As a business owner, it’s always a proud moment when a company wants to announce that it has chosen you as its service provider of choice. For the Bolt PR team, TownZilla.com not only selected us as its PR, copywriting and social media management agency, but the local search engine company also wanted to announce it to the world. (Thanks TownZilla.com!)

So if you haven’t heard about TownZilla.com before, here’s the skinny: It’s a local search engine for the Orange County, Inland Empire and San Diego communities. As a business owner in San Diego, if I want to find a San Diego CPA, I search on TownZilla.com and the results displayed will only be San Diego CPAs… not Orange County, San Francisco or Las Vegas CPAs. Just local CPAs in my local area. Now as a new Orange County resident, when I want to find a local restaurant, I can use TownZilla.com for that, too. And when I search for Orange County restaurants, TownZilla.com will only display OC restaurants. No amount of money can “buy” a business a place in this search engine where it doesn’t belong.

That’s because TownZilla.com’s sole purpose is to support local businesses by connecting potential buyers with them. A few of the fantastic features of TownZilla.com include:

- Local search specific to Orange County, San Diego and the Inland Empire
- Free business listings for all businesses in the TownZilla.com coverage areas
- Updated event blog with all the latest happenings in Southern California
- Local job postings relevant to job seekers’ specific area of residence through a partnership with Jobing.com
- Travel search for local residents to find flights, hotels, cars, vacations and cruises
- Premium, non-invasive advertising for local businesses and events
- Local mortgage rate finder and real estate information
- Continuous traffic reports for anywhere in Orange County, San Diego and the Inland Empire
- Local restaurant, hotel and art gallery listings specific to each of the counties in Southern California

So check it out and start supporting YOUR local business: http://www.townzilla.com/.

Posted by: Caroline Callaway, caroline@boltpr.com

Squidoo, Seth Godin’s brainchild, is an online social encyclopedia made up of lenses (user-generated pages). Lenses are little authority sites, much like Wikipedia and About.com. Anyone can create a lens for free on any topic of choice and the creators are called “lensmasters.”
Unlike most Web 2.0 creations, Squidoo is about what you know, rather than who you know.

Why should you create lenses?

• You are an expert on something. Why not share the knowledge?
• Traffic! You can include backlinks to your website. One way to use Squidoo to increase your blog traffic is by using the RSS feed tool. You simply load the RSS feed from your blog and the Squidoo lens will update automatically as you update your blog.
• Google loves Squidoo. The lenses often rank very high in search engines. Each page gives crawlers another opportunity to find you.
• Money. You have the option to donate 50% the money Squidoo makes from ads and affiliate links on your page to charity. Or you can keep it. Of the other 50%, 45% of it “covers overhead and stuff” and the other 5% automatically goes to charity.
• It is free.

For an example of a lens, check out Bolt’s ‘San Diego Public Relations’: http://www.squidoo.com/sandiegopr

By: Anne Carr, anne@boltpr.com

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I did a little digging to find out just who St. Patrick is and why he’s important enough to have a holiday in his name. Here is what I found:

Who is St. Patrick?

Patrick lived during the 5th century and is given credit for bringing Christianity to Ireland. He was born in Ireland and lived there until he was kidnapped at age sixteen by pirates and sold into slavery. During his six years of captivity, he learned to find strength in his faith. (Although, he worked as a shepherd, so his captivity doesn’t sound too rough). Patrick finally escaped and lived in France, where he became a priest and then a bishop.

Oddly, he waited until he was 60 years old to move back to Ireland and spread the gospel of Christianity. While teaching about the Trinity, he used the shamrock as a metaphor to illustrate the concept.

St. Patrick is also legendary for driving snakes out of Ireland. While it is true, according to all accounts I could find, that there are no snakes in Ireland, critics believe that there probably never were any there in the first place because the island separated from the rest of the continent during the ice age before snakes existed. He is most likely credited with this because serpent symbols were common and worshiped by many supposedly pagan religions. Driving out the snakes may be symbolic for the end of these practices.

St. Patrick died a hero in Ireland on March 17th around 460 A.D. He described himself as a most humble-minded man, pouring forth a continuous paean of thanks to his Maker for having chosen him as the instrument whereby multitudes who had worshipped idols and unclean things had become the people of God.”

What is St. Patrick’s Day?

Prior to the 20th century, St. Patrick’s Day was celebrated only as a religious holiday. It became a public holiday in 1903 by the Black Holiday Act, introduced to Parliament by Irish Prime Minister James O’Mara. In Ireland, the holiday is still a religious observance. Businesses, besides restaurants and pubs, close down. People attend mass where it is a time of spiritual renewal and offer prayers for missionaries around the world. Then, they celebrate!

The first accounts of American celebration date back to 1737. Now St. Patrick’s day is a day to wear green and celebrate everything Irish. For San Diego St. Patrick’s day events, visit the San Diego Weekly Reader.

Meanwhile we, the Bolt team, will continue helping small businesses expand their pots of gold through credible exposure, both on- and off-line.

By: Anne Carr, anne@boltpr.com