condos in Trump Tower-including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A-a condo directly below one owned by Trump-served as the headquarters for a "sophisticated money-laundering scheme" that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States. The entire operation, prosecutors say, was working under the protection of Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, whom the FBI identified as a top Russian vor closely allied with Semion Mogilevich. In a single two-month stretch, according to the federal indictment, the money launderers paid Tokhtakhounov $10 million.

Tokhtakhounov, who had been indicted a decade earlier for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the only suspect to elude arrest. For the next seven months, the Russian crime boss fell off the radar of Interpol, which had issued a red alert. Then, in November 2013, he suddenly appeared live on international television-sitting in the audience at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Tokhtakhounov was in the VIP section, just a few seats away from the pageant owner, Donald Trump.

After the pageant, Trump bragged about all the powerful Russians who had turned out that night, just to see him. "Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room," he told Real Estate Weekly. Contacted by Mother Jones, Tokhtakhounov insisted that he had bought his own ticket and was not a VIP. He also denied being a mobster, telling The New York Times that he had been indicted in the gambling ring because FBI agents "misinterpreted his Russian slang" on their Trump Tower wiretaps, when he was merely placing $20,000 bets on soccer games.

Both the White House and the Trump Organization declined to respond to questions for this story. On the few occasions he has been questioned about his business entanglements with Russians, however, Trump has offered broad denials. "I tweeted out that I have no dealings with Russia," he said at a press conference in January, when asked if Russia has any "leverage" over him, financial or otherwise. "I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we've stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia. I have no loans with Russia at all." In May, when he was interviewed by NBC's Lester Holt, Trump seemed hard-pressed to think of a single connection he had with Russia. "I have had dealings over the years where I sold a house to a very wealthy Russian many years ago," he said. "I had the Miss Universe pageant-which I owned for quite a while-I had it in Moscow a long time ago. But other than that, I have nothing to do with Russia."

But even if Trump has no memory of the many deals that he and his business made with Russian investors, he certainly did not "stay away" from Russia. For decades, he and his organization have aggressively promoted his business there, seeking to entice investors and buyers for some of his most high-profile developments. Whether Trump knew it or not, Russian mobsters and corrupt oligarchs used his properties not only to launder vast sums of money from extortion, drugs, gambling, and racketeering, but even as a base of operations for their criminal activities. In the process, they propped up Trump's business and enabled him to reinvent his image. Without the Russian mafia, it is fair to say, Donald Trump would not be president of the United States.

Semion Mogilevich, the Russian mob's "boss of bosses," also declined to respond to questions from the New Republic. "My ideas are not important to anybody," Mogilevich said in a statement provided by his attorney. "Whatever I know, I am a private person." Mogilevich, the attorney added, "has nothing to do with President Trump. He doesn't believe that anybody associated with him lives in Trump Tower. He has no ties to America or American citizens."

Back in 1999, the year before Trump staged his first run for president, Mogilevich gave a rare interview to the BBC. Living up to his reputation for cleverness, the mafia boss mostly joked and double-spoke his way around his criminal activities. (Q: "Why did you set up companies in the Channel Islands?" A: "The problem was that I didn't know any other islands. When they taught us geography at school, I was sick that day.") But when the exasperated interviewer asked, "Do you believe there is any Russian organized crime?" the "brainy don" turned half-serious.

"How can you say that there is a Russian mafia in America?" he demanded. "The word mafia, as far as I understand the word, means a criminal group that is connected with the political organs, the police and the administration. I don't know of a single Russian in the U.S. Senate, a single Russian in the U.S. Congress, a single Russian in the U.S. government. Where are the connections with the Russians? How can there be a Russian mafia in America? Where are their connections?"

Two decades later, we finally have an answer to Mogilevich's question.

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Over the years, Trump and his sons would try and failfive times to build a new Trump Tower in Moscow. But for Trump, what mattered most were the lucrative connections he had begun to make with the Kremlin-and with the wealthy Russians who would buy so many of his properties in the years to come.

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Storyboard some video ideas - refer to notes...

Plan for Salon flyers.

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6 Things the Most Productive People Do Every Day

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Ever feel like you're just not getting enough done? Know how many days per week you're actually productive? About 3: People work an average of…

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Does paralysis analysis keep you from launching out and starting your business? Do you fret about your idea not being totally fleshed out or just plain bad? Many people are scared out of their wits to start a business that could fail. In fact, the SBA cites that 96 percent of businesses fail within 10 years.

A 2013 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology suggests that real learning comes from making mistakes, rigorously analyzing them and then applying new knowledge based on those experiences to other situations.

The formal word for this process is called after-action review (AAR.) Created and implemented by the U.S. military, the corporate world has applied this methodology to training, executive education and large projects like corporate acquisitions. The goal is to examine successes and failures of an operation or experience, then rinse and repeat on future projects for better outcomes.

The whole concept of AAR may sound involved and complicated for the average entrepreneur Joe. However, the fact of the matter is that we see serial entrepreneurs engage in AAR quite often: start, fail, then start again. Success may or may not follow a few attempts at business, but in persistence, many entrepreneurs eventually strike gold.

Stanford researchers who studied small businesses in Texas between 1990 and 2011 found that entrepreneurs who failed once in business were more likely to succeed the second time around. If some didn't reach success on the second go round, each successive attempt at business was more and more successful.

If you've been waiting around for the best idea, the perfect opportunity or just enough cash to start your business, don't wait too long. Those things are nice to have in order to start your business idea. However, they are fleeting at best and may never materialize at worst.

Instead of waiting for perfection, just start something. It may be horrendous, poorly executed and ultimately fail, but at least you started. The more you fail in business, the more you can start again- stronger, smarter and with greater odds for success. Winston Churchill himself said, "Success is the ability to move from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm."

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Science Says You Should Act on Your Business Idea (Even If It's Bad)

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Does paralysis analysis keep you from launching out and starting your business? Do you fret about your idea not being totally fleshed out or just plain bad? Many people are scared out of their wits to start a business that could fail. In fact, the SBA cites that 96 percent of businesses fail within 10 years.

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Hate your commute? Struggle to motivate yourself to hit the treadmill? Perhaps both these problems (and many more) have the same solution. Why not turn these odds and ends of unpleasant time into opportunities to learn by popping on a podcast? That's how many luminaries like Bill Gates manage to find time to feed their brains despite their insane schedules, after all.

All you need is a few good suggestions of where to start. A fabulously useful Quora thread responding to a questioner who wanted to know " What podcast has made you smarter?" offers tons of great ideas covering topics from design and spirituality to health and entrepreneurship. Happy listening!

1. The Tim Ferriss Show

In an incredibly diverse list of recommendations, the Tim Ferriss Show comes up again and again. "These are long form interviews. Each podcast is almost two hours," explains business consultant Colin Christensen. "I'm always impressed. Tim is also a master question guy -- the questions he asks lead to hints on how to make your life better in un-thought-of ways." The show is also the source of lots of unexpected but interesting book recommendations.

2. The James Altucher Show

Probably the second-most mentioned podcast is the James Altucher Show. The entrepreneur and author "hosts top-notch writers and entrepreneurs on his show and asks unique, carefully thought out questions. His provocative, witty, and honest approach to each conversation is what makes this podcast engaging and fun," claims fellow entrepreneur Nela Canovic. The episodes featuring Tony Robbins, author Michael Singer, and singer Jewel are her personal favorites if you're wondering where to start.

3. Hidden Brain

" Hidden Brain reveals the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, the biases that shape our choices, and the triggers that direct the course of our relationships," writes researcher Etip Sinid. That's both helpful information for your personal life and handy to know if your work involves persuading others.

4. On Being

Life isn't all about persuasion, productivity, and making money. Living well means developing wisdom as well as worldly success. Podcasts can help with this too. Several respondents suggested On Being with Krista Tippett to feed your spiritual and moral intelligence, including Sinid and math teacher/podcast enthusiast David Walker.

5. 99% Invisible

This one "is about all the thought that goes into the things we don't think about -- the unnoticed architecture and design," according to Sinip. Several respondents suggest it both for design enthusiasts and for people who simply want to see the world with fresh eyes.

6. The Model Health Show with Shawn Stevenson

"Shawn is an author, nutritionist, and coach, and he hosts a fantastic educational show on many interesting topics related to health, fitness, and personal growth," notes Canovic, who calls this one of her current top-three favorite podcasts.

"Look for tips on how to learn faster and increase focus with memory expert Jim Kwik (No. 197), how to embrace change and become emotionally agile with Dr. Susan David (No. 185), and how to stop the stress cycle with Dr. Pedram Shojai (No. 142)," she suggests.

7. Planet Money

Looking to get smarter about money? Then Brian Sanders, CEO of podcast app Nexcast, suggests Planet Money by NPR. It delves into the "very interesting economics of everyday things. Not only for finance or econ people by any means," he notes.

8. Freakonomics Radio

Sanders also recommends this classic podcast. Computer science student Kalvin Lam agrees: "Stephen Dubner is great. He takes things we see in everyday life -- the president, gender barriers, the internet, suicide -- and breaks these concepts down to their core. With each episode, he explores the 'hidden side' of things. Why do people commit suicide more in Hungary? How much influence does the U.S. president really have?"

9. News in Slow Spanish

Lam also points out a less often discussed way podcasts can develop your brain -- by helping you master a new language. News in Slow Spanish is particularly useful, he feels. "The Spanish is slower than normal for your understanding! What's not to like? ¡Que se abra el telón!" he writes.

10. How to Start a Startup by Y Combinator and Stanford University

This one is pretty much self-recommending if you're an Inc.com reader. "In this podcast you can listen to talks from Sam Altman, Dustin Moskovitz, Paul Graham, Adora Cheung, Peter Thiel, Alex Schultz, Kevin Hale, Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, Ben Silbermann, Alfred Lin, Patrick and John Collison, Aaron Levie, Reid Hoffman and more," explains recent grad Joseph O'Brien.
Podcast enthusiasts: What's the most under-rated podcast more people should know about?

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Hate your commute? Struggle to motivate yourself to hit the treadmill? Perhaps both these problems (and many more) have the same solution. Why not turn these odds and ends of unpleasant time into opportunities to learn by popping on a podcast?

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Social media is a staple for any modern marketer.

Among social media platforms, Facebook is the behemoth -- the 800-pound gorilla. Its December 2016 numbers are astonishing: more than a billion daily active users, both generally and on mobile.

Now that Facebook is emphasizing video content, it's essential for every business, no matter the size, to consider using video to reach potential customers. The good news is that these days, it's easier than ever to create a video with the smartphone in your pocket.

Inc. spoke to two viral-video creators about their tips for creating content that users will want to share. Karen X. Cheng is the head of an eponymous marketing agency, whose most recent Facebook video campaign for the book Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls has achieved 24 million views. Cheng's friend Benjamin Von Wong is a photographer who pulls stunts like posing a model underwater with sharks, or on the unprotected edge of a skyscraper. His Facebook page has garnered 268,019 likes, and a video that he posted in December has reached 22.9 million views.

Together, Cheng and Von Wong know a thing or two about making videos go viral. They have very different aesthetics -- Cheng's videos are informal and approachable, like a slightly more polished version of something you'd see on a friend's Snapchat, whereas Von Wong's videos look like scenes from epic fantasy movies. Here's their advice.

1. Copy the approach that's already working.

Cheng and Von Wong both emphasize the need to study the popular content on Facebook. "It's observing what other people are doing and observing what takes off," Cheng says. She gives the example of square-size videos -- it used to be that most videos shared online were landscape-oriented, but then creators figured out that square videos take up more landscape on smartphone screens.

Trends wax and wane based on audience whims and on Facebook's own priorities, so it's important to keep paying attention. "Every change that the Facebook algorithm makes, I am eyeing that and I am ready to change my video strategy," Cheng says. For instance, she points out that Facebook actively suppresses YouTube or Vimeo links. Videos uploaded natively to Facebook will do much better.

2. Book smarts shouldn't be neglected.

Cheng recommends Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath's treatise on concepts that burrow into the brain, while Von Wong mentioned Jonah Berger's Contagious. Understanding the psychology of how the human mind processes information, and the role that content performs in our social lives, is key to brainstorming the right idea for a viral video.

And no, the secret isn't cats, As Berger has explained to Knowledge@Wharton: "There are definitely some cat things that become popular, but that really doesn't tell us anything about why most things go viral." For that you need to examine the research.

3. Optimize for people's real watching conditions.

The first frame of the video needs to grab people right away, because otherwise they're going to scroll past without watching. In the past, people would discover a viral video by reading a news headline and then clicking through with the express purpose of watching that video. Now they're browsing through their friends' posts, possibly while standing in line at the grocery store. These Facebook users are likely semi-bored and willing to watch a video, but it has to be eye-catching enough to pique their interest in a split second.

You should also be prepared for your video to be watched without sound -- even when Facebook rolls out audio autoplay completely, users will be able to mute videos with ease, so you can't expect them to be listening. "I typically edit [videos] with sound off [...] on a tiny, tiny screen," Cheng says. "It's the return of the silent video!"

Last, but absolutely not least...

4. Content is actually king.

Von Wong suggests trying to think from the audience's perspective: What is your video going to do for them? Does the video cater to their interests and needs? Cheng says bluntly, "If you don't have a strong shareable concept that's executed well, the video is going to tank." So it's back to step one -- figure out what the Facebook audience wants based on what they're already watching and sharing, then re-purpose the techniques for yourself.

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4 Tips on How to Make a Video Go Viral on Facebook

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Social media is a staple for any modern marketer. Among social media platforms, Facebook is the behemoth -- the 800-pound gorilla. Its December 2016 numbers are astonishing: more than a billion daily active users, both generally and on mobile.

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That's because I love content marketing. In my case, that involves writing long form articles like the one you're reading now.

I love content marketing because it delivers insane levels of success to businesses all over the world.

When I first got into the marketing industry about ten years ago, it was all about technical SEO and link building.

Today? It's all about content. Just look at the way the content marketing industry has exploded!

It doesn't matter if you run a tiny mom & pop shop or a mega-billion dollar corporation. Content marketing works.

But in this article, I'm not just going to sing the praises of content marketing. Instead, I'm going to take a deep dive into something that most people don't talk about - a tiny slice of content marketing.

It's one of those small-but-mighty secrets that will either make or break your success in content marketing.

I'm talking about h1s.

Truth be told, if you're reading this article, you may have a smattering of knowledge about h1s. It's long been a fixture of SEO ever since the dawn of search engines.

And, truth be told, most SEOs, content marketers, web developers, and marketers know a little bit about h1s.

But that's the problem. We're so used to hearing about h1s, using h1s, and talking about h1s, that we don't stop and think - okay, what's really going on here with the h1?

Not many people are writing cutting-edge research on the h1. I wanted to change that because of an experience that I just had (more on that in a bit).

Here's the bottom line - the whole purpose you need to read this article today before losing any more time.

If you learn how to create perfect h1s, you can dominate content marketing easier, faster, and better than anyone out there.

I'm convinced that h1s are way underestimated in content marketing today.

You're different. You're reading this article, and are going to learn the exact method for producing kickass h1s that will take your content marketing to the next level.

Learn how I generate 195,013 visitors a month through SEO.

What is an h1?

I'm going to assume that you know nothing about h1s.

That's totally okay. I'll spell it out for you.

The h1 is an HTML tag that indicates a heading on a website.

Let me unpack that.

HTML - This stands for Hypertext Markup Language. Most websites use this language to create web pages.

Tag - An HTML tag is a snippet of code that tells your web browser how to display the content.

Heading - HTML has six different heading tags - h1, h2, and so on. The h1 is considered the most important tag, and the h6 is the least important. The tags are often formatted from large (or most important) to smallest (or least important).

If you were to create an h1 in HTML, it would look like this:

<h1> Hi, my name is Header One! </h1>

You can take a look at this yourself. Open up any web page - preferably a good quality blog - and follow these instructions.
First, make sure you're on a web page.
Got it? Good.
Next, view the source code.
To do this, I use a keyboard shortcut for Chrome (Mac): CMD + Option + u

You can also click View → Developer → View Source (in Chrome):

This is what you'll see when you view the source code:

Does it mean anything to you?

Good luck looking for the h1 tag. There are 76,849 characters on that page. (I counted.)
Search for the h1 tag.
Press CTRL + F to open the search feature on your browser. Again, I'm using Chrome, but most browsers use this function.

When I press CTRL + F, I see a small search bar in the upper-right corner of the browser window.

Type "h1."

Then, press Enter.

Chrome highlights the h1 on this page.

There's a bit of intervening code between the start tag and the end tag, but the tag is there.

The copy within the h1 tag is "How to Keep Your Facebook Group Active and Engaged."

That's it. It seems pretty simple, but the h1 has a big impact, as you'll find out in the next section.

So why are h1s so important?

First, let me tell you a story.

A little while back, business was humming along as usual. I was doing my thing, running my blog, and writing my articles.

My blog traffic has been pretty good overall. But I decided to get another set of eyeballs on it.

When I did this, I made a discovery and changed the h1 on one of my articles.

Within three days, the page had 85% more organic traffic. Plus, it had gone from page 3 of the SERPs to page 1, position eight!

All because I changed the h1.

I'm not the only one who's experienced such a dramatic change. In fact, my bump in search traffic is nothing compared to these guys.

A local car parts store in Houston, TX changed their page titles and h1s. The result?
The chart tells it all:
I don't want to sound like a snake oil salesman with a bunch of anecdotes, so let me give you the cold, hard facts about h1s and SEO.
H1s have always been a major ranking factor.
There have been plenty of trends in SEO that have come and gone, but h1s have never lost their significance.

In Moz's most recent search ranking factors survey, the importance of tags (included in "Page Level Keyword & Content-Based Metrics") is the third-most influential ranking factor group.
H1s are usually the most visually notable content on the page.
This is probably the most important SEO feature of h1s. And at first, it might not seem like an "SEO" feature.

Why not? Because it's more about the user than about the technical optimization of the page, right?

Right! And that's the direction that SEO has taken in recent years. SEO is more about user optimization than it is about search engine optimization.

Don't skip over this idea of users noticing the h1. It matters!

H1s are one of the most potent on-page SEO and UX elements that you have in your arsenal.

Now, let's figure out how to use them.

How do I create killer h1s?

H1s aren't a big secret. The fact is, just about anyone who knows anything about SEO or HTML is using them.

80% of the first-page search results in Google use an h1.

So why did I even write this article?
Because most people are using them incorrectly!
Until recently, even I didn't realize just how wrong I had been when I was writing h1s.

After turning the corner and making a discovery, my knowledge of h1s hit the roof, and my website traffic changed as a result!

Here are the rules of h1 creation. Follow these, and you'll score perfect h1s every time.
Use only one h1.
Every page needs only 1 h1 tag. There is no reason to use more than a single h1 tag.

Why not? If one is good, wouldn't two or sixteen be even better?

Every page needs only 1 h1 tag. There is no reason to use more than a single h1 tag.

Why not? If one is good, wouldn't two or sixteen be even better?

Search engines will crawl multiple H1s on a page, sure, but the logical priority of an H1 semantic tag means that you're your SEO efforts on one keyword phrase or sentence, as opposed to many.

The presence of more than one h1 won't necessarily confuse the search engine, but it could dilute the SEO power of a single h1.

Some SEOs may be comfortable using multiple H1s, but in my experience, the one page/one H1 rule has given me the best SEO results.
Your h1 should describe the topic of your page.
At the most basic level, the h1 should describe what the content is all about.

1. Often, the h1 tag will be similar to your title tag.

2. Usually, the h1 tag will be the title of your blog post or article.

3. Normally, the h1 tag gives the reader a strong sense of what he or she is going to read.

The h1 should be from 20-70 characters.
Don't obsess over h1 length. It's not as important as it used to be.

The only reason why I mention it is to suggest that if it's too short, you're wasting valuable space. But if it's too long, you're diluting the power of the tag.

A medium-ish length - 20-70 characters - is just right. You can use a normal sentence as an h1, and it's totally fine.
Make your h1 stand out.
Your h1 should be the most important visual element on the page.

1. It should be big.

2. It should be strong.

3. It should be noticeable.

4. You should use whatever visual, formatting, and style elements are necessary to make that thing stand out.

Why is this important?

As I discuss elsewhere in the article, it's all about the user experience.

Keep in mind that an H1 is a semantic element, not a visual element, and it's important to keep this distinction. Web designers don't need to add style elements by using semantic tags such as the H1, H2.

However, in the real world, style and semantic elements mix. Following design and development best practice means that the most significant semantic tags are also the most important visual elements.

Size matters in web design. And semantic tags matter in web development. Conjoining them in SEO makes sense.

For a good example of this formatting, check out the blog at Smart Passive Income. Pat Flynn's h1 is definitely strong.

When I check out the source code, this is what I see:

Here's another good example from Ramit Sethi.

Can you guess what his h1 is?

Yep. The h1 is "Do you know your earning potential."

The point that I'm making here has to do with the user experience which is the next section:
Create h1s that provide a good user experience.
SEO changed massively over the past few years. The biggest change by far has been the influence of user experience on SEO.

The best way to consider SEO and UX is with this Venn diagram.

That diagram was published in 2012.

Today, several years later, the SEO would probably be a smaller circle within an even bigger Design & Usability circle.

Part of the reason for this is that search engines have evolved to such a high degree that they can intuit what users want, even as users are searching and browsing.

Keep in mind that due to machine learning, search engines are constantly changing. There's no longer massive SERP upsets due to algorithm shifts.

Instead, there is the continual nuanced adjustment of search ranking factors based on the search and browsing habits of the search engine's millions of users.

In other words, how users interact with your page has a lot to do with how your page will rank.

And the h1 is one of the most important elements on your page that influences their interaction.

Why? Because it's noticeable. It sends a message. It communicates a sentiment. It makes a promise.

Your h1 should speak to the user in an overt way!

In 2015, Searchmetrics performed a massive study on ranking factors. What they discovered was that the biggest impact of an h1 wasn't the tag itself but the way that the tag was formatted!
Here's a key sentence from their research: When on the page itself, the presence of h1 and h2 provide a header structure to outline the text on the page - these elements enhance the user experience
This is a fascinating part of the science of h1s. It's not just the presence of the h1 on the page that makes a difference - even though that's the starting point.

Instead, it's the way that the formatting and placement of the h1 appear to the user!
Use a focused long-tail keyword in your h1.
Believe it or not, some SEOs do not recommend using keywords in your h1.

Why not?!

Keyword stuffing, that's why.

I think we all agree that keyword stuffing is a thing of the past. We used to do it. We don't do it anymore. We're sorry. We forgive you. Life goes on.

Are there SEOs still doing keyword stuffing? Maybe. But it doesn't work. Google penalized that a long time ago.

But there's nothing keyword-stuffing at all about using a keyword in an h1. To the contrary, Google wants you to use a keyword in the h1.

Why? So their crawlers can understand better what the page is all about!

If you don't use a strong keyword in your h1, then Google can still find out what the page is about, index it appropriately, and give you a nice rank.

But why leave out the opportunity to give Google all of the information it needs and wants right in your website source code?

Use a keyword - a long-tail keyword.

Let me show you a clear example of how this works using a simple keyword, "bandit testing."

Even though this keyword is not technically long tail, it works well for our purposes, because it's clear, concise, noticeable, and easy to use in an h1.

This is a page from the Crazy Egg blog.

The article is about bandit testing.

The most noticeable visual element on the page is "Glossary: Bandit Testing."

And that's also the h1.

Here are the facts about this page.

The title: What is Bandit Testing? The Crazy Egg Glossary

The h1: Glossary: Bandit Testing

The keyword: bandit testing

Their rank? Google page 1, position five! And that's only two weeks after publishing the article!

This article takes a more long-tail approach. The keyword in this scenario is "Facebook Video Ad Hacks."

That keyword is included in the blog title, and it is also the h1.

And, just two weeks after publishing, the article is on page one, position 5 of Google.

So, yes, I'm recommending that you use a long-tail keyword in your h1.

But do it.
Answer user intent with your h1.
The phrase "user intent" seems to confuse some people, but it's really quite simple.

Whenever you write a piece of content, you want to be asking the question what does the user want when they open my article? What's their intent?

Your h1 should satisfy that intent.

If someone is looking for "risky SEO tactics," I can probably assume that they are looking for some quick search engine optimization techniques that will boost their rankings.

If I were to write an article on that topic (oh wait, I did!) then I want to answer their intent with my h1.

Here's how the journey of intent works.

First, the user gets an idea. Then, they search Google for it.

They see this promising result in the SERP.

So they click it! And they see my blog article on the topic.

My goal with that h1 is to promise them what they came looking for - some straightforward but risky SEO tactics that could boost their traffic.

The task of your h1 is to begin to satisfy the user's intent.

This is how Marc Purtell explains it in SEJ:

In order to have some great, Hummingbird-optimized h1 tags, try to understand what a user may be asking when they are searching for a keyword the page is targeting and format that question on the page with h1 tags.

Let me summarize the rules for creating amazing h1s.

1. Use only one h1.

2. Your h1 should describe the topic of your page.

3. Make your h1 stand out.

4. Create h1s that provide a good user experience.

5. Use a focused long-tail keyword in your h1.

6. Answer user intent with your h1.

Transform your website in 1 week with an h1 audit.

As a bonus, I want to give you an actionable way to put these lessons into practice.

I'm going to give you a homework assignment that can boost your organic traffic by 50%.

You can carry out this task in a few days, no problem.

I see a lot of people waste a lot of time doing "content audits" on their websites. I'm not against content audits.

What I am against is wasting time and money. And that's what a lot of content audits are - a waste of time and money.

Instead of doing a full-fledged content audit on your website, I suggest that you do an h1 audit instead.

Here's the power of an h1 audit. It's quick. It's easy. And it gets ridiculous results in record times.

A lot of SEOs and marketers are looking for a silver bullet in SEO that will help their business skyrocket in the SERPs.

Look, there's no such thing as a silver bullet. But the process you're about to learn is the closest thing to it that I know of.

If you have a small-to-medium sized site or blog, follow this process.
Download Screaming Frog
You can do this from the website https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/.

Click "SEO Spider Tool."

Then click "Download."

You do not need to purchase a license to use the software. If your website is more than 500 pages, however, it's a good idea to purchase a license.
Open up Screaming Frog.
When you've successfully downloaded Screaming Frog, go ahead and open it.
Type in your URL. Click Start, and wait for the crawl process to complete.
Depending on the size of your site, this could take a couple minutes or a few hours.

It usually takes less than a minute for Screaming Frog to crawl 500 pages.
Click h1 in the menu bar.
Here, you'll see a list of all the h1s on your website.
Check for missing h1s.
Click the filter menu.
Select "Missing."
You'll see a list of all the pages on your site that lack an h1 tag.

Your first task is to create an h1 for each of these pages.

(Unless, of course, you have a reason not to. My /blog page is a menu page to select the articles that I'm regularly adding and updating there, so I've chosen not to include an h1).
Create a list of the missing h1 tags.
Click "Export."

Find a good place to save the file.

It's a CSV, so you can open it up in Excel.
Filter all the "duplicate" h1s.
You can do this by clicking "duplicate" on the filter menu.

Again, save this list in a CSV for future reference.
Filter all the "multiple" h1s.
Again, save the list
Now, go back to the filter menu, and select "All."
Export the list.

At this point, you should have four CSV files.
Create new h1s.
Your task now is to create new h1 tags for each of the categories. Start with the missing ones, move on to duplicate, next multiple, and finally rework all h1s.

If your website is tens of thousands of pages, you may only be able to work on the highest-priority h1 tag project - the missing ones.

However, if you have the time, update all of your h1s to align with the rules that I provided above.

I think you'll see a big difference in your traffic, your rankings, and your overall site performance.

Conclusion

If you've read this article, you know more about h1s than most people on the planet.

More importantly, you know exactly how to use h1s for maximum SEO impact.

Keep in mind that h1s are still very important for SEO. They can make or break your website, your content, your traffic, and your rankings.

I hope that you'll be willing to do what I did - to discover the power of h1s, to revamp them on your site, and to experience the surge in traffic that I experienced.

Let me know your experience! I can't wait to hear what happens.
What are some of your h1 best practice tips?

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How to Create the Perfect H1 Tag for SEO

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I write a lot about writing. That's because I love content marketing. In my case, that involves writing long form articles like the one you're reading now. I love content marketing because it delivers insane levels of success to businesses all over the world.

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A 'text' conversation

A video of screenshots

Typewriter (move into THIS century)

A design montage from sketch to finish

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Even before building Content Snare, I'd spoken with hundreds of different web design and development businesses about the favourite parts of their business through to the biggest challenges.

Then as we went on to start building Content Snare, I interviewed around 20 businesses to really deep dive into the biggest issues they faced in their business.

Almost without fail, the biggest problem web designers face is getting content from their clients.

Grow your web agency. Get notified when we post new actionable tips, awesome tools and other resources that will help get your life back. Click to sign up

These are actual quotes from those interviews:

Content is the biggest bottleneck in our business

It is the biggest pain in the ass!

Every single project was backed up because of content

It made me want to leave the industry

That last one... wow. It doesn't get much more serious than that.
The Bad News
Truth be told, there is no perfect solution. In the end, content has to come from somewhere. That means there is always potential delays from the client themselves, a copywriter or someone who has to approve the content before it goes live.
The Good News
There are a lot of ways you can streamline the process of getting content from your clients. Every business I've spoken to seems to have a slightly different way of doing it. What works best will depend on how you deal (or want to deal) with your clients.
Firstly ask yourself
What point in the website process will you require content? This will be one of the most important deciding factors as it needs to fit right into your process. Do you want content upfront before you even start the website? Do you want to just get on with the design and use 'lorem ipsum' to be replaced later? We've spoken to agencies who do both of these and everything in between.

Let's get down to the options.

1. Documents and follow ups

This one is the most common. Simply put, this means requesting content from your clients and following up regularly until you finally get what you need. It doesn't sound ideal, but this is often the only real option which we'll see as we look at the other options.

One of the biggest issues with this method is every client seems to provide content in a different way, even if you provide clear instructions.

They'll add inline instructions in a different colour (or maybe just in brackets, which you might completely miss and add to the production website).

They'll add links to other pages in bold, by name not URL.

They'll send images from stock photo sites with the watermark still intact.

You name it, we've seen it. It becomes a big task in itself to proofread and format into web-ready content. This is not something you should be doing as a web designer, unless you factor it into your prices to every client.

Pros

Cons

Often tedious to follow up

Little to no control over the format provided

Wastes loads of time in formatting and proofreading

Can end up taking months

How to make it easier

Provide templated documents to the client with sections to fill out

Send the client clear instructions

Use FollowUpThen to make follow ups easier**

Make sure it is on your contract that work will not start until 100% content received

Build contract clauses to indicate that delayed work due to content is on the client, not you

**FollowUpThen is an incredibly simple tool that has been incredibly valuable. I use it for everything from initial meeting follow ups, to proposals to chasing up content. It allows you to BCC an email to something like "1week@followupthen.com" which will bounce the email back to you in a week to remind you to follow up. You can also let it email the client directly if they haven't replied yet. This is a premium feature but only $5 a month.

2. Web Forms

Asking your client to fill out web forms is similar to asking for content in documents. The difference is that you can have a little more control over what sections they provide you. For example, you could have a "contact" section that asks for specifically a Facebook URL, phone number and email. That removes any ambiguity and forces the client to put a URL directly into the correct box.

With this added control, it usually means reduced flexibility. It is difficult to enable a client to enter content for several similar pages. Ideally you'd want to create a template and let the client "add a new page" based on that template, but web forms often don't allow this or it is difficult to set up.

It is also unlikely that your client will be ready to enter all the info in one sitting, so you'll need the ability to "save and continue later", which doesn't work well on all web form solutions.

(Of course Content Snare solves both of these)

Another decision you need to make is to use self hosted forms (Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms) or Software as a Service forms (Typeform, Survey Monkey). I've known a few agencies to have clients lose work on the self hosted ones due to hosting hiccups. This can be incredibly stressful for the client if they have added a lot of information. On the flip side, self hosted gives you a lot more control on what you can do.

Pros

Cons

Inflexible

Still need to chase clients

Potential technical hiccups on self hosted forms

Still have to deal with inline instructions

How to make it easier

3. Bring in a Copywriter

Working with a copywriter can make your life as a designer/developer a lot easier. I'm a big fan of specialisation, so in our business we focus on development and work with other copywriting businesses to handle getting the content sorted.

Depending on who you work with, your involvement may be as little as connecting the client with the writer and waiting until the content comes back. Or you could be involved with the initial briefing and provide assistance throughout the process. Like everything else, it comes down to how you want to work.

The most obvious downside to using a copywriter is that the client will need a larger budget. You'll need to communicate this to them. Most good clients will quickly understand the value of using someone who can sell with words. They should also understand that their time is better spent working on their business, rather than trying to get copy right.

Pros

Much easier for you

Can initiate partnerships between copywriter and developer

Cons

Need to convince the client to spend more money

It can take some time to find a good writer that lives up to expectations and works well with you

How to make it easier

4. Deliver Lorem Ipsum

Some web design companies will build a website entirely out of lorem ipsum content first. Later, they can either drop in the client's content, or the client can change it themselves, provided some training.

This is a pretty contentious way of building a website. Many will argue that the wording on the page is the most important part and should be done first. In this case the design is created around the content, rather than shoehorning content into an existing design.

The upside is that doing design first allows you to say you've completed the website and to ask for the final payment. That way the job is finished without any hold ups from the client.

Pros

Can deliver a website without waiting for the client

Fewer constraints in creating the design and building the website

Cons

Client may need training to edit content themselves

Need to force content into pre-designed content areas which may not be the best for conversions

How to make it easier

Resources

Which works for you?

Almost every business we speak to fits into one of these methods. Some will use a combination. For example, you could say that if you don't get content within 2 weeks, you'll do design-first and the client will have to upload their own content later. Or you could provide the option of using a copywriter if the client is reluctant to write themselves.

As always, it comes down to:

1. What you feel comfortable with

2. What provides the best results for your clients

3. Is the least stressful

With our clients, we get content up front using forms and provide the option of a copywriter. We won't start work until the content has been provided. If there are big delays we'll push a bit harder on using a writer. This is nice middle ground that works well for us and our clients.

This process is automated with Content Snare. It allows us to build a content template that our clients, or a copywriter can complete. All of the follow ups and validation are handled within the app, and once it's approved we'll paste it straight into the website.

To sign up, head to ContentSnare.com
Updates
17 April 2017 - Added Lorem Ipsum Resources

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4 ways to deal with clients taking weeks to give you content - Content Snare

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Even before building Content Snare, I'd spoken with hundreds of different web design and development businesses about the favourite parts of their business through to the biggest challenges.

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With Custom Audiences, you can reach customers you already know with ads on Facebook. Just upload a list of contact info like email addresses or phone numbers. You can also use info from your website or app. We'll deliver your ad to those people if they're on Facebook.

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facebook advertising b2b - Google Search

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Aug 9, 2017 ... If you're marketing a B2B business, you probably think Facebook isn't the best way to use your advertising budget. Many B2Bs focus on other forms of social media such as LinkedIn advertising, which can be extremely expensive. In my experience, I've seen over £4 per click on LinkedIn, compared to ...

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With Custom Audiences, you can reach customers you already know with ads on Facebook. Just upload a list of contact info like email addresses or phone numbers. You can also use info from your website or app. We'll deliver your ad to those people if they're on Facebook.

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Beauticians
Restaurants
Cafes
Mechanics
Handymen

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Facebook searches
Video(s)
dbm graphic plates (FB ads)
100MessagesPerDay

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Warilla
Shellharbour
Blackbutt
Warrawong
Port Kembla
Berkeley
Dapto
Albion Park
Albion Park Rail
Oak Flats
Kiama
Unanderra
Figtree

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Search Facebook for local businesses in categories - Hairdressers
Mechanics
Handyman

etc

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At the heart of this method is the idea that a person should practice doing something for a single minute, every day at the same time.

Almost all of us periodically set ourselves a new goal or challenge - and just as often in the end we fail to achieve it. We end up telling ourselves that we're just not ready yet, that we'll do it next week, next month...next year.

We might even pursue them with zeal at the start. But once we've made a small amount of effort, we'll tell ourselves we've done enough, and it's time to take this whole "starting a new life" thing more slowly.

Why does it always turn out like this? The answer's fairly obvious: because we try to achieve too much, too fast, we get sick of the new responsibility and, because it's difficult to change old habits and try something new.
Kaizen is the simple technique of practicing something for one minute every day.
Just One Minute A Day

In Japanese culture there exists the practice of Kaizen, which includes the idea of the "one-minute principle" for self-improvement. At the heart of this method is the idea that a person should practice doing something for a single minute, every day at the same time.

You can't do Kaizen just once or twice and expect immediate results. You have to be in it for the long haul. - Masaaki Imai

Clearly, it shouldn't be any trouble for absolutely anyone - even the laziest person - to carry out a given task for such a small amount of time. Whereas you will more often than not find an excuse not to do something when faced with carrying it out for 30 minutes or an hour a day, you should be able to do it without any misgivings for just 60 seconds.
Even the biggest mountain can seem smaller if you take it one step at a time.
The Pursuit of Continuous Improvement

Whether it's doing press-ups or reading a book in a foreign language, in this case the task before you won't seem like something unpleasant which you have to get through, but will instead be an activity which brings you joy and satisfaction. By taking one little step at a time, you will move on to the path of self-perfection and achieve great results.

When you're inspired by such feelings, you will gradually begin to increase the amount of time you spend doing the task which you have set yourself.

It's important to overcome that lack of confidence you might have in your own abilities, as well as free yourself from those feelings of guilt and helplessness.
A simple technique that requires daily discipline to achieve noticeable results.
Celebrate Each Step Forward

You need to experience a sense of victory and success to move forward. When you're inspired by such feelings, you will gradually begin to increase the amount of time you spend doing the task which you have set yourself.

Maybe at first just for five minutes more, but then this will soon turn into half an hour, and then even longer after that.

In this way, the one-minute principle lets you see the progress you're making right before your eyes.
Each step that you take in your personal growth is a cause for celebration.
Change and Wisdom

Kaizen originated in Japan. The word itself contains two roots - "kai" (change) and "zen" (wisdom). It was invented by Masaaki Imai, who believes this philosophy can can be applied just as successfully to the world of business as it can to one's personal life.

The word itself contains two roots - "kai" (change) and "zen" (wisdom).

At first glance, this practice might seem doubtful and ineffective for people who have grown up in Western culture, with its emphasis on the idea that results can be achieved only by undertaking immense efforts.
Imagine what you could achieve through the pursuit of continuous improvement.
Applicable for Everybody

But elaborate, challenging programs of self-improvement which deprive a person of huge amounts of energy can simply end up exhausting them, and leave no tangible results. Kaizan is something that anyone can attempt in virtually any sphere of their life. In Japan, for example, it is often applied to improve management techniques.

All you have to do is understand what it is you want to achieve, and you're already set to go.

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A Japanese Technique for Overcoming Laziness

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At the heart of this method is the idea that a person should practice doing something for a single minute, every day at the same time. Almost all of us periodically set ourselves a new goal or challenge - and just as often in the end we fail to achieve it.

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If you're still stuck on the same old on-page SEO routine, it's time to wake up, smell the coffee, and figure out what's up now.

If you're waking up from 2010, you've got a long way to go, Rip Van Winkle.

But even if you're poking into the SEO world from just a few months ago, you might be surprised at how much changed while you were away.

We're always in need of "updated" information for SEO, and I thought now was a great time to release my updated checklist.
I've organized this list into three main sections:

1. Basic SEO

2. Keywords and on-page SEO

3. Content Optimization

If you are looking to focus solely on local, I suggest checking out this local SEO checklist in addition to the advice below.

Let's get this party started!

Basic SEO Checklist

Install Google Analytics

Analytics help you gain an insight into your visitor demographics and understand your marketing better.

Add Website to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

These tools analyze many factors that affect your search traffic. It's a must have.

Check Site Page Speed at Google PageSpeed Insights

A score of around 85/100 is considered good for both mobile and desktop. Remember, if your site takes more than 2 to 4 seconds to load, your visitor will move on.

Ensure Your CMS is Equipped

Make sure your Content Management System is equipped with an SEO plugin that allows you to write the title, description, image tags, h-tags (headers), and page tags. It should also allow you to format your article (bold, italics, spell-check). I suggest Yoast SEO for WordPress.

Make Your Site Responsive

It should deliver a great user experience across all devices.

Check Broken Links

Use Xenu's Link Sleuth, which is a free and helpful tool.

Validate Your HTML and CSS

Validate your HTML and CSS coding at W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) using HTML validator, CSS validator, and mobile code validator.

Create and Upload a Sitemap.xml

Position pages with maximum potential at the top. Here's a dynamic sitemap.xml generator (free for up to 500 pages).

Submit the sitemap link (yoursite.com/sitemap.xml) to Google and Bing using appropriate sections located in the Google Search Console/Bing Webmaster Tools.

Create and Upload a Robots.txt File

The Robots file instructs search engines about pages to crawl, and pages to leave alone (admin area, restricted areas, etc.).

Run an SEO Check

Run an SEO check after submitting your website to Google Search Console (See #2 above). Check the following sections and fix as necessary:

Structured Data for identifying errors in your rich snippets (I've discussed rich snippets in the Content Optimization section)

HTML Improvements for figuring out where your coding and on-page SEO has gone wrong

Mobile Usability for pointing out errors in your responsive coding

Manual Actions for figuring out if Google has penalized your site

Blocked Resources for seeing which URLs you have blocked from search engines

Crawl Errors for discovering the errors (including 404 Page Not Found) Google encountered while crawling your site

Robots.txt Tester for viewing any errors in your Robots.txt file

Find 301 and 302 Redirects

Use Screaming Frog to find 301 and 302 redirects. Fix if necessary. You can use the tool free for up to 500 URLs. It does much more than reporting on redirects, but it's much of the same stuff covered above, so I'm not repeating it here.

Check Your Server

Check if your site is hosted on a spam server. If it is, it will ruin all your SEO-related hard work. Feed your server IP into this tool, and get the lowdown.

Test Your Website Load

Scoring 85+ at Google Page Insights means jack if your website can't handle many users at once. If your speed goes down, not only will you lose customers, your rankings will also get hurt.

Test your website load (Free test is restricted to 50 virtual users at one time) at ZebraTester. If your current hosting plan does not deliver, upgrade.

Install an SSL Certificate

It encrypts your buyers' inputs, gets you an HTTPs, and builds trust with search engines and viewers at a small price.

Claim Your Business

Claim your business and/or URL on all social networks and directories (G+, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Technorati, Pinterest, etc.).

On-Page SEO

Though I'm assuming you have a list of keywords, here's a quick primer:

1. Head to Google Adwords and log in with your Gmail ID.

2. Select Tools > Keyword Planner. Choose "Search for new keywords using phrase, website or category."

3. Enter your primary keywords, select your industry, enter your fiercest competitor's URL, choose your geography, and search for ideas.

These days, search engines look for context and not just keywords. Here are a few strategies that will help you keep you up-to-speed with the latest search engine algorithms:

For contextual keywords, fire up Wikipedia and search for your niche. Note down all contextual keywords (also referred to as Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords in the SEO business). Mine synonyms using Thesaurus.com.

Use UberSuggest and the Google Related Searches box that appears at the end of Google SERPs to mine long-tail keywords/keyphrases.

Research keywords that are gaining popularity using Google Trends. You also can use the tool to weigh keywords against each other and even check how a group of keywords are performing in different geographical areas.

To analyze your top competitor's keywords and backlinks, use a tool like SEMRush or Ahrefs. Finally, research Industry-related terms and jargon to complete the list of contextual keywords.

Title, Meta Description, and ALT Tags

Limit the page title to 60-65 characters and ensure it begins with a relevant keyword.

Limit the meta description to around 155 characters.

If you're serving a locality or a restricted geography, include your phone number. For example, the last line of your description could be: "Call XXX-XXX-XXXX for a special offer." That way people may call you directly after viewing your number in the SERPs.

Write appropriate ALT (image) tags. Remember, search engines can read content, but cannot view the images (at least not yet).

Headers Tags and Internal Links

Use H-tags (headers) to markup sections and subsections of your content.

Build internal links. Don't link text like "Click Me," or "Know More," etc. Use strategic anchor text to link to other internal pages. Such links help visitors find topics of interest and spread link juice all over.

Content Optimization

We've started talking to our phones, thanks to Voice Search and assistants such as SIRI. One day, when AI (Artificial Intelligence) evolves, mobiles will start talking back to us. How will your website sound when the visitor asks his mobile AI to read it back to him?

If it sounds unnatural or keyword-stuffed or contains incomplete information, the visitor will ditch your site.

Follow these rules:

Write in a natural, conversational tone.

Ensure your article content does justice to its title.

Write in a conversational way that can be easily understood by a fifth grader, unless you're writing a scientific paper or thesis.

Create an FAQ page and answer every question that exists for your niche and products/services. This may also get your website into the Google Answer box.

Position Your Website for RankBrain Success

Search engine algorithms are evolving. Google's AI, RankBrain, answers tough and complex search queries and is currently handling about 15% of search volume.

It pays attention to context and not just the keywords, and also learns from its mistakes and from what users click on.

To position your website for RankBrain success, do this:

Write great content that gets clicked on (RankBrain moves most-clicked content higher up in the SERPs).

Write in a natural tone.

Write complete and meaningful articles that genuinely inform and help your visitors

Make sure to use videos and images.

Aim for Good UX

Does your content look nice and informative on the results pages?

User experience matters, and SEO is all about UX. Let me explain this with an example:

I Googled "strawberry sauce". Here are the top three results:

Which result are you likely to click on?

In my opinion, the second or third result, because you can see that the recipe has been given a 5-star rating by many users, which implies that the recipe is great and that there are more strawberry sauce makers to interact with.

You may not even consider clicking on result # 1, unless you know about Pioneer Woman. (She's awesome, just for the record.)

The rating that appears in the search results is made possible by Rich Snippets.

Rich snippets help search engines understand content, and index and present it better. Users get a good deal, too. They get to view search results that make immediate sense.

It pays to add rich snippets to your HTML. Currently, search engines can understand the following types of snippetted content: Product, Recipe, Reviews, Events, Video, News and Software Application.

Conclusion

Follow my checklist to beef up your site's SEO health.

But keep this in mind. SEO isn't just about the technical optimization, important as it is. SEO is also about delivering rock-solid content to the right users.

You want to do more than be technically impeccable. You want to be materially superior to your competition, unleashing sizzling hot content that turns heads, earns clicks, and brings in revenue.

Try that, and you'll never suffer from being outdated.
What SEO practices are you ensuring you implement this year?
Image Credits Featured Image: WDnet/Pixabay.com
All screenshots by Neil Patel. Taken May 2016.

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If you're still stuck on the same old on-page SEO routine, it's time to wake up, smell the coffee, and figure out what's up now. If you're waking up from 2010, you've got a long way to go, Rip Van Winkle.

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Brochures/Flyers
Keywords (SEO)
Images
Colours
Associations/Professional Groups
Awards
Testimonials

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Last night's Oscars bizarreness was not just bizarre but bizarre in a way that is typical of this entirely bizarre time. The rhythm of the yes-they-won-oh-my-God-no-they-didn't event, with "La La Land" replaced by "Moonlight" as Best Picture, was weirdly like that of . . . Election Night. First, a more or less expected, if "safe," result was on its way-although Hillary Clinton never got all the way to the stage, so to speak, the result did seem safely in hand at 7 P.M., according to the polling-and the expected and safe people were ready to deliver their touching but obviously polished pieces. Then the sudden confusion and visible near-panic of people running around in the background of the stage, with the same slightly horrified spirit that one felt on Election Night as shocking results began emerging from the exurban counties in Florida. Then, yes-can this be happening?-the revised and unexpected result.

In this case, obviously, the result was positive to all but the poor "La La Land" producers, with their earnest and spouse-approved speeches already delivered. "Moonlight" was no Donald Trump of cinema, and obviously a popular favorite. (Though there are those of us who found its beautifully photographed sentiments a bit, well, sentimental.) But the rhythm of the night was disconcertingly the same, and the sheer improbability of the happenstance scarily alike. Nothing like this has remotely happened before. This wasn't just a minor kerfuffle. This was a major malfunction. Trump cannot be President; forgetting all the bounds of ideology, no one vaguely like him has ever existed in the long list of Presidents, good, bad, and indifferent; no one remotely as oafish or as crude or as obviously unfit. People don't say "Grab 'em by the pussy" and get elected President. Can't happen. In the same way, while there have been Oscar controversies before-tie votes and rejected trophies-never before has there been an occasion when the entirely wrong movie was given the award, the speeches delivered, and then another movie put in its place. That doesn't happen. Ever.

And so both of these bizarre events put one in mind of a simple but arresting thesis: that we are living in the Matrix, and something has gone wrong with the controllers. This idea was, I'm told, put forward first and most forcibly by the N.Y.U. philosopher David Chalmers: what is happening lately, he says, is support for the hypothesis that we are living in a computer simulation and that something has recently gone haywire within it. The people or machines or aliens who are supposed to be running our lives are having some kind of breakdown. There's a glitch, and we are in it.

Once this insight is offered, it must be said, everything_ _else begins to fall in order. The recent Super Bowl, for instance. The result, bizarre on the surface-with that unprecedented and impossible comeback complete with razzle-dazzle catches and completely blown coverages and defensive breakdowns-makes no sense at all in the "real" world. Doesn't happen. But it is exactly what you expect to happen when a teen-ager and his middle-aged father exchange controllers in the EA Sports video-game version: the father stabs and pushes the buttons desperately while the kid makes one play after another, and twenty-five-point leads are erased in minutes, and in just that way-with ridiculous ease on the one side and chicken-with-its-head-cut-off panic infecting the other. What happened, then, one realizes with last-five-minutes-of-"The Twilight Zone" logic, is obvious: sometime in the third quarter, the omniscient alien or supercomputer that was "playing" the Patriots exchanged his controller with his teen-age offspring, or newer model, with the unbelievable result we saw.

There may be not merely a glitch in the Matrix. There may be a Loki, a prankster, suddenly running it. After all, the same kind of thing seemed to happen on Election Day: the program was all set, and then some mischievous overlord-whether alien or artificial intelligence doesn't matter-said, "Well, what if he did win? How would they react?" "You can't do that to them," the wiser, older Architect said. "Oh, c'mon," the kid said. "It'll be funny. Let's see what they do!" And then it happened. We seem to be living within a kind of adolescent rebellion on the part of the controllers of the video game we're trapped in, who are doing this for their strange idea of fun.

The thesis that we are in a simulation is, as people who track such things know-my own college-age son has explained it to me- far from a joke, or a mere conceit. The argument, actually debated at length at the American Museum of Natural History just last year, is that the odds are overwhelming that ours is a simulated universe. The argument is elegant. Because the advance of intelligence seems like the one constant among living things-and since living things are far likelier than not to be spread around the universe-then one of the things that smart living things will do is make simulations of other universes in which to run experiments. (We're not all that smart, and we're already starting to do it, modelling large interacting economies and populations on our own, presumably "primitive" computers.)

Since there will be only one "real" universe, and countless simulated ones, the odds that we are living in one of the simulations instead of the one actual reality are overwhelming. If intelligent life exists, then we are surely likely to be living in one of its Matrices. (Or Matrixes, depending on how you grammatize it.) As Clara Moskowitz, writing in Scientific American, no less, explains succinctly, "A popular argument for the simulation hypothesis came from University of Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrum in 2003, when he suggested that members of an advanced civilization with enormous computing power might decide to run simulations of their ancestors. They would probably have the ability to run many, many such simulations, to the point where the vast majority of minds would actually be artificial ones within such simulations, rather than the original ancestral minds. So simple statistics suggest it is much more likely that we are among the simulated minds."

The implicit dread logic is plain. If we are among the simulated minds, then we exist in order to be stimulated minds: we exist in order for the controllers to run experiments. Until recently, our simulation, the Matrix within which we were unknowingly imprisoned, seemed in reasonably sound hands. Terrible things did happen as the cold-blooded, unemotional machines that ran it experimented with the effects of traumatic events-wars, plagues, "Gilligan's Island"-on hyper-emotionalized programs such as us. And yet the basic logic of the enfolding program seemed sound. Things pinned down did not suddenly drift toward the ceiling; cats did not go to Westminster; Donald Trump did not get elected President; the movie that won Best Picture was the movie that won Best Picture. Now everything has gone haywire, and anything can happen.

Whether we are at the mercy of an omniscient adolescent prankster or suddenly the subjects of a more harrowing experiment than any we have been subject to before (is our alien overlords' funding threatened, thus forcing them to "show results" to the grant-giving institution that doubtless oversees all the simulations?), we can now expect nothing remotely normal to take place for a long time to come. They're fiddling with our knobs, and nobody knows the end.

Or perhaps, let us pray, it's just that someone forgot to plug in an important part of the machine, and, when they spot the problem, they'll plug us back in to the usual psychological circuits. Let's hope for a sudden mysterious surge of energy, and then normalcy again. But don't count on it. Expect the worst. Oh, wait. It's already happened.

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Did the Oscars Just Prove That We Are Living in a Computer Simulation?

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Last night's Oscars bizarreness was not just bizarre but bizarre in a way that is typical of this entirely bizarre time. The rhythm of the yes-they-won-oh-my-God-no-they-didn't event, with "La La Land" replaced by "Moonlight" as Best Picture, was weirdly like that of . . . Election Night.