Michigan Blog - Featuring Michigan Shopping, Travel, Business & People

Labels: Happy Thanksgiving, Holiday Gift Giving

Every once in a while we have to forget about the politics and business; put the automotive woes on a back seat and tell our audience about a fabulous "little known" promotion that can save our readers a ton of cash and is basically "GOOD sense".


One of our very own Michigan companies ( http://www.grpet.com/ ) is partnering with Google Checkout this holiday season to bring you one of the best Christmas deals available. The reason that we think it is "Good sense" is because Google Checkout doesn't just save time and money, it provides innovative tools to keep track of Christmas and Holiday shopping.

In a nutshell, Google checkout offers Google Checkout Purchase History, which compartmentalizes all of the information needed – including shipping status and store contact information – in one simple interface. Did we fail to mention that Google Checkout is free?

GregRobert Enterprises must have thought that this made good sense too because they are offering an unbelievable deal for visitors that checkout with Google Checkout for the next few weeks:

Get $10 off purchases of $60 (cart minimum) or more before shipping and tax with Google Checkout at www.GRpet.com and other GregRobert stores. Limit 1 per person. Offer available until 12/17/2008. No resale and offer not valid in combination with any other promotional offer. NO COUPON CODE NECESSARY.

Starting today, Google Checkout shoppers at GregRobet can take advantage of notable discounts at GregRobert online stores as they methodically work through their holiday and Christmas shopping lists. GregRobert online stores include GregRobert Pet Supplies ( http://www.grpet.com/ ), Backyard Style ( http://www.backyardstyle.com/ ), Shanes Tack ( http://www.shanestack.com/ ), Rachel's Robin Wild Bird Supplies ( http://www.rachelsrobin.com/ ) and the Rabbit Mart ( http://www.rabbitmart.com/ )

Some say that Cyber Monday is next week - but at The Michigan Business Directory, we thing that Cyber Monday in November 24th, 2008. Despite the economic gloom we can see the holiday spirit emerging.

Let the Holidays Begin!

Labels: phishing, Security Software Coupons

Death is a scary word. The word Dying may even be scarier. Maybe because the word dying precedes the actual process of death? Whatever......... Today, right now, any of my"scary" thoughts or fears about death and dying have been eradicated after reading an article titled "No Fuss Funerals" on the front page of the Sunday Free Press.

After reading that the "cost of dying skyrockets" , my old scary thoughts have been changed into new scary thoughts of anger, revenge and sarcasm. These new scary thoughts are very efficient, psychological weapons for a person like me who diligently fights to remain optimistic, free-spirited and loving in times of crisis and adversity. I would like to freely use my weapons now..................

Personally, I love reading the Detroit Free Press. The paper is delivered to my house and I read it every day. I believe the Free Press deserves a Pulitzer Prize for its investigative journalism regarding the mayoral scandal. I have no problem, gripe or complaint about any journalist or content. However, today I read something that perhaps I did not need to know. Or maybe I did because it got me thinking. Today I read that "the cost of dying skyrockets" and the "national average funeral is $7000.00".

Now, I realize that the article has more substance to it than these two bits of information, but I truly could not get past the actual wording of "the cost of death skyrockets". It seemed so, well, ridiculous. We know that the cost of everything is going up, but death? Skyrocketing? What a concept. So here I go, off into my new scary thoughts..............

"Great.............. Now I can't even afford to die properly," was my first thought. When I read that the "national average cost of a funeral is $7000.00", my brain immediately registered this number in its memory bank. It then bounced it around and around and around until it computed that we did not have an extra $7000.00 laying around for a proper funeral.

Or, for that matter, if we are going "all out", we need an additional $7000.00 for a funeral for my husband. I know this man would most certainly have some sort of attack when he heard about the cost of death skyrocketing. So now I'm up to $14.000.00 for the two of us. And I haven't gone grocery shopping yet. Yikes.

So, instead of going into fear, doom and gloom, I start to justify spending $7000.00 on my funeral. Trust me, my husband and I have come a long way with the financial talks. But I have been avoiding this months budget talk like the plague. It's not pretty. In fact, we may be going down in flames this month, which is actually not all that bad considering the cost of an average funeral.

So, I take a breath and think.........Hmmmm........$7000.00. Because, realistically, it always comes down to a number. And, in my opinion $7000.00 is quite a hefty sum. I really need to sell this to my husband so I have to make it good. How about.........

"Oh, honey, by the way, we need to squeeze an extra $7000.00, for each of us, out of somewhere if we want to budget for the "proper" funeral.... after all, we don' t want the Joneses to talk about us after we die do we?"

or

"Well, as I was trying to put together a decent, realistic budget for Christmas, I found out if it's my time, we'll need at least $7000.00 for a funeral. Why can't I just spend it now?"

maybe...

"Yes, I know we don't have it now but we are going to NEED it when we die. Can't we just charge it?"

this is good.........

"I know that $7000.00 is a lot of money for one pair of shoes, but aren't they fabulous?..... I mean I needed to wear something to my funeral"

After I come out of my justification mode and realize that I am truly considering spending $7000.00 on a pair of shoes, I decide that reading this article was good for me. I start to empathize with the families and the losses mentioned in the article. I do know what it is like to lose a loved one and provide for a funeral. My brother died in 1989 and it was a very dark time in our lives.

However, now that we have made it through the years and are doing the best we can in spite of all the doom and gloom, I remember something very interesting that pertains to this whole blog.

Back in 1987 I drove a beat- up car, had a waitress's job, and some great friends. I shared an apartment with 2 others and lived footloose and fancy free. But most of all what I remember now, after reading this morning's article and thinking about all the debt and economic problems today is a bumper sticker I loved and thought was hilarious. It read "Get Even, Die In Debt". Coincidence, I think not............

Labels: cost of funeral, death and dying

I received an interesting survey phone call this morning and since it peaked my interest, I took the entire survey. It was about the troubles in the automotive industry and where the blame lies.

Up front, I want to disclose my job background. Prior to my current career, I worked for Chrysler for about 18 years. Leaving automotive 8 years ago was difficult for me, I left because of personal reasons. I loved my job, loved the industry and loved the people around me. I still keep in touch with many of my friends and it breaks my heart to see how worried they currently are. Retirement savings are at stake, homes, families ... you get the picture.

Back to the survey.

The purpose of this particular survey was to identify where Americans put the blame for the problems the Auto industry is currently experiencing. One in every 10 Americans make a living from the Auto industry, so the problem is far-reaching outside of the Detroit area. To sum up the survey in one question:

Where do you put the primary blame for the Auto industries woes:

1. Management
2. Government
3. UAW

What is your age group and political affiliation? Are you female or male?

How can one entity take the blame for this disaster? Impossible. Option 4 on this survey should have been "The Perfect Storm" - a combination of economic, international and political issues spun together at precisely the right moment to cause the most intense upheaval.

The bottomline question that needs to be answered is should the government help bailout GM and the automotive companies in general? Is GM about to declare bankruptcy? A GM bankruptcy could create a cascading set of bankruptcies among OEM part suppliers, other auto makers and suppliers. That's because a bankrupt company could take months, if ever, to pay its pre-bankruptcy bills. Such delays would put stress on suppliers that already run on thin working capital and that feed just a few end auto makers.

What is your opinion - should the government help? If the government does help can it cause far reaching problems in other areas? Can they afford to do this? Can they afford to not do it?

The only thing that can be said for sure is the underlying goal should be to help Americans get through this crisis and come out of it with a stronger economy. Repeat... stronger economy.

Labels: automotive bailout

I started working on search engine marketing in 1999. Back then, a good optimized website with keywords, a description and a good title tag would get ranked well on search engines including Google. Noone had heard of the terms "Page Rank" and once a month, Google would dance.

Yes, Virginia, there really was a google dance each month. (It isn't just us old folks' imagination gone wild). Times have changed, actually they have mutated into a wild rush for websites to look "popular" to the search engine spiders so that they rank well. The methods of gaining popularity are exploding and new "bookmarking" and social networking sites are popping up everywhere.


It is so confusing .. but here are a few SIMPLE guidelines for newbie online marketers that are trying to promote websites.

1. Blogs will help. Yes, they will, but you have to take time to create information that people want to read. Not just spiders. Search engine algorithms are getting smarter and they really can tell if your post is just a bunch of spam. Write for people, double check your spelling and grammer .. for people. Write consistently and you will be rewarded.


2. As a guideline, use TWO tags for the post. In a nutshell, the way that Blogger and other Blog software handles tags is that it creates a single page for every tag. Therefore, unless you have a 10,000 entry Blog, you will have alot of duplicate and useless pages that Google DOES NOT like.


3. Be consistent about your linking strategies. If you are promoting an eCommerce site, don't link to a product 15 different ways (with and without the www etc..). Use a consistent linking method so that search engines don't think you have duplicate content on the website. Unless you are lucky enough to have a super popular website, Google is only going to index a limited amount of pages. Make those pages worthwhile.

On the flip side, the above guidelines don't work well for social bookmarketing and social shopping websites. On those websites, it behooves you to use as many tags on the product or page that you are promoting as possible. Confusing and conflicting information, right?

The tags on public websites are used for searching and normally, they DO have millions of products submitted, so making a page for "Dog Bone" and "Dog Chew" makes sense because it would not generate duplicate content.

Don't spam with your tags, anywhere. Only use applicable terms - this corresponds to Web 2.0 social responsibility. (a term that I coined myself)

Happy promoting! - Next article will be on making money with affiliate marketing!

Labels: Blogging, social networking

I have three teenagers therefore I understand the obsession with Vampires these days. The Twilight books by Stephanie Meyer are truly an obsession in my household. The first thing on my 13 year old daughter's Christmas list this year is a "Vampire Wife Beater".

For those of you that do not have teenagers, a wife beater is actually a sleeveless athletic shirt. We used to call them tank tops in our day. I think that they call them wife beaters because of old movie flicks. The guy beating his wife always had a beer in one hand and a few hairs sticking out from beneath a white tank top.

Although I admit that I didn't read the series, according to my kids, the Twilight series is about a vampire named Edward that falls in love with a human girl named Bella. Edward can read thoughts of humans - but he is unable to read Bella's and Bella's blood smells particularily sweet.

As the story goes, Edward tries not to fall in love with Bella - but he eventually does and has to tell her that he is a vampire actually born on June 20, 1901. His Father, transformed him into a vampire in 1918, to spare him death from a flu epidemic.

I won't go into any more details with you. You may be interested in reading the series yourself. But if you do have teens that love the series .. below are a few early ideas for gifts.

What ever happened to "I Vant to Drink Your Blood"?

---

buy unique gifts at Zazzle

Labels: Vampire Shirt

Labels: Presidential Campaign, Twilight

The full effect that online social networks and "web 2.0" will have on the 2008 election may never be known entirely. It will be difficult to quantify, to say the least. The effects have proven substantial enough to confidently state that not a single candidate in the next election will be without a social networking advisor / blogger on the campaign staff.

As with all online marketing campaigns, political campaigns which emphasize social networking and web 2.0 can be broken into two major parts:

1. Article writing, blogging, monitoring and responding to positive and negative blogs, articles and comments about the candidate.


2. Developing circles of influence in popular networking websites like Facebook.com and LinkedIn, as well as Twitter and others.

The benefit of article writing, blogging and monitoring the "blogosphere" can be described to a lay person in this manner:

• A blog or article is written about Joe Candidate. His staff immediately receives notification and takes action. The action might be a comment outlining that the post is inaccurate, it might be a comment response that substantiates the information or it might even be "just a link" from another site to the post because it was well written and was favorable to the candidate. (Increasing the link popularity of information that is favorable so that it recieves higher ranking on search engines)


• Staff members write blogs and articles, videos and images that are favorable to the candidate and submit these at websites like DIGG or Zimbio, YouTube or eZineArticles. This increases the odds that favorable information is displayed on search engines when someone searches for information relating to the candidate. These networks also reach millions of people everyday.
  
• Staff members maintain Wiki information that is accurate and fight inaccurate information or opinions that may have a negative impact on the candidate's campaign.

We did preliminary research on the number of Michigan political candidates that have Facebook accounts and the number of "friends" that each of these candidates currently have (research done a few days before the election).

Approx. 65% of all candidates have a facebook account and approx. 1/2 of those with an account are actively using those accounts to self-promote. The number of "friends" that a candidate has ranges from 40 to 50,000. It was slightly more likely for a Democratic candidate to have an active account compared to a Republican candidate.

Fully two-thirds of Americans age 18-29 say they use social networking sites like Facebook, and more than a quarter in this age group (27%) say that they have gotten information about candidates and the campaign from them – including 37% among those ages 18-24.

Nearly one-in-ten of people under age 30 (8%) say that they have signed up as a "friend" of one of the candidates on a site. And the numbers are even higher for each of these activities among young registered voters.

...and this is just the tip of the iceberg .. there are PPC campaigns and RSS feeds and Press websites .. more to come!

Labels: Blogging, Politics, Web 2.0