With the Canadian election reaching its conclusion and the American election just around the corner, I thought that it would be apt to pay a little attention to the world of politics. For those of you who aren’t as politically inclined, I’ve included a few non-political posts too… unless you consider a rumored third jersey for a hockey team as being a political process.

Buzz Bishop admonishes the recent Canadian election, asking (and answering) if it was even necessary in the first place. Not much has changed, but the election did cost Canadian taxpayers millions of dollars.

Jeff Kee runs quite the successful business and he’s willing to share a few tips with you. It can be pretty unprofessional to converse with clients via a Hotmail account, so you may want to check out Jeff’s post on how to use Gmail for your corporate email natively. No forwarding needed.

Awearness Blog (no that’s not a typo) has come across a clever video from Sarah Silverman called The Great Schlep. In short, she is encouraging all American Jews to visit Florida, convincing their grandparents to vote for Obama. Be forewarned that the Silverman video contains some blue language.

The Beacon Blog took some action on Blog Action Day this week, discussing various ways that we can combat poverty. The first point involves free trade and open borders. The post also approaches sweatshops and Wal-Mart.

Miss604 is featured in some Vancouver Canucks’ ads around the city and it seems that she has come across some insider information too. Check out the leaked picture of what may be the new Canucks third jersey. Johnny Canuck makes an appearance!

Not everyone has the same advertising budget as big companies like Budweiser and Apple, so what can your smaller company do to garner a similar amount of attention? More likely than not, you don’t have the funds available to plaster billboards across the country and fill the television ariwaves with a never-ending supply of expensive commercials. As it turns out, some of the best marketing that you can do won’t cost you a penny, at least directly.

One of the better examples of this is when you have a book that is ready to be published or has recently hit the shelves. Your publisher will likely send you out on a some sort of tour so that you can engage readers directly about the material in your book, sign a few copies, and take a few pictures. This may prove to be costly, depending on how it is done, so how can you get the same kind of presence and publicity?

A controversial author that I respect is Marty Beckerman. He has always been incredibly approachable and is quick to respond to requests for interviews and review copies. In fact, he takes a very proactive and personal approach in this respect. After I was given his previous book to review a few years ago, Beckerman added my contact information to his list and he was quick to send out a message when his new book was ready to hit bookstores. He openly offered free copies to anyone who wanted them with absolutely no obligation to give him any media coverage. He said that he’d greatly appreciate any reviews and he’d be available for interviews, but never did he place any sort of obligation.

Shortly afterward, Marty followed up to make sure that everyone who requested a copy of his new book, Dumbocracy, actually received one. This personal touch is very important if you’re looking for free publicity. I’ve started reading the book and will be contacting Marty soon for an interview. I’m sure he’ll be open to it and he’ll show his appreciation too.

Free publicity isn’t hard to get. Just be honest, open, and available.

In Part 1 of our PHP Tutorial series we covered how to use PHP and HTML together and use the print command. In Part 2 of our PHP Tutorial series we covered using variables.

In this tutorial we will cover how to send an email using PHP. If you ever need to capture information from a contact form and email it then using PHP mail is one of the more secure and easy methods of doing so.

To start you will need an html form page which captures the details. I have placed the code into a file so you can easily copy it. Once you have the form setup the way you want create your form.php file.

Place the following code into the form.php which you should have in a text editor:

[code='php'] $emailto = "me@myaddress.com";
$emailsubj = "Email Submission";
$emailmess = "Name: ".$_POST["name"]."\r\n";
$emailmess .= "Email: ".$_POST["email"]."\r\n";
$emailmess .= "Comment: ".$_POST["comment"];
$successpage = "http://www.google.com";
mail($emailto, $emailsubj, $emailmess);
header("Location: $successpage"); /* redirect */
exit;
?>[/code]

The above code should be edited to fit your needs. You can change:

$emailto should be set to the actual email you want the content sent to.
$emailsubj can be set to a more meaningful email subject.
$successpage should be set to a relevant thank you page on your site after the person submits the form.

Again be sure to save the file form.php with a .php extension and upload it to your site. In this example you should see a form and emailed the details when you submit it.

Stay tuned as we will continue this tutorial with more details on using PHP.

If you want to grow the traffic numbers on your blog, it’s important that you encourage comments from your visitors. You can do this by posing questions at the end of your posts, for example. The Top Commentators plugin can also do a lot to encourage commenting, because the people who leave the most comments get a “dofollow” link in the sidebar. You may have also seen the CommentLuv plugin that has been installed on a number of sites around the blogosphere.

Another useful plugin that may encourage increased comment activity on your blog is the Social Profiles WordPress Plugin. In this age of the Internet, people are more interactive and social than ever, setting up profiles at a wide range of social networking and social bookmarking sites. You probably have an account on Digg and Flickr, for example.

With this plugin, a comment can come with links to the reader’s social profiles on these websites. The plugin supports twelve such social networking sites, including Furl, MySpace, and Twitter. Just as people enjoy driving traffic to their blogs directly, they’d also like to attract attention to their profiles on these sites as well. The catch with this particular plugin is that the user must first be registered with your blog. You could use this as another added form of encouragement.

The Social Profiles WordPress Plugin can be found at sugarrae.com.

Last week we asked who gets your vote for the 2008 Canadian Federal Election and 35% said Liberal and 35% said NDP. This weeks question is…

I don’t have the exact figures in front of me, but it has been shown that it is substantially more cost-efficient to try and retain a customer than it is to try and acquire a new one. That’s why companies like Rogers Wireless and Telus Mobility have such large retentions departments. Despite what the mass populace may believe, these companies are actually trying to keep your business.

When approaching the strategy for your own company, you should also keep this kind of philosophy in mind. Taking it one step further, have you considered the possibility of growing your client base by simply re-connecting with some of your past customers? These are firms and people who have used your services or purchased your products in the past but, for whatever reason, have stopped doing so.

Perhaps they were looking for a product that you didn’t offer at the time, but you do offer now. Maybe they were going through some tough financial times, but their situation is better now and they simply had not thought to call you back. Whatever the case, you have the opportunity recapture these customers and expand your business once more.

It doesn’t take much more than a simple email or phone call to reconnect with these companies. If they ordered from you in the past and were satisfied with what you offered, there’s no reason why they wouldn’t feel the same today.