Flowers are an integral part of every wedding, right down to the cake itself. Wedding cake flowers can add an extra touch of beauty and grace to the end result. There are many common ways for them to complement the design and flow of your presentation. For starters, having them on the table around the cake really spices up the overall look and feel. Placing a small corsage on the top of it is one popular option, as is spreading some flower petals on top of the cake. Flashier arrangements might spread from the bottom of the cake to its top.

In the past, artificial flowers were the most common choice. Whether sugar flowers meant to be eaten or silk flowers just for decoration, fake flowers were the ones often used. This is because while beautiful, many of them can also be toxic. Fortunately, most florists are keenly aware of which types might present a danger to the guests. Thus, it’s possible to use fresh, real flowers to garnish a wedding cake. Many florists can even provide options where you can actually eat the flowers that will be a perfect match for your cake.

Using edible flowers will often be a more expensive option, however. Since most flowers are commonly grown with pesticides, it can be difficult to find ones that are grown naturally for a good price. If it’s in the budget however, using this option can really add something unique to your reception ceremony. Your guests will love the beauty, and the overall presentation will definitely be enhanced.

There has been much said about building links this year and we thought it would be a good idea to give you a quick and simple technique to help your search engine optimisation process and give your staff a Xmas present. You are a great boss after all!

Solution

Simply ask all your staff who has a blog and ask your staff if they would consider placing a footer link in their blog that is keyword rich to your site. In return every year you will pay for the hosting fees for their blog on their own domain, if they are not hosting on their own domain name offer to pay for the domain name registration as well. This could make a great little Xmas present to your staff every year, but it is best get them something else as well!

Important

You should make it perfectly clear that the ownership of the blog is 100% theirs regardless of the hosting or domain name fees you will pay. Offer to sign a contract stating that you (your business) are not entitled to ownership of the blog or part there of regardless of the fees that are being paid. This may help them be comfortable with the idea.

One Step Further

After you have set up an army of bloggers within your business offer to allocate a set amount of time each week for them to blog during work hours. See some of the possible benefits below of implementing this.

Benefits

You will be cool boss because:

you give your staff time to blog during work, saves them time after work as well.
gives them a break from their everyday task
re stimulates the minds of your employees and generates creativity
employees are happier creating a happier working environment
creativity in employees flows over into the work place increasing productivity and enthusiasm for their job and work place
Customers have a better experience with your employees because they are happier
YOU BUILD KEYWORD RICH LINKS that help your online marketing campaigns.
Advanced Option
If your staff are willing to do this it would be very beneficial to your search rankings.

When adding the keyword links to your employees blogs, change the location of the H1 HTML tags on the blog template and the individual page template to be surrounding the keyword link to the business site in the footer. You will need to change the CSS for the H1 tag so the links blends in and is not RIGHT IN YOUR FACE!

Optional

If you end up with a few bloggers for your cause, it would be a good idea to allocate pages for certain employees to link to.

For example, Blogger Employee 1 links to home page, Blogger Employee 2 links to sub page 1, Blogger Employee 3 links to sub page 2 etc.

Negative Xmas Elf Read This First!

For those of you that don’t think this will work, why not try it out first.

Let us know the results or you could just send us a Xmas present now because we think you will be shocked at the response in the work place and in the search engines.

We’ve all had it, I’m sure. You’re innocently using the computer and suddenly you get some cryptic computer-jargon message (apparently it’s called a ‘dialogue box,’ but that’s a bit silly considering that we can’t talk with the computer!) saying, “General error, the program needs to close.” What can you say? Apparently it’s some file or script error and re-starting the computer is the way around it.

And the same happens with our brains to a certain extent. We get these ‘scripts’ and ‘programmes’ running that just cause us to terminate what good thinking might be happening at the time. It’s called anxiety and worry and fear. We track off into the past or the future for a moment and then the programme of our effective thinking stalls. Time for technical help perhaps?

The humanist community might call us to become ‘aware,’ so that we can control our thinking on manual mode, just allowing stimulus from our surrounds, and any deliberate, normal cognitive thinking to take place. They would tell us, ‘Just be present,’ and focus on your breathing.

It shouldn’t be that hard should it–to just be present? I tried the technique on the way home from work one evening and I got distracted off ‘being present’ so many times there must be eternal ruts in my mind.

Paul tells Timothy that, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” -2 Timothy 1:7 (NKJV).

We’ve all heard the term, ‘Junk in, junk out,’ relating to computers. Well, our minds are the processing unit for what we eventually do in life. We think of junky things, and yes, we then do junky things.

Our thinking is like the car that cruised slowly past me; for a time, that car was plain out of sight. I had to deliberately and purposely check it was still there. For a moment I thought it had vanished. My experience wasn’t based in truth and therefore my mind started to believe something that wasn’t real. But then the car in my blindspot did eventually re-appear.

Our thinking, similarly, has to deal with all sorts of blindspots that prevent us from seeing truth and reality–we will generally only believe what we can see. But, if our thinking is subsumed by a blindspot, we’re making decisions based on bad data. Life is suddenly going from bad to worse, as the false script reinforces the negative quickly down toward the sinkhole syndrome of concern, anxiety, fear, dread, and a myriad of other forms of ‘nothing’ thoughts, which can only be destructive.

We make thousands of incorrect assumptions every day when our thinking is not based in truth. (And to think otherwise takes a whole deal of training, which I’ll get into next article.) Erroneous thinking impacts incredibly badly not only on our decisions, but also on our relationships. At best it’s counterproductive, and at worst, it’s plain destructive.

We learned through the above quote of Paul’s that a sound (and sensible) mind is a gift from God’s Spirit.

So, if God’s gift is a sound mind, where does the junky thinking come from? You guessed it! It’s the Devil in disguise, and he’s messing with us. Why be duped? The Devil might want it that way, but why should we succumb when there’s by far a better way for us and everyone connected with us?

Now, all the ‘Devil talk’ might be putting you off… let’s change the subject. Let’s just get into some “awareness” as purported above.

The advice I read recently made so much sense to me I decided to give it a try, and strangely it works. I think it’s but one technique God gives us to enjoy his gift of a sound mind.

Email Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) is fast becoming the preferred process for companies who are looking for cost efficiencies, faster payments and a reduction in their environmental impact and carbon footprint.

Paper bill delivery is simply replaced with electronic bill delivery.

There is a small niche of EBPP offerings which drive paper turn-off, by providing an alternative delivery mechanism, (a secure electronic ‘push’ delivery channel), which effectively delivers eBills directly to customers’ email inboxes, instead of requiring them to collect bills from a website.

Consumers are becoming more aware of the environment and are thus looking for ways to ‘go green’. Many are expecting their service providers (banks, telco’s and utilities) to implement green initiatives. Choosing an eBill over a paper bill directly contributes to saving trees, and consumers support it.

Switching to electronic billing and payment will make a significant, positive impact on the environment. According to statistics published on the PayItGreen Alliance website, every year, paper cheques use more than 674 million gallons of fuel and contribute more than 3.6 million tons of harmful greenhouse gases to the environment. It is estimated that every year around 13 million trees are needed to produce all the paper invoices used in Europe.

As companies convert customers to receiving digital communication, there are significant cost savings to be enjoyed with every eBilling run. The business case for eBilling is very solid, and in most cases the investment required to set up this process is very often recovered within the first few months.

An organisation can save 1-2% of its turnover by replacing paper bills and optimising the related processes. Thus, the payback time on investments in eBilling projects can be as short as six months. Billers throughout Europe are realising how quickly enterprise costs can be reduced. According to Billentis, in 2008, roughly 1 million European businesses and 23 million consumers exchanged one billion electronic invoices. It is expected that every day in 2009 1,200 businesses and 11,000 consumers will become new eInvoicing users.

In addition to saving costs and the environment, Email Bill Presentment and Payment Solutions can also save time, as receiving and paying bills online each month reduces the time it takes billing-to-payment cycle from days to minutes.

EBPP clients are predominantly companies that produce and disseminate high volumes of bills each month – in the financial services, telecommunications and utilities industries. They are currently experiencing phenomenal benefits by replacing paper bills with secure electronic documents.

As the world adopts a more ‘Go Green’ attitude, many companies are investing in going green initiatives such as EBPP, which ultimately provides a tangible demonstration of their commitment to carbon footprint reduction.

About Striata

Striata’s Secure eDocument Delivery and Email Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) are solution sets that deliver a rapid reduction in operational costs, quicker payments and an enhanced customer experience.

Striata revolutionises the way bills, statements, policies, collection notices, letters, payslips and other high volume system-generated documents are delivered and paid. Registration requirements are eliminated by emailing feature rich, interactive, encrypted documents directly to the inbox and enabling innovative 1-click electronic payment from within the document itself. Direct email delivery of bills and statements dramatically increases customer adoption of electronic documents, paper turn off and ePayments. This enables Striata’s clients to achieve rapid ROI; complement their existing self-service and e-communication strategies; significantly reduce paper output and to meet their carbon footprint/environmental impact targets.