Happy Sunday! This morning, I thought I would go to Google Analytics and share my top 10, non-flaunt it! traffic makers.  Enjoy what we can call “The Best of Eco-Office Gals To-date”

• Is #5 Plastic Safe?
• Reduce Office Waste and Save Money
• Coca Promotes Use of Plastic for Earth Day
• Eco-Options: Business Cards
• Introducing Greenway, the New Gal In the Office
• How To Dump Your Unloved Gadgets on Valentine’s Day
• 10 Things You Can Do In the Office For EarthDay
• Are You Being Bagged?
• Is Bartering Good For Business?
• 21 Best Green Business Tips.

So there you have it, the top 10 most read posts that are non-giveaway related for your reading pleasure.  If you have only been to Eco-Office Gals for our fpast giveaways,  take a minute to see what else we have to offer. Read, Comment, Share & Enjoy! If you are interested in contributing a post to the Eco-Office Gals collection, please feel free to contact me with your details!

All the best!
Jen

Post from: Eco-Office Gals

Eco-Office Gals: What Are You Reading?

So, you’ve had a few days to check out all of the awesome giveaways and sponsors available and I hope you are loving all the prizes as much as I am! There is more to these sponsors then just their products and sponsorships. They’re also doing their own projects or sharing tips to contribute to towards Earth Day and the environment as a whole.

Tara Burner:

Tara Burner of Affordable Mineral Make Up and Go Green Home Makeover, offers a Green Tip everyday to help you grow in your green lifestyle at Green Tip of the Day.

EcoStore USA:

The founder of their company Ecostore New Zealand, Malcolm Rands, is known throughout New Zealand, Australia and Britain as Ecoman! Because he is a true environmentalist who stumbled upon a way of keeping not   only the planet healthier for our families and children as well.Malcolm is here with Ecostore USA for the month of April not only promoting their launch at the MEIJER grocery store chain but Earth Month.  For the next three weeks they have Malcolm on a tour of all five of the states that MEIJER is located in on the ASK ECOMAN tour.

GlassDharma:

GlassDharma is putting their straws where your mouth is. As a small business dedicated to making a difference (without a massive photography, marketing and advertising budget), creativity and generosity were needed. In honor of Earth Month, GlassDharma is giving away 500 straws to those who ask because they are so confident that you will love their line of straws, and help to make GlassDharma a trend that is fabulously functional. GlassDharma is certain that once people use them, they will spread the word…and their straws.

WeeBgreen:

WeeBgreen is going to posting a couple things in recognition of Earth Day this month.

1. They will be attending a “Kids Grow Expo” at the local university campus on April 24th

2. They are also going to start a “vegetable garden” series on weeBgreen.blogspot.com chronicling our garden plans and planting schedule

3. One other thing they’re going to slowly do over time is recycle/upcycle old clothing into new apparel and plush toys (old sweaters become soft play blocks with appliqués, etc).

The Green Path Company:

Green Tip of the Month

This month’s tip has to do with recycling plastic bottles and jugs.  If you are lucky enough to have a recycling program in your city then you probably have a separate recycle trash bin that you toss all your recyclable trash into, including plastic bottles.  Most of us, including me, thought that tossing plastic bottles into the recycle bin insured that these items would be recycled.  Not so!  If the bottles have liquid in them there is a chance they will be removed from the recycling process either during an automated phase or during the manual sorting phase. So the tip this month is to make sure ALL of your plastic bottles and jugs are empty before putting them out to be recycled.  Even if they look empty there can still be residual liquid in them, so remove the caps before tossing them out, this will help insure ALL of the liquid has evaporated before they reach the recycling center and ALL your plastic is recycled.

For additional entries to the Green My World Giveaway: Visit any of the sponsors in the giveaway and let readers know about Earth Day projects, tips or giveaways they are doing. You can build off of one of these tips by getting details from their sites or find your own. Do not simply copy one of above, the entry will be deleted!

DO NOT leave your tip on this post, leave it on the Green My World giveaway post.

All the best!

Jen

Post from: Eco-Office Gals

Earth Day Happenings

Earth Day is this month and Eco-Office Gals wants to get as many people as possible on board to grow a little greener.   If you’ve been wanting to, trying to, thinking about growing a little greener there’s no better time to do it then now! We don’t want to make you go it alone either. We have reached out to our cyberspace friends to bring you green tips, projects, inspiration, events and products.

While were at it, how about a HUGE green incentive? Keep up with Eco-Office Gals, share your own tips, tricks, progress, and green finds and one of you will be the winner of an Awesome “Green My World” Giveaway!  This giveaway will green just about every corner of your world — maybe even enough for you to share some green love with your friends and family!

Today, we’ll just get things started.  We’ll give you a chance to check out the sponsors and the prizes, look around their sites and get your creative green juices flowing.  In the coming days and weeks I will continue to share with you some of their green tips, events, projects and announcements.  So, lets get started!

Welcome all our Earth Day Giveaway Sponsors and their generous donations to Green Your World:

EcoStore USA – $25 Gift Certificate
Affordable Mineral Make Up – $25 Gift Certificate
Go Green Home MakeOver – Stainless Steel Water Bottle
Coco-Zen – Fair Trade Chocolate Lips To-Go
Naked Binder – Project Binder Set
Cactus and Ivy – You’re the Balm Gift Set
Sarva Soap – Natural Artisan Soap 8 mini’s of choice
Nurture My Body – $35 Gift Certificate
The Green Path Co. – Men’s & Ladies Organic Cotton T-shirt set (choice of size and artwork)
GreenOfficeStore -  Staple-free Stapler,  Recycled Paper Pencils & Recycle Bin
Mama Goes Green – Waste Free Lunch Kit; Wrap N Mat & Mini RuMe Bag
Tilvee – $25 Gift Certificate
Teatulia – Fair Trade Organic Tea Sampler Set
Glass Dharma – $30 in store coupon
WeeBeGreen – $15 Gift Certificate
SafeMama – Bubble and Bee Lip balm and an 8oz Body Butta
Let’s Be Green Together – 4oz Bag of Soap Nuts

Update! Due to a few new sponsors this giveaway is now worth OVER $400 and counting!

Ok so here’s the deal, as stated above this prize pack is now worth OVER $400.00 in retail value and one person will win it ALL! So, you will need to do a little work! You need to green up your act!  Absolutely, no “Thanks for the great giveaway” comments, they WILL be deleted.  Please don’t copy and paste someone’s comment as your own, be original.  You can enter as many times as you’d like as long as you follow one of the options below. For shipping purposes – US residents only, please.  Leave a separate comment for each entry.  On April 22nd Earth Day, one winner will be picked to win the whole thing! Good Luck!

• Pick a green step that will help the environment. Something new, that you are not already doing. Leave a comment about it, or if you post about it on your own blog, provide a link in your comment so we can check it out!
• Leave a comment about any progress and achievements in your green goals, too.  Let us know how it’s going!
• Leave a unique tip (i.e. I saw someone post on #earthtweet to use olive oil to polish stainless steel appliances)  it’s different, you know?
• Visit the sponsors and let us know how one of their products could help your green up your act.  Leave a link to the product so we can all check it out.
• Send out a tweet about the giveaway & consider using the #earthtweet hashtag – be sure to include a link to it.
• Use other Social Networking avenues to get the word out about the giveaway and let us know which ones you did.
• Add the giveaway button to your sidebar and let us know you did. Here’s the code: <a href=”http://eco-officegals.com/2009/04/08/green-my-world-earth-day-giveaway/” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://i311.photobucket.com/albums/kk466/EcoOfficeGals/earthday.png” border=”0″ alt=”Green My World”></a>
• Think a product is so awesome on one of our sponsors sites, you can’t wait to win before you buy? Leave 5 separate entries telling us what you bought from who — we will confirm.

Be sure to sign up for Eco-Office Gals RSS by feed or email.  I’ll be continuing to bring you information, tips and events from our sponsors and may just throw in a few extra ways to enter as we go along!

Grow Green! Good Luck!

UPDATE April 22nd:

Happy Earth Day!!!  It’s 8pm and I have been going through so many AMAZING comments!  It was a tough one to choose from, but there was one person that really came out shining green.  EVERYDAY she gave me readers in depth in site on the sponsoring companies, natural  home cleaner recipes, steps she has implemented, steps she wants to integrate into her green living routine, she faithfully RT’d the giveaway…. all in all I noticed her really stepping up to the challenge for this giveaway over the entire time it ran.  So…. I have made the call Joanna Smith Eco-Office Gals and all of our GREAT sponsors are going to Green Your World!!!!

Post from: Eco-Office Gals

Green My World! The Eco-Office Gals Earth Day Giveaway!

Hosting websites takes HUGE amounts of energy.  You may not think of it when you sit in your home office and your host serves is located in some other state.  However, if you ever have a chance to go to a corporate office that has their own servers, take a walk in the room.  I guarantee…. it will be sub zero in there, bet you thought I would say hot right? No, they keep it climate controlled at super cold levels so the servers don’t over heat.

Many people choose their web host for various reasons.  Cost, uptime, features available, etc.  Although, you may not take the time to consider where the energy comes from when you are deciding.

There are several options for green hosting, here are a few for you to check out:

HostGator: When I started Eco-Office Gals, HostGator was recommended because I was going to be using WordPress for my platform.  However, when I checked out the site and saw they  had recently made the move to wind powered hosting, I felt it was a good fit for me. My choice has been very satisfying, they have top notch customer service and were quick to follow me on Twitter and offer assistance when I sent out a question to my followers!

The basics:

• 130% Wind powered from local Texas wind farms. They’re not just neutralizing our environmental impact, they’re reversing it!
• Green-e Certified RECs: All of HostGators REC’s have been registered, verified, and retired from the market.

Read more…

Sommer of Green & Clean Mom picked Solar Powered Web Site Hosting provided by AISO.Net

Many hosting companies use carbon offsets or some of their hosting efforts are “green” but with AISO they are 100% solar powered. I had reservations, thinking I would have down time and it wouldn’t be reliable. This isn’t the case but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been glitches. I’ve had WordPress issues that happened to be simple code changes and when there was an issue, I made a call got a human being to talk to and it was quickly fixed. AISO runs on solar panels that run their data center and office. Solar tubes bring in natural light from the outside during the day, making everything about AISO green. Read more here. Besides being solar powered, they are friendly and quick to reply.

Jenn of  The Green Parent uses Dream Host for her hosting:

“Love, Love, Love Dreamhost!  Their service is easy to use, even for folks (like me!) who don’t know their FTP from their PHP.  Their customer service is outstanding, and as a greenie, I’m thrilled that they offer green, carbon neutral hosting.”

Dreamhost, the Basics:

• purchases Renewable Energy Credits and neutralizes unavoidable emissions by investing in Emission Reduction Credits (a.k.a. “offsets”) which guarantee their remaining impact is effectively erased.
• Green-e Certified RECs

Read more here…

All options have plans that run around $5-$10 per month so cost isn’t a factor.  Finding a host that suits you needs and cares about the environment is what matters!

Do you have a green hosting company you recommend? Share some green wisdom below and let us know about it!

All the best,
Jen

Post from: Eco-Office Gals

Green Options: Web Hosting

Wait! Isn’t it Flaunt It! Monday??  Yes, but since people will be in and out for the holidays I don’t want any giveaways to flop on the sponsors due to lack of participation.  So, Flaunt It! Monday will be back in 2009.

I am going to spend the week focusing on other topics to gear you up for 2009!  Some on growing green in your home and business others on strengthening your online (and paperless) presence on the internet.

Today I bring you 40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content by Chris Brogan.  I found this list very inspirational for my business in the new year and hope I step up to the plate and use some, if not all, of his points!  I’ve referred to Chris before on my Tweetin’ Twitter post. I’ve learned a lot about Social Media from him, I hope you can take something from him, too!

The Basics

1. Brevity rules. Can you say it briefly?
2. Start at the main point, then work the story up. (Make the main point in the first paragraph.)
3. Use small words. You don’t have to impress people. You have to be clear.
4. Analogies help people understand things better.
5. So do stories.
6. You don’t have to write complete sentences, even though your teacher taught you to do that. But treat it sparingly. Like this. Like a condiment.
7. Keep paragraphs small, if possible. We balk at large blocks of text.
8. Make your point from the reader’s side of the fence. Who is your audience?
9. Depending on how you write, go back and see if you can cut out more. Reduce. Reduce. Reduce.
10. Use the word you’re thinking about, not a fancier, or more polite word.

Concepts and the Bigger Picture

1. Set up series of posts, even if you don’t call them a series. Make a post that brings up follow-on points from a previous post, and link back to that post to reinforce the original content.
2. Get your inspiration from reading. #1 source for my ideas comes from other blogs not in my space. Not sure what to read that’s NOT in your space? Alltop, my friend. ( see also).
3. Think strategically, if this is for business or a cause. Ask yourself what you want your reader to do next. Try to write from that point of view.
4. Theme-wise, writing very helpful things that people can use is way better than writing thoughtful things that make people think and just walk away. You can have thoughtful but not helpful, but you’re striving for helpful and thoughtful in the same piece.
5. Never write the me-too blog. Look to be ahead of the wave and feeding backwards, not behind the wave and eating someone’s wake.
6. Look for ways to think forward, but that tie to your business interests. When I write about the future, I’m also inviting someone to make that future with me.
7. Mix it up. Keep an editorial calendar and note what kinds of posts you’ve written lately. Thought posts? Lists? Interviews? Make sure you’re mixing up the type of post you’ve written lately.
8. Consider the occasional dip into Google Trends to write a story that might draw new audience to your conversation. Don’t do this all the time, because the gimmick can wear off quick. Again, think condiments, not meals.
9. If you don’t have anything interesting to blog, skip a day. Don’t skip many days.
10. And never never never (raise your hand and repeat this with me) “I” (state your name) “solemnly swear never never never never ever to post another ‘I’m sorry I haven’t blogged lately’ posts ever again. Ever.”

Overdrive

1. Consider your audience but write from your passion.
2. Don’t mince words. If it’s a “pissing match,” it’s not a disagreement.
3. Ask questions. Blogs are conversations starting and flowing. Ask. Questions.
4. Link to people. If you write about Steve Garfield, link to Steve Garfield.
5. It’s not all about your blog. Get out and comment on other people’s blogs. Often.
6. Leave a few ideas unfinished. Ask for input. It always improves a piece. Blogs are great for that.
7. Use tags. Lots of tags. Make sure you claim your blog with Technorati, and submit it with Alltop.
8. Make sure your blog’s URL is everywhere: in your email signature, in Facebook, in Flickr, in Twitter, in every outpost you can think about.
9. Don’t email, DM, and otherwise push every blog post you write to other people. Share the best ones. Let the others be found on their own merits.
10. Always know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Question yourself often. Look for ways to improve the game.

Encore

1. Comment back to the people who have left comments.
2. Follow those people’s links sometimes and go explore their blog.
3. Look for ways to empower the community you inspire.
4. If you haven’t found your community yet, keep looking, searching, and connecting.
5. Learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). It’s no longer okay not to know even the most basic things.
6. Find great Creative Commons photos and use them for your post (with attribution).
7. Deconstruct what your favorite writers do, and try it your own way.
8. Occasionally, try something completely different.
9. Don’t be afraid to fail. Be afraid of not being interesting enough.
10. Write as if someone believes in you, because someone does. (me!)

Feeling inspired? Go forth and blog! All the best in 2009!

Jen

Post from: Eco-Office Gals

Gearing Up Your Blog For The New Year!

So, today I bring you my thoughts about  Twitter… you’ve heard me speak of it countless time.  I’ve found several great green businesses, clients and so much more on Twitter.  My relaunch was almost completely brought together by Twitter followers! My Flaunt It! Monday series continues to be sponsored by people I have found or have found me on Twitter.  An estimated 50% of my growing traffic comes from Twitter.

So, What can Twitter do for your business? It can make or break you, it can put your business on the hot seat in an instant … No, I’m not kidding! Heard of the Motrin Moms? Or the Chris Brogan and the Kmart/Izea uproar?

On a smaller scale I had some issues with Direct TV about 2 weeks ago, I called, I complained, I got no where.  Meanwhile, as I complained on the phone I was complaining on Twitter… it was 6am and they were saying I owed $260 for 6 days of service and had cut me off, I was not a happy camper.  So, a few hour later Direct TV was following me and within 24 hours and several tweets back and forth my account went from $260 to -$4.22… now THAT is customer service! Thank you!!

So, what can you do today to grow your business green?  Get a Twitter account! Find great green businesses and tweeple & learn from them.  Say no to paper fliers, say no to business cards, forget newspaper ads and articles! Grow your business online through social media! How? Start by reading 50 Ideas On Using Twitter For Business.

After that… Follow me!

Grow Green,

Jen

Post from: Eco-Office Gals

Tweetin’ Twitter

Yes, we have another whole week to go! More great green companies will showcase their companies and offer you a chance to win one of their products!

The breaks don’t get put on after the week is over either.  We have the Mommy Go Green Blog Tour making it’s way through, more giveaways and reviews, guest posts and tons of green tips, eco-product sales information and updates on what Eco-Office Gals is doing to grow small businesses green!

So, sign up for the Eco-Office Gals RSS, Twitter your friends, pick up the phone… choose whatever paperless means you want to spread the word about Eco-Office Gals! See ya tomorrow.

Grow Green!

Jen
Eco-Office Gals

Post from: Eco-Office Gals

Week Two of Relaunch!