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

On Inauguration Day, 2009 - Michigan Republicans and Democratics stand united to welcome our new President.

Obama moved into the Oval Office today around 12:15 as the nation's fourth-youngest president, at 47, and the first African-American. This barrier-breaking achievement was once believed impossible by generations of minorities.

For many a Michigander (that was hit hard by the current economic condition), today was a ray of hope in a dismal downward swirl of layoffs, automotive job losses and real estate value drops, as well as stock market dives.

I look at it as a "Ray of Hope" also. Not that I am a democrat, it should be pretty obvious from past posts that I had supported McCain and Palin, but it is a hope that the majority of American's will start trusting America and the economy in the United States again.

Anyone that is as old as myself realizes that "Trust must come before Recovery". It is the trust that starts the stimulus that eventually will lead to recovery.

We need to all refrain from the typical thinking ... "If only we get a Democrat in the White House, things will be okay. If only we pass this or that new legislation, things will be fine. If only we defeat this or that new tax, things will be okay." Nonsense. Things will not be okay based on a single action.

The "four day work weeks" have to transform back to "five day work weeks". Everyone in Michigan has to roll up their sleeves and pitch in.. give a little bit more, work a bit harder and learn something new.

"Learn Something New?" .. novel.

When we stop hoping for additional external assistance, when we stop hoping that the awful situation we are in will somehow resolve itself, when we stop hoping the situation will somehow not get worse, then we are finally free—truly free—to honestly start working to resolve it.

When "The Ray of Hope" fades, the action can begin.

Today that Ray of Hope came, tomorrow it will start to fade. Let's get moving Michigan and start generating new ideas, new jobs, new incentives for business to stay here.

"Action?" ..novel!

We've been here before, Michigan and we all know that we will be here again. Now is the time to start the turn-around. We look at it as a rebirth of new ideas, exciting new jobs and endless possibilities - we hope you do too. Got an idea? Start a new business.

Labels: automotive bailout, Presidential Campaign

Our second big revamp announcement of 2009 is getting even more Kudos than our first announcement!

Back in the beginning of 2007, the Michigan Business Directory launched a sister website http://www.michiganpr.net/ that offered Michigan Business members and Michigan based companies the ability to send out press releases for free throughout the web.

Our members loved the feature, and more and more websites started picking up our RSS feeds giving free exposure to our companies.

The problem we had was that the release service was tedious. Each release had to be manually reviewed and we received a tremendous amount of spam. It became very expensive to manage with hundreds of releases coming in each day. We had two alternatives:

1. Start charging companies for the releases OR


2. Revamp the submission process to eliminate the SPAM and make it easy to edit and approve the legitimate releases.

We chose option #2 and it has already proven to be the right option! Throughout our social network, our marketing company partners and PR company friends .. we have gotten rave reviews. Try it out yourself: http://www.michiganpr.net/addpage.php?a=addnews

A couple of friendly reminders:

• This service is for newsworthy press releases - if you would like to draw attention to an event in Michigan - use our Free Michigan Event Calendar. It's easy to register and once you register one time, you can input all of your company events.


• Please make sure that you submit your release in a professional manner. We truly want to approve all releases, but some PR gets submitted with spelling errors and improper grammer and we cannot approve it


• Spread the News! Make sure that you bookmark your release using our handy "AddThis" button when your release is approved!


• Use the WYSIWYG editor and add a couple of links that are applicable. Doing this will help your website or blog gain exposure. But do not submit HTML - we cannot approve press releases with HTML.

If you have any questions, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/maryjoyce or Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Mary-E-Joyce/773284581

Labels: Free Press Release, Freebies at the Michigan Business Directory

We were hoping to announce our new "2009 Social Features" on January 1st, because that would be most fitting, but ... a programming bug here and a holiday drop-in there .. and well ... here we are on the 5th of January finally ready to announce!

• Your Google profile
• LinkedIn.com profile or company page
• Facebook profile or company page
• Delicious profile
• Your company or individual blog (RSS feeds are accepted)
• Your twitter profile

Finally, we added a field that allows you to offer a coupon, discount, sale or promotion to your company page.

More on all of our new features in subsequent blog entries, but now is the time to login and reap the rewards of extra exposure by adding your profile pages.

Happy New Year and don't forget to add me as a friend when you create your Google Friend Connect account. My id is: nicayla9042

Labels: google friend connect, social networking