Here are a few articles I have recently published about blogging for businesses and for individuals.

• An introduction to blogs
  

  I wrote my first blog post on a stone tablet using a crude chisel many years ago. It sounds good, doesn’t it? But blogging, one of the biggest buzz words on the Internet, is just a few year old.

  Blog is short for “web log”. The first people to blog created a personal diary on the Internet. Today, about a decade later, nearly all the blogs in existence are still just a personal diary on the Internet.

• Company blogs and their value for public relations
  

  A company blog brings a great deal of value to a business’s public relations efforts.A company blog is about information. Blogging will allow a business to place important and necessary information in a place that is easily accessible and available 24/7. Companies blog about common product questions, upcoming product improvements, recent changes in the industry, employee promotions and awards and other information which may be of interest to the community of people that surrounds the business.

• The best reasons to continue writing on your blog
  

  One of the most quoted phrases on blogs applies to writing on your blog; “Life happens.” Anyone who writes reaches a point when it becomes difficult to continue. It might be the dreaded “writer’s block.” It could be the writer’s changing interests.

  Everyone who writes a blog does so for a complex set of reasons. Life happens, things change, yet the blog remains. What are the best reasons for continuing to write on your blog?

Andrew Lubin, who blogs at The Military Observer, is headed back to Afghanistan, and is asking for support to help pay travel expenses. Andrew asked us to mention that his book “Charlie Battery; A Marine Artillery Battery in Iraq” is available for sale off his website, www.andrewlubin.com. Book sales are his primary source of funding his embeds.

This is his fourth trip to Afghanistan, along with multiple past trips into Iraq. His work also appears Leatherneck, Small Wars Journal, Proceedings (U.S. Naval Institute), and others. He’s one of those few free-lance correspondents who goes out in the field with the Marines and soldiers; he understands both the strategies and tactics over which he writes. He has embedded and written from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Beirut.

“Charlie Battery; A Marine Artillery Battery in Iraq” won the Military Writers Society of America’s 2007 Gold Medal for best military non-fiction. It’s about his Marine son and his artillery battery fighting at An-Nasiriyah, six years ago this week.

It’s a great book, and in this market, he needs all our support. Without reader support, trips like this would not be possible.

The lovely wife called my attention to a commercial she saw on television for the Verizon Yellow Pages. It is a promotion called “The Super Guarantee“. Here is the FAQ.

Limited SuperGuarantee. Subject to these Terms and Conditions, the SuperGuarantee Program (“Program”) offers eligible SuperGuarantee Program Members (as defined below) who meet all the criteria described in these terms and conditions our services to attempt to resolve a dispute with a SuperGuarantee Service Provider (as defined below) with whom the Member has a written contractual relationship and who does not provide the service contracted for in the manner described in the written contract, or at least in a commercially reasonable manner, and, if resolution cannot be reached, the ability to obtain up to a $500 payment from us. The Program is void where prohibited or restricted by law. [snip]

Terms and conditions

Super Guarantee Commercial Video

This is quite a clever idea, and should prove attractive to both consumers and advertisers. Most businesses do their very best to begin with, and their participation in this program will not change their business practices. Program participation will, however, bring them the cachet that belonging to the Better Business Bureau used to.

The terms and conditions are not hugely beneficial to the consumer. This program will, in the event there is no resolution to a problem, pay the consumer $500, on top of any civil judgment. The consumer still has legal recourse in the civil courts against the business involved.

The commercial is very well done. Based on my lovely wife’s reaction, it should generate a great deal of interest, surprise and amazement for the Verizon Yellow Pages and Idearc Media, the company that publishes the Verizon Yellow Pages and home to Superpages.com.

My mother video taped the Tea Party in Phila. on Sat Feb 28th. It’s on Youtube.

July Linett (www.becauseitstrue.org)

I decided to give Live Write another try. The last time I used it, I quit because it would not display what the blog ended up displaying. If I can’t accurately preview my work, no point in using the program.

My Other Work

I was born and raised in a small town in upstate New York. Went to St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York, and finally fell into this profession. Discovered computers in college where we learned on a Xerox mainframe (!). I’ve been a member of the Lions’ Clubs, a volunteer firefighter, and for the last twelve years a NYS certified EMT-D. From about 1986 to 1992 I ran a small, portrait photography business, and a few of those photos will turn up on my blog from time to time. I continue to be interested in photography.

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