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Many business owners and writers who promote their businesses or books online wonder whether a blog makes sense. After all in this Web 2.0 age you already have a website that gets traffic, you produce a well-read e-zine and make connections in social media networks. Why would you still need a blog?

In Technorati's State of the Blogosphere Report (2008), (www.technorati.com), the overwhelming consensus is that blogging is a global phenomenon which has hit mainstream:

• 26.4 million people in the United States have started a blog while globally that number tops 184 million people
• 60.3 million people read blogs in the U.S. while 346 million people read them worldwide
• 77% of all active Internet users read blogs

No doubt, blogging is here to stay. It's an ever-evolving medium that offers tremendous opportunities for the blogger such as:

Raising search engine rankings. The more you blog the higher your rankings on Google and other search engines.

Increasing online visibility. You are part of a community that thrives on linking and connecting. The idea is similar to viral marketing. Your post could be featured on other sites.

Low costs yet high-impact results. Creating a blog is free or is at a minimal cost. But the opportunity to effect your bottomline is significant.

Reaching a global audience in less time. No longer are you relegated to promoting your books one-to-one but promoting one-to-many.

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Two Penguin Group (USA) authors and their books have been selected as finalists for the 2008 National Book Awards: Aleksandar Hemon for The Lazarus Project in the Fiction category; and Jim Sheeler for Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives in the Nonfiction Category. The announcement was made today at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago.

Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project, which follows the stories of two young Eastern European immigrants in Chicago separated by a century, whose lives have both been marked by political violence and dislocation, was published by Riverhead books this past May to critical acclaim. Born in Sarajevo, Hemon came to the United State s in 1992. He is the previous recipient of both the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant, and the Guggenheim Fellowship. In addition, his book Nowhere Man was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

» Donna Eden will discuss her women's guide to using energy medicine to promote and maintain optimal physical and mental well-being .

» Listen to other Penguin Podcasts.

Donna Eden, Energy Medicine for Women, Energy Medicine, Holistic Medicine, alternative medicine, holistic healing, chakra, health, vitality, pressure points, women, women's health, energy, medicine, Penguin, books, author, reading, passage

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An e-zine is simply an online newsletter that is sometimes known as an e-newsletter. It's produced in HTML format (with graphics/images) or plain text and is delivered via e-mail at regularly scheduled intervals of time.

While other new media tools attract an audience, an e-zine goes out into the Internet universe and speaks to your audience (your prospects or existing customers) directly in their e-mail inbox. It's an in-your-face marketing tool that is highly effective. According to Jupiter Research (2007), "60 percent of business decision makers said Internet and email are the best ways for advertisers to reach them."

But e-zine marketers should refrain from advertising in a blatant manner. It's not about "buying my widget." It's consistently keeping in touch with your core audience and giving them valuable information. As a result, when you consistently show up with information that addresses your audiences' challenges and needs then you're perceived as an expert in your field.

Your e-zine could be delivered weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. The frequency depends on whether you are using other new media tools in your marketing toolkit. For example, if you blog several times per week, podcast once every two weeks then you may want to send a monthly e-zine. However, if your only point of contact with your audience is with an e-zine you may want to consider producing a weekly e-zine. The idea though is to have a variety of touchpoints where you communicate in different ways.

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The Secret Life of Bees Movie Receives Rave Reviews…Try For Your Chance to Win a Free Pass to A Screening!

The world premiere of The Secret Life of Bees movie at the Toronto Film Festival and the US premiere in Washington, DC at the Congressional Black Caucus, both in September, have reviewers raving about the movie and its cast.

This past Monday was the LA premiere at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which, like the first two premieres, Sue Monk Kidd attended. She said "it was very Hollywood and very glamorous." There was a huge Red Carpet, where she got to talk to everyone from CNN to Access Hollywood. The Academy theater was filled with an audience of close to 1,000 and there was a fabulous response with the audience breaking into applause. She was introduced on stage along with the cast and director before the screening and she spoke with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, who produced the movie. Sue said "They were really gracious and thanked me for writing Bees and said how much they loved the novel. When I thanked them for all they did as producers to make the movie happen, Will said it was an honor and Jada commented that it was important to have this story in the world."

Jumpstart’s 2008 “Read for the Record” Is a Roaring Success

Last Thursday, over 425,000 people joined Jumpstart's "Read for the Record," shattering a world record and bringing early education to a national stage. As mentioned, this year’s “Read for the Record” campaign book was a custom edition of the beloved children’s classic, Corduroy by Don Freeman, published by Penguin Young Readers Group. The day kicked-off this morning with an early reading event in Rockefeller Plaza on NBC’s “Today Show” with First Lady Laura Bush joined by Pearson Foundation President Mark Nieker as well as appearances by such celebrities as LL Cool J (pictured here with a group of children on People.com), Jesse McCartney, Mary Louise Parker, Greg Kinnear and Maria from Sesame Street. Pearson and Jumpstart representatives were also briefly interviewed on the program.

Thousands of events were held across the nation, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. And, employees from Penguin Group (USA) in both New York and New Jersey volunteered their time at various events across the tri-state area.

In addition, Hannah Montana, Jesse McCarthy and various other celebrities signed limited editions of Corduroy for an online auction.

For more details, go to Jumpstart’s Read for the Record website and the Pearson Foundation site.

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In the not so distant past, it was enough to have a website that functioned only as an online brochure. You'd get credit just for having an online presence with static information.

But today, with the advent of Web 2.0, everyone is interacting and connecting online. The website is now the official home for all of your online activity. All roads (links) from your other new media tools lead back to your website where you inform, elucidate, and educate your audience on what you offer.

The website has morphed into an active, collaborative medium where you not only speak directly to your audience but you can also interact with them as well as promote and sell your products, books, or services.

Websites now offer Web 2.0 features such as:

Forums and message boards that maintain the flow of conversation and feedback.
Audio and video testimonials that significantly boost the trust and credibility factors.
Interactivity in the form of delivering your message with video and audio that appeal to your audience's various learning styles. Offering them interactive quizzes, polls and assessments.
Transparency in the varied ways that your audience can reach you.
Language that speaks to the core of your audience's challenges rather than using "me-centered" language.

Can your contact lens get lost in your eye and float into your brain?

No! Your eyelids, both top and bottom, are connected to the eyeball itself, thus preventing the contact lens from drifting behind your eye. If your contact lens is not centered over the front of your eye (the colored part , is the iris, and the dark circle, or the pupil), it can not help you see. Sometimes the contact can fold up on itself and drift to the side of your eye. By gently feeling the surface of your eye, you can usually find out where it is.

View more information on Why Don't Your Eyelashes Grow?

Beth Ann Ditkoff, Why Don't Your Eyelashes Grow, questions, kids, human body,factoids,books, Penguin Books

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Lena Claxton and Alison Woo are our guest bloggers during the week of October 16th. If you have any questions for them, add a comment to any of their posts. Here is some more information about How to Say It: Marketing with New Media: A Guide to Promoting Your Small Business Using Websites, E-Zines, Blogs, and Podcasts:

The essential resource for building a global community of customers.

How to Say It®: Marketing with New Media provides business owners with the tools they need to effectively market their company to today’s ever-evolving online community. Packed with power words, content templates, practical steps for getting the word out, and the essentials of speaking to the right audience, this book is the key to building a community of loyal customers online. It also offers quick tips for generating website copy, articles, podcast scripts, and blog posts months in advance, so any small business owner can start an online marketing campaign regardless of limited schedules and budgets.

About Lena Claxton and Alison Woo

Alison Woo (left) and Lena Claxton (right) are business coaches, new media experts for Forbes.com’s premier Business & Financial Network, principals in NewMediaMavens.com and the authors of How to Say It: Marketing with New Media: A Guide to Promoting Your Small Business Using Websites, E-Zines, Blogs, and Podcasts.

» Bestselling author Sarah Vowell discusses her latest book which offers and examination of New England Puritans.

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Sarah Vowell, Puritan, John Winthrop, New England, City Upon a Hill, Anne Hutchinson, colony, Massachusetts Bay, history, Penguin, books, author, reading, passage

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That thing is called the uvula. After food is chewed, but before it is swallowed, it passes through the back of your throat, called the pharynx, which is divided into the nose part of the pharynx and the throat part of the pharynx. The dewdrop uvula prevents food from coming back out through the nose by pushing it to the back of the throat and down the esophagus on its way to the stomach. If you are laughing when you drink milk, the uvula cannot do its job properly--and milk will come out of your nose!

Why don't humans have tails?

Human embryos do have tails -up to the eighth week if gestation and then they disappear during further development. You can feel what is left of your tail -which is the tailbone or coccyx-by sitting cross-legged on the floor. In this position, you can feel the pointed, triangle-shaped bone at the bottom of your spine just before the crack in your buttocks.

The coccyx got its name from the Greek word kokkyx, which means "cuckoo bird" because the bone is shaped like the beak of a cuckoo.

No one knows exactly why human being no longer have tails like monkeys do, but one idea is that monkeys need their tails for balance and grasping as they swing from tree to tree. Since humans walk upright on two feet, having a tail behind them would throw them off balance. Thus, humans have no need for tails.

Very rarely, a human baby is born with a small tail. This phenomenon was first described in the late 1800s and there have been fewer than one hundred cases reported in the medical literature since that time.