Business, economic development - the unofficial Chamber of Commerce

There are many different ways to increase your traffic on the web. Just as there are get rich quick schemes, there are get traffic quick schemes. These can backfire on you just like any other shortcut to results.

As part of your overall strategy, it is possible to create a plan that will get your steadily increasing traffic, increasing visibility and results. The more employees you have that use a computer the better.

Here are the key elements to getting your employees to create some Internet Buzz for you.

# 1 - Prepare

The first key is to create a clear document on what your employees can and cannot say about the company. What is the vision that you want to make public? What is unique about the organization? What stories can they tell? Collect examples of good and bad posts from employees in other companies.

#2 - Coach

Once this is done, have a meeting and explain that if everyone spends a short amount of time each week participating on the web, they can significantly increase the visibility of the organization and all its employees. Clearly state if this is to be done on the clock or outside of business hours.

Explain that this is not sales. Each employee should participate in online communications and add something of value to wherever they are posting information, and work in where they work if they can. Links are the best, but do not force it.

#3 - Set Minimum Goals

Ask each employee to commit to doing a minimum amount of online buzz each week. Some examples of online buzz are:

• Post comments on other people’s Blog
• Create or maintain your own Website or Blog
• Email a friend and tell them something interesting on your organization’s website
• Write an article for another website, with a bio and link back to the organization’s website.
• Set up a profile on a social networking site and participate in discussions
• Email an author or writer that you have read and introduce yourself, and let them know you like their work.

#4 - Collect & Reward Efforts

Have employees email you or record their buzz in a central place. Have someone review each buzz effort and recognize excellent buzz creation. Talk about how buzz effects search engine ranking and traffic. Give rewards to those top buzz creators and publicly thank them for their effort.

#5 - Review and Renew

Periodically give your employees new talking points about the company. It might be an exciting new product line coming up, it could be a great customer service story to work into a forum post, but keep giving them fresh new things to talk about.

If you give employees exciting new buzz-worthy stories they can repeat plus stress the value of their participation, you will find you have more inbound links and internet buzz than any SEO firm could have generated for you in a legitimate way. And it was basically free.

Ron McDaniel, CEO
Buzzoodle (http://www.buzzoodle.com)
ron@buzzoodle.com
330-677-0555

Get your workforce buzzing about you.
Buzz Blog: http://buzzoodle.blogspot.com

Copyright © 2005-2006 Ron McDaniel

Child Car Seat Safety:

We know you love your children, but so many people do not follow these simple car seat safety principles. By following these easy steps you can ensure your child is completely safe in your car.
Just to get one thing straight, there is no one best child car safety seat. The best car safety seat is determined by various factors that you as the parent need to take into consideration. The seat needs to fit your child’s height and weight, as well as be able to fit properly in your car.

Another common misconception is price. More expensive, does not always mean better quality or the seat is better safety wise.

The first step of proper car seat safety is of course determined by the age of your child. Any child that is under the age of twelve should be kept in the back seat of a vehicle. This is especially true if your car has passenger side air bags.

Infants should be in a rear facing car seat until they are at least one year old and twenty pounds. After they are twenty pounds they can be placed in a front facing car safety seat until they are around forty pounds or they have reached the maximum height recommended for the specific car safety seat in question.

Once a child reaches forty pounds, they should be placed on a belt positioning booster seat. The vehicle’s normal seat belt should not be used until they are around eighty pounds or 4ft 9 inches tall.

As always read your car’s owners manual as well and any manuals with the car safety seat.

Additional Car Safety Tips:

Most accidents that occur over a parent/child incident occur when a parent is trying to turn around and discipline their child. Think about it, you are taking you eyes as well as you mind off of the primary task at hand (driving) and exclusively focusing on your child who should be, and usually is behind you in the back seat of the vehicle.

To prevent this the best thing to do if you must discipline your child is to find a place to pull over and do so then, when you are not moving.

Child Safety is our primary concern, check out these FREE child safety related resources at Child Safety Booster Seats

The “MICR laser printer” is becoming very popular. Businesses
are discovering that they can save a substantial amount of money
by printing their own checks on plain paper. However, to
successfully do this, a business should have an MICR capable
laser printer, an MICR toner cartridge, security paper and MICR
check printing software.

HP laser printers are by far the most popular. In fact, most of
the current HP models are capable of MICR check printing. MICR
toner cartridges are available from both HP. Many third party
MICR toner suppliers manufacture compatible MICR toner
cartridges at substantial savings. It would take many pages to
review the possible MICR printers offered by HP.

In addition to HP, Troy and Xerox also produce certified MICR
laser printers. The Troy MICR laser printers are quite popular.
Troy produces several different series of laser printers that
are ideal for small workgroup settings. Troy printers provide
high security check printing hardware and software. The Troy
software makes digital signatures and logos a cinch to print on
your personalized checks. Most of the Troy laser printers use
both Troy and HP MICR toner cartridges

For over 20 years, Acom Solutions has provided MICR laser
printers to business organizations for printing MICR laser
checks. These laser printers use blank security check paper,
which provides a huge cost savings and is a real deterrent of
check fraud. Acom has enhanced several Xerox laser printers to
provide MICR check printing at speeds of 26-45 pages per minute.
Acom has been selected as the Xerox vendor of choice for
certified MICR laser printers.

The following chart gives you a comparison of some of the most
popular Troy and Acom MICR laser printers.

A Comparison of Troy and Acom MICR Laser Printers

MICR Laser…… PPM…. Pgs/Mo.. Input Capacity… First Page
Out…. Toner Yield*

PHASER 4500…… 36…. 150,000… 700 sheets….. < 8
seconds…. 18K

DOCUPRINT N4525.. 45…. 250,000… 1050 sheets….. 4 seconds
(ready)…. 30K

Troy MICR 1320… 22…. 10,000… 250 sheets….. < 10
seconds…. 6K

Troy MICR 2420… 30…. 75,000… 250 sheets….. < 10
seconds…. 6K

Troy MICR 4250… 45…. 200,000… 500 sheets….. < 8
seconds…. 12K

Troy MICR 4350… 55…. 250,000… 500 sheets….. < 8
seconds…. 12K

Troy MICR 8150… 32…. 150,000… 1,100 sheets….. < 14
seconds…. 20K

Troy MICR 9050… 50…. 300,000… (2) 500 sheets < 8
seconds…. 35K

* Yields based upon thousand pages per 5% toner coverage on
letter size paper

The Phaser 4500 and DocuPrint N4525 laser printers are available
from Acom Solutions.

The Troy MICR Laser printers are available from Troy group. If
you want to save as much as 75% on the cost of printing checks,
check out an MICR laser printer today.

Because Garden Direct was started around 1996 it has with momentum become one of a selection of profiting mail order stockists of garden plants, tools etc. Throughout the twelve years which Garden Direct have been open the business presently have 2 million clients who have been interested through very good convenience, brilliant charges, the best value for money & forever high quality all things for your garden. www.gardendirect.co.uk’s products is so different; Garden Direct are also constantly praised in their fantastic plant forms that can be found continually added to said range, and it also includes garden tools with add ons to help buyers that can buy the very finest for their precious garden. Garden Direct sell beyond 130 million best select shrub plants each and every year, the massive majority raised within Garden Direct’s own farm, all this permits you yourself to be calm about your acquisition & consider that what folk have ordered are of the highest standard.

GardenDirect.co.uk don’t forget offers the choice of a catalogue for you to examine through or feasibly buy from in a bit of your own time. GardenDirect.co.uk have the best variety from classic favourites to other unique forms you yourself could not get around the majority of garden centres; the catalogue does also incorporate a variety of seasonal deals too. The business have various options of plants which people can acquire from GardenDirect.co.uk’s online store. You yourself may either go for a plug, ready or super seeding. All of which are altogether divergent, plug shrubs, supplied 4-6cm tall in a plug of compost the aforementioned properties are the best excellent value for money, you then have the bigger ready shrub plants that are distributed at at 6-8cm tall and being also more aged will often be set direct into one’s garden, not forgetting you have super flower plants these are perfect for folk that have less time to spare, sold at 9-11cm tall they also might be directly set into the garden. Visit the Garden Direct site for garden tools, they have a wide range of tools, including shears and loppers, helping you to make the most of your garden.

Along with shrub plants the online shop sell the customary gardening products that you yourself may purchase; the above mentioned consist of garden tools, gardening sheds & gardening shears along with various others.

Good Buy Auto Auction

To this day few people know about the good buys that can be found at auto auctions. Getting a good buy at an auto auction is very simple and very real.

Car dealerships themselves go to auto auctions all the time in order to buy their vehicles, they then clean them up and sell them to the public at inflated prices, often times profiting triple or even more then what they paid.

Yet in reality anyone can attend a public auto auction and buy a car or truck for cheap. Some people even go into business for themselves and buy at auto auctions and then sell them in the local paper, profiting thousands on every vehicle.

But even if you’re not interested in going into business for yourself, buying a car for a good buy at an auto auction is easy and straightforward, and most people who attend their first auto auction get a good buy on a great vehicle, some even find themselves the exact car they want for a price much cheaper then they could have found anywhere else.

So instead of buying your next vehicle from a private party or through a used car dealership, why not check out your local auto auction and see for yourself the kind of deals that can be found there.

David Foley is the owner of Car Deals Search which is a website that helps people learn about auto auctions.

To learn more about auto auctions visit: http://www.cardealssearch.com/goodbuyautoauction.html

Blood cleansing is usually achieved by following a special blood cleansing fast. First you need to choose an appropriate time for a fast. Blood cleansing fast requires the conservation of energy, so it is not a good idea to plan heavy work or sport events for the same week. Therefore it is easier to do blood cleansing fast during spring and summer. Maybe the most important thing is to be mentally prepared. If you strongly “feel like it”, then it is the right time for blood cleansing fast.

To fully benefit from the blood cleansing fast you should also be physically prepared. For one week prior to the blood cleansing fast eat only raw vegetables and “green drinks”. This way your body will be “pre-cleansed” and the fast will not be such a shock to your system.

To carry the toxins out of your body with blood cleansing fast you need to drink at least 8 cups of steam-distilled water every day. Use herbal extracts to aid in blood cleansing. Drink juices made of beets, lemons, carrots and leafy greens. Chlorophyll in leafy greens builds up the blood with important nutrients, promotes regularity, and inhibits cellular damage from radiation. This makes Chlorophyll an essential part of any blood cleansing therapy. Good sources for Chlorophyll are wheatgrass, barley, and alfalfa juices.

You can use these herbs in any combination or independently to aid in blood cleansing. Dandelion, burdock, licorice, rhubarb, sage, shiitake mushroom, ginsengs, hawthorn, pau d’arco, and red clover. If you have high blood pressure, don’t use licorice or ginseng at all and not more than 7 days in a row when healthy. Sage is not an option for you during blood cleansing fast if you have any kind of seizure disorder, and avoid Siberian ginseng if you have hypoglycemia or heart disorder.

To cleanse the liver and the endocrine system you can use barberry, black radish, eyebright, lobelia, milk thistle, Oregon grape, pau d’arco, wild yam, and yellow dock in combinations or independently. Oregon grape is not an option when pregnant, and lobelia should not be taken an ongoing basis. To cleanse the mucous membranes you can use goldenseal for one week at a time. If you are allergic to ragweed use it with caution. Borage seed, ginkgo biloba, and sarsaparilla help to restore the acid/alkaline balance.

Stay on the blood cleansing fast for three days. Once the blood cleansing fast is completed, avoid sugar, white flour, and heated fats and oils at least for one month. Better yet to always avoid unhealthy food.

More information about nutrition, diets, herbal remedies, body cleansing, and vitamins at Nutritionbases.com

According to a Miller Heiman 2003 Sales Effectiveness Study, over 60% of sales organizations are being pushed to increase results with reduced budgets and fewer salespeople compared to last year

Whether you are a sales rep or a sales manager this information is probably not a surprise to you. Simply put, the current business climate demands you work smarter and not harder. It’s about being organized enough to put your best foot forward in order to close business. The sales professionals I work with sales pros who rarely disagree when I say that time management is not only important but a critical factor in being successful. When I break down the most important components, here’s what I find:

Prioritize. Most sales professionals I work with have a clear understanding of their goals and priorities, but shifting priorities have become the norm in most organizations. Being able to change quickly can mean gaining a competitive advantage, but it might also leave the employee feeling confused and over-whelmed. To remain flexible, re-visit your priorities several times during the day. Try working on priorities first thing in the morning BEFORE accessing email. This is a much more effective approach, both long and short term. However it can be difficult to implement because we tend to respond to the urgent (email) first. Your time management habits should support your ability to focus and proactively seek working on what’s important, because focus and importance shouldn’t be on any customer and prospect but on the right customer and the right prospect. Otherwise you’re simply wasting time and opportunity.

Process. Selling is a process. It requires being efficient (doing the right thing) and effective (at the right time). And that’s what time management is all about. But the first rule of effective time management is to overcome personal disorganization. How do you handle all that incoming information? Is the pile on your desktop stressing you because you fear something might be falling through the cracks? Can you store, manage and retrieve electronic and paper-based information easily? Paper and time management are interconnected so having a roadblock in one area usually leads to a challenge in another. If your systems and processes are already in line, ask how you can make them better because little shifts can make a huge difference in increasing productivity and reducing stress.

Proceed. ‘Hope is not a Strategy’ is one of my favorite book titles. The same is true for improving your time management skills. It’s action that makes the difference. Doing something that moves you forward helps you feel you have more control of your day and your workload. Just thinking about doing something is a waste of your time. Time that would be better spent overcoming roadblocks.

Don’t be a slave to poor time management habits, cluttered desktops (and hard drives) and procrastination.
Being successful means having more time to spend with your family and friends as well as pursue some of your own interests.

Copyright 2004 Cynthia Kyriazis. All rights reserved.

Cynthia Kyriazis is a Professional Organizer, trainer, consultant, speaker, coach and author with over 20 years management experience in multi-unit corporations. She is President of Organize it, Inc., an organizational consulting firm serving Fortune 500 clients since 1995. Cynthia has worked with over 150 companies and hundreds of professionals to help improve performance in the areas of time, information, space and electronic file management.

Cynthia has appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Kansas City Star and the Legal Intelligencer. She currently serves as Secretary on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO), member of the National Speakers Association (NSA), member of International Society for Performance Improvement - Kansas City chapter (ISPI-KC) and consultant to the American Coaching Association.

“I WON’T DO IT!” “YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!”

Whether parent or teacher, we have all “been there” and “done that” with a child exhibiting refusal behaviors. Before “losing your cool” and your power as well, interventions and strategies are provided for use to help deescalate this classic power struggle.

-Avoid placing yourself in a stand-off situation with the child.

-Don’t “mark a line in the sand” unless prepared to follow through with the consequences on your own. Creating a demand situation….”You will sit in your seat or I will call someone to seat you”….will cause the authority figure to lose his/her power. This is a main goal of oppositional children…personal control over their environment.

-Under a demand situation, especially with authority figures, an oppositional child will be more likely to escalate to extreme opposition. Stop talking. Give the child a chance to detach from the situation with some power. Problem-solving the situation when both parties are calm will prove more productive.

-Phrase requests which are more likely to bring an oppositional response with a negative statement…”I don’t expect you would want to….” Or “You probably wouldn’t want to…..”

-Create a situation where it is more worth the child’s while to be part of.

-Use distraction.

-Give choices which give the student some control.

-Give the student a specific leadership role during stressful transitions, such as day care dismissal. Monitoring younger children for appropriate dismissal behavior, such as sitting quietly, would be an example of a specific leadership role.

These children can be extremely challenging. Should a pattern of continuing emotionality become evident, additional advice from professionals, such as the child’s pediatrician or a school guidance counselor, would be recommended in order to develop a positive behavior support system to help ensure behavioral success.

Sheree S. Marty has worked with elementary school children as a school counselor for the past nine years. A physical education teacher for thirteen years, Ms. Marty earned her Master degree in Counseling in 2000. Ms. Marty is the author and owner of “Chinese Jump Rope”, a childrens games book and website. For more information, visit http://chinesejumprope.tripod.com

If you are a gardener you probably already do a bit composting to recycle yard and kitchen waste. This homemade “Black Gold” does wonders for your plants and soil. But, have you discovered the gardening benefits of harvesting and recycling rainwater to use in the garden?

Many communities nationwide are experiencing either short-term or long-term water shortages. Some communities have begun rationing programs and impose fines if a homeowner uses too much water. Why not try some simple rainwater harvesting techniques and use the water to irrigate your garden? You’ll be able to water your plants when they need it and you may see a bit of savings on your water bill at the same time.

Harvesting rainwater is as simple as placing a rain barrel under a roof gutter downspout. Practically any large, clean container can be used as a rain barrel. For instance, you can use a plastic or metal trash can. However, there are major benefits to using commercially designed rain barrels. Features of commercially available rain barrels include: childproof and pet-proof lids, mosquito screens, overflow hardware, spigots for attaching hoses, and the ability to link multiple barrels together. These features make using your rainwater much easier and safer. Many city water departments will give homeowners a rebate on their water bill if they buy a rain barrel.

You can find durable, heavy-duty rainbarrels at most home improvement stores and garden centers. You can also order them from online suppliers. These rain barrels can be quite attractive also. Some are made to look like traditional round wooden barrels while some are square, or half-round to provide versatility and style when placing one beside your house. Some rain barrels currently on the market are made from recycled shipping containers for Mediterranean foods such as olives.

What are some of the advantages of collecting rainwater for use in your garden? For starters, you will be doing your part to conserve both water and energy. When you use rainwater you will not be using your municipal drinking water and will not be using the energy it takes to pump it to your house. It’s free, so you won’t be billed for it! Rainwater is fresh and naturally low in salt and chlorine so it’s good for your plants. Most of the time it is not cold and won’t shock your plants like water from an underground source can do.

Your grandparents probably used rain barrels to irrigate their gardens. Why not try something old to solve a new problem and conserve water by using a rain barrel? Even if you live in an area with very little annual rainfall you will be amazed when your rain barrel fills up after just one or two rain showers.

Article by Amy Passmore for The Gardening Guide. Visit The Gardening Guide for more information on conserving water in your garden.

This article may be freely distributed as long as the author’s name and live website link appear.

Content is King! shout the search engines. That’s what the
search engines love. We also love the non-reciprocal links that
we get for our websites when our articles are published on other
peoples’ sites with our resource boxes dutifully appended below
them.

To create a well written article takes time and effort. We have
to get everything right: it has to be of relevance to the reader
in that subject field; it has to be well researched; all
spelling, punctuation and grammar must be correction; it has to
be a genuine contribution to that particular area of
specialization, and so interesting that the editor will jump at
the chance of publishing it. And, oh yes, all the right keywords
have to be there, of the right density and in the correct
proportions.

The well-crafted article must satisfy both the reader and the
bot; both the aesthetics of the eye and the strictures of the
code. So those of us who try and be at least a little bit
serious about things know that a second draft is always
necessary, and then a third. Then it’s best to sleep on it. Even
after that, we know that we have to forget about it for a few
days until we are able to come back to it again with a freshly
critical mind. You prune it and nurture it. You take off the
sharp edges and you tighten it up. If necessary you know when
you have to tear it up and start over again.

Only after we have got it absolutely right - and then after
spending many hours submitting to directories, editors of
ezines, article announcement sites and individual webmasters -
are we rewarded, perhaps, with those hard-won non-reciprocal
inbound live hyperlinks.

But wait. There seems to be a problem. It appears that an
increasing number of people are quite happy to simply copy and
paste our work onto their own sites without a link back. Or they
don’t bother to check if the link is ‘live’.

That would be bad enough. But there are other people who print
our articles and then don’t even bother to name the person who
wrote it.

But there’s far worse: those people who print our article and
then announce to the world that they wrote it themselves! Some
of those even have the temerity to add the copyright sign next
to their name!

I may be being a bit too harsh. Perhaps these people don’t
realize that they’re doing anything wrong. After all, the
Internet was originally conceived as ownerless and based upon
free and open source information. And I can think of nothing
more Public Domain, in fact or in spirit, than the World Wide
Web.

Yet just consider what it is these people are doing. They are
stealing other peoples’ work and passing it off as their own.
They are effectively also stealing the web traffic that goes
with it, the traffic that our labours should be rewarding our
websites with, and diverting it to their own. This is blatant
plagiarism. It just should not happen. Theft is theft, in
whatever medium.

I wrote an article a few months ago on Internet marketing for
small businesses. A search for the title of that article on
Google now returns 10,800 pages, so at least the title itself
has been reproduced that number of times and in that number of
different places. A search for a chunk of text from the middle
of the article returns 536 pages, which suggests that the
article text has been published in its entirety no fewer than
536 times. Great! So now I have 536 inbound links from that one
article! Wrong.

I looked at individual entries of the article and in a
surprising number of cases there were no backlinks at all. Also
surprising - and somewhat sickening - was the number of
individuals who wantonly attached their own names to my work.

I recently posted the same article to a fresh source of
publishers. I was astonished at the response of one editor of a
well-known directory who had rejected the article on the grounds
that it was not mine! She had seen the same piece on many other
websites under different names, she said, and it was not her
policy to publish work that had been produced using “cookie
cutter” techniques. I wrote back saying that it really was my
own work, citing the URL of SitePro News where it originally
aired as that day’s headline feature. She apologized and was
even good enough to supply me with a list of names of people and
sites who had published it as their own. I’m so tempted to
publish their names here (perhaps I will on my blog; so watch
out!) but have decided that discretion should rule. For the
moment, at least.

But I think there is a clear message here. The fashion for
article writing and publishing for content and backlinks is
going through the roof at the moment. It’s like a mini Internet
boom all of its own. And like any other boom it has attracted
its own inevitable pack of rat-racers, chancers, charlatans and
cheats; shysters who go for the shortcuts every time, while
remaining quite happy for other people to do their work for them.

For the record, the convention is this: distribute and publish
the article freely by all means. But it must be published in its
entirety and unedited, and MUST include the resource box with a
live hyperlink back to the author’s site (or wherever the author
wants, for that matter).

Hey, now even my lawyer understands!

Next time I will publish their names gleefully, and be damned.