Digital Interactif

5 Reasons to start a Blog for your Business

Tonight I went to the Tech Blogs with Scott Kirsner panel in Cambridge, Massachusetts and I came away feeling great about both Boston and the future of digital advertising.  Thankfully Dan Bricklin, podcaster extraordinaire, recorded the event and has posted the audio on his website.  If your business doesn't have a company blog yet, listening to this podcast may very well convince you to start one.    

5 - Give your employees/partners a creative outlet for their ideas.  It can serve as a platform for exchanging ideas as well as highlight the talent that your company can offer. 

4 - A blog provides you with greater credibility when speaking with a potential client or investor for the first time.  It offers them a glimpse of the ideas and insights that you can bring to the table.   

3 - Fills the void in between press releases.  This will keep your company in the headlines and create more interaction between you and your clients and investors.   

2 - Adds a human dimension to your business.  Your company blog should let readers know that your firm is run by thinking/innovative/talented people, not a bunch of automatons. 

1 - Three letters: SEO!(Search Engine Optimization) A blog will direct traffic on your website.  Google ranks a page higher when it receives links from other websites and a blog is a great way to generate quality links by hosting original content. 

I'm no General but...

I came across news today that Google had added 54 new countries to Google Maps.  Here's the list of countries added(emphasis added):

Afghanistan, Aruba, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Bermuda, Brunei Darussalam, Bhutan, Bolivia, Cambodia, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Fiji, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Mexico, Myanmar (Burma), Mongolia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Timor-Leste, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen.

"Afghanistan and Iraq?" I thought.  So I figured if I zoomed into a random Baghdad neighborhood I might catch an explosion or maybe small jihadi's blasting away at each other.  What I didn't expect to see was a detailed view of American military bases from the sky accessible to whoever wants to look. 

Long story short, I typed "american military base Afghanistan" into Google and selected the number one result which stated that "Bagram Airbase is located in the Parvan Province approximately 11 kilometers (7 miles) southeast of the city of Charikar and 47 Kilometers (27 miles) north of Kabul."  I then typed in Charikar, Afghanistan and looked roughly 7 miles to the southeast in Google maps.  Here's a sample of what I found:

Now, as the title of this post states I'm no General, but this CAN'T be a good idea, right?  I mean, for all the privacy issues that Google has trampled on in the past (and present) this is clearly a radically different issue.  As far as I'm concerned, there is no need for "Average Jihadi-Joe" to have access to overhead shots of American/Coalition military bases overseas. 

I imagine this will gain attention at some point on a larger scale, but where is the outrage?  Why is Google giving away our troops positions and unit strengths in the middle of a war?   Come On!

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