Archive for November 20th, 2007

November 20, 2007: 11:57 pm: adminThe Technology Way

Now that you have got a basic understanding of the ins and outs of blogs, and some options available, you're probably wondering: How does this help my business? How does it help me to stand out?

1. Team Communication. Companies use blogs internally to communicate project status to stakeholders and managers. It beats clogging everybody's email with mass broadcasts. It allows these missives to be archived, indexed and easily searched.

2. Enrich Your Clients. You can easily link to articles and resources relevant to your readers and their needs. You can more easily attract experts to provide value-added content to your audience.

3. Get to Know Your Customer. Nobody buys from someone they don't know. Blogging allows you to demonstrate your expertise and point-of-view quickly and easily. In addition, blogs allow the customers to receive your updates in the format they choose.

4. Collaborate. You can create your own marketing buzz to drive attention and buyers to your products and services. Some companies use internal blogs to report on projects or to track work groups distributed around the world.

5. Research and Development. Weblogs are the perfect forum to test out new ideas and receive instant feedback. You can allow others to see how you develop your products and services, and at the same time, they can tell you how best to serve them.

6. Go Global. Blogs, like other online media, allow you to take your business and ideas to a global market. Translation services are getting better every day, allowing more people to read online content in different languages. I've helped bloggers from New York to New Zealand, from Indiana to India.

7. Hidden Entrance to the Press. Journalists are busier than ever and blogs provide a virtual directory of pundits on any topic. You and your company can be the content expert they're looking for. Furthermore, if your company is talked about in the blogosphere it could end up using that exposure as a back door to the press.

8. Get Published. Publishers are turning to blogs to find new writing talent. Blogs can give a publisher a taste of your writing style as well as a sample of your depth of knowledge. Content specific blogs show a a commitment to a certain topic or subject matter.

9. Write your book. Let your readers help you write your latest book or article. Post chapters or ideas, then let readers help you in researching, testing and suggesting ideas. Or, use a blog after your book is published to update the material or to answer questions from readers.

10. Success Stories. Invite clients to blog about their successes with your products and services - it's like a living testimonial that never ends. As clients share their experiences, your prospects can see first-hand how you can help them, too.


Copyright © 2005 Andy Wibbels


About Andy: Andy Wibbels is a blogging evangelist and creator of the Easy Bake Weblogs seminar that has helped hundreds of small businesses all over the world leverage blogs and RSS news feeds to increase profits and save time. You can download his free special report on business and blogs at http://easybakeweblogs.com/.

: 11:54 pm: adminMiscellaneous

Fresh water cultured pearls turn up in a wider range of colors and shapes than their saltwater counterparts. You will see them in white, off-white, champagne, shades of pink and orange, purple, mauve, silver and brown. Their shapes take in oval, ovate, button-shaped, and drop shaped. Flawlessly round, large freshwater pearls are virtually nonexistent. Another dissimilarity from saltwater pearls- a single fresh water mussel can produce up to 60 pearls a year, much higher than saltwater production levels. Natural fresh water pearls come about in mussels for the identical cause that saltwater pearls occur in oysters.

An external object, such as a sand grain or tiny parasite, comes into a mussel and cannot be excreted. To relieve irritation, the mollusk coats the gatecrasher with a secretion it uses for building it’s shell, called nacre. In cultured freshwater pearl production, workers ease the mussel half shells apart and cut small slits into the mantle tissue inside both shells. Then they introduce minute pieces of live tissue from a different mussel into the slits. That is enough to start nacre production. The majority of cultured freshwater pearls are made entirely of nacre, just like their natural counterparts.

Culture of fresh water pearls began in Japan. After their successes with culturing saltwater pearls, Japanese pearl farmers experimented with freshwater mussels in Lake Biwa. The early freshwater commercial crops came out in the 1930s. The all-nacre Biwa pearls featured colors never seen in saltwater pearls. Depth of luminescence and lustre matched naturals. In fact, until recently, all fresh water pearls were called
About the Author

Antoinette Boulay writes for