2006 was a fantastic year in so many ways but one incredible statistic to share was the readership growth of our weblog. We started the Executive Edge weblog http://blog.premierstrategies.com as a companion site to our email newsletters in Q2-2006. We’ve received fantastic feedback over the helpful information in the e-newsletters over the past few years. Our in-house email list has grown to just over 8,500 business owners, executives and professionals. We never had a place to archive those articles and resources online for others to find online and use. With the weblog, we do.

Enter the world of the weblog. We use www.wordpress.com It’s made it so much easier and faster to write, share and contribute articles online, posting them to the weblog. We then then simply share with you a shorter, briefer compilation email each month that indexes our recently published resources. You can visit anytime and see any past articles or links.

The growth in readership has been incredible. Primarily because now all of that content is indexed by Google. This pulls in a significant number of new visitors and readers to not only the weblog but our website. I would highly recommend this experience to anyone who is looking to improve their personal or professional profile in a particular market. I believe it could be a very rewarding experience for you or your organization

Here is a preview of the three initial WVNewsline.com postcard mailings going out to business owners, executives, CEO's, industry professionals and WV leaders statewide.

Our most exciting announcement this issue - we've been working the past three months to create WV's most   comprehensive news headline aggregation site.  We're launching this nationally in all 50 states - beginning right here in our home state of West Virginia!

The website puts all the headline links from most every WV news source on one page. This saves you time each day by helping you quickly find the news you want to read.

WVNewsline.com automatically aggregates headlines and links to every news article published online in West Virginia. The site is currently tracking over 30 news sources and updating hourly. 10-20 additional news sections are coming soon!

Please take a quick moment to visit the site and see if it might be a useful tool for your own daily news experience.  And most of all, please let us know what you think and how we can improve it and make it even better! 

• Visit www.WVNewsline.com 
  

Here is a example of how easy it is to upload and share a video using YouTube.  This is a one and a half minute video clip of the WOWK news story covering the awards ceremony and the back story of Paul's receiving this award.

Each year WV Executive Magazine honors a select few young business leaders.

On a personal note, it was an honor to be recognized in 2000 as one of WV's young business leaders. 

Here is a complete profile of the twenty-five individuals recognized in 2006 and 2005:

• http://www.wvexecutive.com/young_guns_folder

Note that nominations are open now for 2007 Young Guns.

Everyone is doing it! Blogging that is. And as I have come to learn over the past few months - running a blog is one of the very best ways to share dynamic, up-to-date information with clients, colleagues, and friends.

At the same time the information shared is syndicated to millions of servers worldwide and a real contribution can be made by the sharing of knowledge through a blog. Since our newest member of the company is an absolute technical wizard (thanks to Paul McNeely) it is now so much easier to post current content every couple days vs publishing it on our website or putting everything into an e-newsletter.

Now we can just send out summary emails that highlight topics and articles - and more simply share the links to that content vs putting it all into an email. This makes the e-newsletter updates much easier to quickly scan and get to specific articles / updates that you find of interest and value.

Thanks again for your readership, interest and most of all your personal and professional relationship. I look forward to sharing some great information on how to profitably grow your business and reach your personal and professional goals.