Newsbites

Win $25 Gift Certificate for Kiva.org: June 2007 Promotion

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kiva

Revised since first posted!

From today (dates revised) until June 15th, I’m running a very special promotion, in support of Kiva.org! This is your chance to participate in a unique charity event and win a $25 gift certificate for Kiva.org!

You win the chance to help someone, increase traffic to your blog and SEO, share your stories, and (one day but not immediately!) get $25 in your Paypal account! Not too shabby, eh?

Kiva says it best: “We let you loan to the working poor Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.”

How to participate:

There are three simple things that you have to do:

  • 1. Choose one post from InvestorBlogger and post a story of at least 50 words on your blog, OR post a comment of it on my blog – you choose! (see below for details!)
  • 2. Fave me at Technorati!
  • 3. Place a notice in your blog advertising this contest with links to this page/post. You can copy and paste the relevant parts, as you wish, but links come back to this post!
  • 4. Use the form below to contact me, and tell me you’ve completed the tasks, including your email address, and your blog address!
  • … That’s it!

What to write about in your comment:

kivaBannerSmall DWrite a detailed comment sharing your story of money management success or failure affected your life, what it meant to you, and how you handled it! My own business is facing challenges right now, so I’m looking for inspiration! The most inspiring story wins!

{mailform}

What do you win?

Well, one lucky person will receive one $25 gift certificate from Kiva.org that they must lend to someone as part of a syndicated loan for micro-entrepreneurs in the developing world who don’t have access to good sources of capital.

After the money is repaid from the completed loan repayments, that $25 can either be withdrawn to your paypal account or used to generate another loan for another business person! In addition, the winner’s blog and commented story will be featured in the winning announcement!

For those non-winners, it’s not all lost! You’ve raised awareness of Kiva.org with your notice on your blog, you’ve probably got readers for your blog, too; AND I will fave everyone who faves me. Moreover, comments in my blog are all DOFOLLOW, so you will generate interest, and backlinks to your blogs!

Rules for my competition!

  • You can enter as many times as you wish, but no duplicates! Any duplicates will be invalidated.
  • My decision is final on the most inspiring story.
  • Winner will be notified via email of the result. The result will be notified as soon as it is known.
  • The competition will run from now until June 15th 11:59pm (EDT).
  • It may take some time to sort through entries, but I will endeavor to post results within 3 days!

This competition is not supported or in any way associated with Kiva.org. This is a personal sponsorship by InvestorBlogger! I’m still hoping that you’ll support it!

Buzz #2: Enthral’s Craft Blog and Shop

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This is a buzz, the third in my series of buzz promotions. I’m highlighting Enthral’s blog AND online craft shop! 2-in-1! Nice touch! Anyway, Enthral’s blog can be found at http://enthral-enthral.blogspot.com/ and is a blog about crafts, the crafts business, features, etc.. The blog doesn’t have ‘categories’ so you can’t really check out the range of what is there! Still, click on a couple of months, see what you find! I found some nicely designed broaches on my search!

enthral

In fact, that search led me to her online shop Enthral, and a whole new website for online retailing whose purpose is to sell handmade items! It’s an interesting ethos to support handmade items! I’ll be exploring that website, for sure. Enthrall makes jewelery items that are “unique accessories and jewelry made with vintage, reclaimed and recycled elements”.

etsy shop

Thanks, Enthrall for supporting InvestorBlogger!

 

Want a little buzz, too? It’s quite simple! Read the instructions here.

Blogging: The blog IS the website!

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383fThese days, many companies large and small have been adding ‘blogs’ to their corporate websites as a way to juice traffic, improve their image and generate sales. In fact Ensight reported a story from Fortune 500 companies that found (guesstimating) around 10~20% of companies were using blogs in some ways.

Blogging: it’s effective
It’s not surprising that blogs are so widely used in companies. Technorati reports that around 70 million blogs have now been created. It seems that the business world is now just jumping on this bandwagon. And with good reason, blogging creates an easy way to post content, update your website, create discussion and interaction with your readers, and can combine text with media elements such as audio, video, etc..

nozkidzOf course, if some companies are using blogs as part of their website, I wonder how many companies have taken the next step and designed their website AS a blog. In other words, how many companies are now using Blogs as their own website, instead of just a supplement.

The Blog IS the website
My own business, for ease of use, quite early on decided on using a CMS to manage the website. We tried Joomla, Mambo, etc.. but they were either clunky or slow or unattractive or impossible to use. So, I erased the whole lot, and just installed WP 2.0 as it was as our website CMS.

Naturally, our website doesn’t look like a website, so much as a blog; but the advantages are tremendous:

  1. fresh information is published right at the front, not hidden away on an internal page;
  2. pictures and media get posted for maximum publicity;
  3. administering the pages is relatively easy with online/offline tools able to handle most of the regular stuff;
  4. more advanced administration is easily handled through the interface;
  5. of course, we can also take advantage of Blog type tools that aren’t open to static websites, such as Technorati;
  6. and more traffic means better SEO, higher Alexa rankings, and so on.

We did face some criticism from some members of staff who didn’t get it: why can’t you have someone just design your website and get it done? Then, like so many businesses, the website would have been DONE and left unupdated for years, until the next make over… This way, we’re creating reasons for people to come back and visit us more often to see what changes or news there have been.

Could there come a time when more companies realize the advantages of a blog type CMS and dump their Frontpage/Dreamweaver/… static sites in favor of a simpler and more dynamic solution? I think so. I know our school made the switch. We aren’t going back, either.