This maybe a slighly unusal post for some of my readers but I wanted to put this solution out there for anyone else who is suffering with what is a potentially great module for Drupal 7 called rotating-banner. The problem is the file in the projects directory needs to be patched. With forum help for others I hand patched the correct file and it now works like a charm.

I post it here for anyone to download who needs it. Download, unzip and replace your previous rotating-banner.module file.

There is no warranty expressed or implied. I used it and it worked for me. Good Luck

Update

This post has caused quite a discussion on LinkedIn. Why not see what people are saying…

The announcement of the "new iPad" or the iPad 3 was made this week by Apple. I thought it was about time to review how iPads are being used in the small business world. Will I get excited enough to buy the new iPad? Not sure as my iPad 1 is still working well. Sure it's a bit heavier that the new version and it doesn't have a camera or LTE – though it did load iOS 5.1 and runs just as well as it did before.

I have loaded the new iWorks tools, Pages, Numbers and Keynote all connected via iCloud which is fine for the limited amount of content creation I do using the iPad. 

After all the last couple of years using my 1st generation iPad here are the business tools I use most:

• Evernote – because it captures notes easily, sound records meetings as I take notes and then auto syncs when I am next in a wifi zone
• 1Password – for all those passwords I need to find when I use Safari (I have 1Password on all my devices and find it saves my memory on a daily basis for all those login id's and passwords)
• Safari – for all those browsing needs
• Mail – all accounts are IMAP and so sync up and I don't care which device I use to read my emails
• GoodReader – the companion program I use to read all those attachments on emails too big for Mail and for syncing my documents from Dropbox and a plethora of other servers

In my first article on the iPad I spoke about jailbreaking and loading Frash for running flash apps on the iPad. I discovered an even better solution where going down the jailbreaking path wasn't required

iSwifter – built to play games it can load ANY Adobe FLASH site I have visited. It loads the site very quickly, sometimes awkward to use but it is usable.

Many of the tools I use are also available on the iPhone and for my desktop and so I am always in sync with my data. A great way to ensure you're backed up.

There are literally hundreds and hundreds of useful specific apps you can load and use on your iPad. This is just a list of the ones I use almost every day. Every business has different needs for their work tools and processes. 

Contact KIX to let us help you bring tools like the iPad into your business to make you and your staff work even better.

I trust this has been useful for you. If you find other tools useful for you in your business then please let me know via the comments section.

In a recent article on short linking I spoke about how you can use Pretty Link, a WordPress blog plugin, to effectively be a bit.ly or other commercial short link service which YOU control.

The creator of Pretty Link, Blair Williams, has recently posted an article on how to make short linking even more effective.

Essentially, you register a very short domain name, point it to your top level site, add a small amount of code into you .htaccess file (and if you don’t know what that is then just contact me for more details) which you need and Blair explains clearly the how and where and why.

Magic, all done. Well apart from one thing there’s a very reasonable one of charge for the pro version of the pretty link plugin.

So, if you want to build your brand, have effective links used for your brand in twitter, facebook and all forms of social media and save space at the same time then this information will be very useful for you.

Making links that work isn't just about text, links can be using images as well. RightLinker 1.3 now supports the creation of links with the image code included in it.

Visit RightLinker to view the latest help video and register to download your copy today. 

RightLinker has an updated user interface to incorporate the new functionality.

Registered users can download their copy from their registration email link.

For FAQ/Support questions please visit the RightLinker Support page.

How can I use Twitter for my business? What makes it special? There's so much written about the use of twitter already but "what does it all mean?".

Twitter offers a completely different method of communication. ;It mixes social networking with instant messaging. ;Posts are a very brief 140 characters each allowing you to answer that burning question, “What are you up to right now?” ;

In order to answer this question you must make every word count. ;You need to grab your readers’ attention quickly with each “tweet” (how a post is referred to on Twitter). ;Twitter allows you to sign up and send messages to your subscribers and friends. ;You can update your audience as frequently as you wish and they can respond to you quickly and easily. ;

The way it works is that people follow your “tweets”, so the more followers you have the more you are likely to get as their friends see your details on the profile pages on others and choose to follow you too. ;Each time you post an updated tweet, it will be transmitted to your group of followers immediately to their computers and cell phones if they have chosen that way of communication. ;

If you send out regular tweets you will start to gather a faithful group of followers. ;Make each tweet count and add value. ;If you write reviews on computer games or create accessories for Avatars, then you can tell your followers when you have been working on something new or have something new to tell them. ;

It is possible to grow a fanatical following who are so interested in what you are doing and offering that they look out for every new tweet from you. ;For information marketers such intensity can quickly develop into a faithful band of buyers who react to any new offerings you put their way. ;

Friends that want to arrange a meeting can tweet everyone to let them know the time and location of the meeting. ;You can also send tweets that give notice of a latest update to your blog or lens update. ;Remember to work your tweet carefully so you have enough room to include the link to your site. ;

This is essential if you want to create interest in your website and branding yourself successfully. ;Even a very brief post can give you an identity in such a way that followers are attracted to your particular niche. ;Some people love Twitter and others just do not understand it. ;

To understand how it works you really need to use Twitter every day. ;Look at what other Twitterers are up to and how they use tweets to market their brand, build an identity, display their expertise and generate website traffic. ;

Twitter is addictive and this is mainly down to instant gratification. ;It is easy to use and allows you to get your message across to lots of people quickly. ;Once you have chosen to use Twitter for your niche, hobby, profession, business, or sport, you will start to see how it is a great way of dispensing huge amounts of information quickly, one tweet at a time. ;

It's more than just this though, you can use some of the social bookmarking tools mentioned in a ;previous post, that will make the tweet for you automatically, for example when you update your blog, or publish a new article. From a business perspective you can send information instantly and also get it back just as quickly. Remember though it's instant gratification and so you need to act fast if a customer contacts you. It's great for support issues, combine Twitter with your support desk and you can have a very effective result for your customers problem resolution and they will be thinking great customer service.

Firstly, what is social bookmarking?

To be successful on the internet, people, customers, prospects, have to be able to find you. To find you they often use a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing to look for the "thing" they are interested in. To be found on the first page of a search engine is vitally important as most people, actually more than 95% of people never look at more than the first 3 pages of results. Some of the popular social bookmarking sites are Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Facebook and Twitter. 

How is this relevant to social bookmarking?

Well, in short if you have provided items of value, like an article, a book, a video and put it on the internet then the more references there are to that piece of content the better. The social book marking sites, and there's more than 150 of them, create a link back to your article. The search engines love to see this link, they give you credit for having all these links to your content, and presto you climb up the list of results in the search engines. We want our business to be as high up on this list of results as possible, preferably the first page. This isn't an article about search engines or SEO but it is very relevant.

Lets look at this in a bit more detail.

Social bookmarking is a way of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs online.  You might have the best product in the world, but if you can’t generate the traffic you’ve just got a nice website on your hands with no customers.  Even if you have a loyal mailing list you will still need to constantly update this by attracting new online visitors.  

There are many options for making connections on social bookmarking sites.  To find the best you need to take your time and surf around.  Once you have researched the best start to set up some social bookmarking accounts that you can use regularly.  

StumbleUpon is one of the most popular of the social bookmarking sites which is both powerful and easy to use. First you need to create an account and then create a toolbar interface.  All that’s left to do is click on the Thumbs Up icon (which is found on your browser after you install the StumbleUpon tool) in order to recommend a website.  This can be done for any websites you own and you can also ask your friends to give you the Thumbs Up.  In addition to these ratings you can also add comments about your website.  

Can you Digg it?  Sounds like a line from a 70s song, but it is actually a very popular social bookmarking site. Digg works very much like StumbleUpon in that users are allowed to push up the ratings for a particular site so that it reaches the front page.  If you can make it to the front page you will be presenting yourself to thousands of potential visitors and more and more people will start hitting your site to see what you are all about.  

To assist you in publishing your information out onto the web there are a number of services available to you. There are both free and paid services and those listed here are the free services. They require a bit of effort from your business to maintain but the effort pays off over time. You will need to register yourself or your business to each of the social sites you want to be profiled on. This can take a little time at the beginning, though once done you don't have to worry about again.

• Clipmarks markets itself as “scissors for web pages.”  This site lets you submit items that are transmitted to the Internet – including to an iPhone and to Facebook.  It provides a one stop shop and can save a lot of time.
• You can sign up with services like OnlyWire to get similiar capability to Clipmarks. OnlyWire has a free and a paid option. 
• Another option is to use a site called Socialmarker. Using your social site accounts it steps your through the creation process of entries in each of these sites. You would repeat this process for each new piece of information that you want to promote out onto the internet.  
• Alternatively you can use ping.fm to connect to all your social media accounts. 

Some of these services provide a small application for your browser. Just install one or more of these plugins for your browser. These "plugins" allow you to carry out a multitude of functions such as clicking once to submit your item to many sites in one go.  In order for this to work, you will need to join any social bookmarking sites you want to use.  

You will need to ensure that visitors to your site know how they can rate your site.  It is not possible to bribe or reward them for bookmarking your site.  This is the social bookmarking equivalent to stuffing the ballot box.  

You can publish links to bookmarking sites as a gentle and polite reminder to your visitors.  Don’t be coy about submitting any updated information to these networks yourself.  You will just need to ensure that you do it in such a way that it doesn’t appear as spam.  If you tell people what you have got and where they can find it there is a good chance they will pass this information on to others.

In the spirit of this article there's a button just below that says "Share / Save". Go on, click and and social bookmark this article and see how it works.

Do Your Potential Customers Forget About You?

Posted by Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO)

Your web business probably gets product inquiries from potential customers around the globe. Inquiries come via e-mail and your web site, and you try to send information to each hot prospect as quickly as you can. You know that you can drastically increase the likelihood of making a sale by satisfying each person’s need for information quickly!

But, after you’ve delivered that first bit of information to your prospect, do you send them any further information?

If you are like most business owners, you don’t.

When you don’t follow that initial message with additional information later on, you let a valuable prospect slip from your grasp! This is a potential customer who may have been very interested in your products, but who lost your contact information, or was too busy to make a purchase when your first message reached him.

Often, a prospect will purposely put off making a purchase, to see if you find him important enough to follow up with later. When he doesn’t receive a follow up message from you, he will take his business elsewhere.

Are you losing profits due to inconsistent and ineffective follow up?

Following up with leads is more than just a process – it’s an art. In order to be effective, you need to design a follow up system, and stick to it, EVERY DAY! If you don’t follow up with your prospects consistently, INDIVIDUALLY, and in a timely fashion, then you might as well forget the whole follow up process.

Consistent follow up gets results!

When I first started marketing and following up with prospects, I used a follow up method that I now call the “List Technique.” I had a large database containing the names and e-mail addresses of people who had specifically requested information about my products and services. These prospects had already received my first letter by the time they requested more information, so I used the company’s latest news as a follow up piece.

I would write follow up newsletters every now and then, and send them, in one mass mailing, to everyone who had previously requested information from me. While this probably did help me win a few additional orders, it wasn’t a very good follow up method. Why isn’t the “List Technique” very effective?

• The List Technique isn’t consistent. Proponents of the List Technique tend to only send out follow up messages when their companies have “big news”.
• List Technique messages don’t give the potential customer any additional information about the product or service in question. He can’t make a more informed buying decision after receiving a newsletter! If someone is wondering whether your company sells the best knick-knacks, what does he care that you’ve just moved your headquarters?
• List Technique messages convey a “big list” mentality to your potential customers. When I used to write follow up messages using the List Technique, I was writing news bulletins to everyone I knew! I should have been sending a personal message to each individual who wanted to know more about my products.

What follow up method really works?

Following up with each lead individually, multiple times, but at set intervals, and with pre-written messages, will dramatically increase sales! Others who use this same technique confirm that they have all at least doubled the sales of various products! In order to set this system up, though, you need to do some planning.

First, you’ll need to develop your follow up messages. If you’ve been marketing on the Internet for any length of time, then you should already have a first informative letter. Your second letter marks the beginning of the follow up process, and should go into more detail than the first letter. Fill this letter with details that you didn’t have the space to add to the first letter. Stress the BENEFITS of your products or services!

Your next 2-3 follow up messages should be rather short. Include lists of the benefits and potential uses of your products and services. Write each letter so that your prospects can skim the contents, and still see the full force of your message.

The next couple of follow up messages should create a sense of urgency in your prospect’s mind. Make a special offer, giving him a reason to order NOW instead of waiting any longer. After reading these follow up messages, your prospect should want to order immediately!

Phrase each of your final 1 or 2 follow up messages in the form of a question. Ask your prospect why he hasn’t yet placed an order? Try to get him to actually respond. Ask if the price is to high, the product isn’t the right color or doesn’t have the right features, or if he is looking for something else entirely. (By this time, it’s unlikely that this person will order from you. However, his feedback can help you modify your follow up letters or products, so that other prospects will order from you.)

The timing of your follow up letters is just as important as their content. You don’t want one prospect to receive a follow up the day after he gets your initial informative letter, while another prospect waits weeks for a follow up!

Always send an initial, informative letter as soon as it is requested, and send the first follow up 24 hours afterwards. You want your hot prospects to have information quickly, so that they can make informed buying decisions!

Send the next 2-3 follow up messages between 1 and 3 days apart. Your prospect is still hot, and is probably still shopping around! Tell him about the benefits of your products and services, as opposed to your competitors’. You will make the sale!

Send the final follow up messages later on. You certainly don’t want to annoy your prospect! Make sure that these last letters are at least 4 days apart.

Following up effectively seems complicated, but it doesn’t have to be! So many potential customers are lost because of poor follow up – don’t you want to be one of the few to get it right?

Don’t make this mistake again!

Never put a link into an electronic document that isn’t accurate or correctly formatted. It loses you all the benefits of prospective clients and interested readers from finding the information you intended for them. It will cost you sales.

Build it, Test it, Deploy it! RightLinker from The KIX Group provides you this capability, whether on a PC or a Mac, or any platform supported by Adobe Air.

It’s simple to use:

1. Enter the web address (URL) where you want your readers to end up.
2. Next, put in the text your readers will see in your document / article or post.
3. Click the “Make The Link” and the correctly formatted link is created. The link is displayed along with a test link shown in blue.
4. To put the generated code on the Clipboard, click the “Copy To Clipboard” button.
5. To test the link click on the blue link below the formatted code.
6. To clear the form to start fresh click the “Start Again” button.

It’s done! No more hassles or mistakes.

Oh did I mention it’s yours FREE – register NOW!

PS. Many Internet Marketers and casual users have already started using this simple tool. Why not you too?

Life is often full of things that VEX us. It’s is worse when the thing that causes us to be vexxed is an important tool, like my iPhone. Now I want to say up front, I did take the Apple Care extended warranty, because if I hadn’t then I wouldn’t have found out why it stopped working that Sunday afternoon.

I had been making some calls and put it back in my pocket. I heard it give the message received beep and retrieved it only to find a totally blank response. Almost like a teenager on a Sunday morning. I tried all the things known to man and Apple Support to resurrect it, without any luck.

Taking it to the Apple Genius bar on the Monday, initially nothing, then please make an appointment with one of our techs. So with appointment made I left and returned.

In the meantime as I couldn’t be without my phone I put my SIM card into my slightly older phone, my Nokia N95. It’s a great phone, but seriously, after using my iPhone for 12 months it was like going back in time. Sure it did it’s stuff well, made calls, had the GPS, could send and receive all manner of messages, but the interface was just, well, clunky. So after being a Nokia advocate for such a long time I knew I had been converted.

Back to my iPhone. At the Genius Bar in the Apple Store, the guy there was very helpful. Checked this and that, ran some diagnostics, and actually got a glimmer from the device. I felt there was hope. He thought it might be a faulty connection to the screen or the screen itself was failing. It was only when he opened it up to reseat the connection did he find the real cause. The connector was indeed not seated correctly, but for the past 12 months or so it had been burning the logicboard (motherboard) and it was slowly frying itself.

Outcome: I was given a brand new device.

Thoughts: If I hadn’t had my extended warranty then I probably wouldn’t have even gone to the Genius Bar. To then find out it was a faulty unit all along made me think, would have the unit been replaced so quickly without the Extended Warranty. Probably not without a fight as the 12 month warranty was just passed.

I am happy with the outcome, two iPhones as I had already gone and upgrade to the 3Gs as I didn’t think my 3G would be fixable and I couldn’t live with my N95.

Yes the iPhone is a great bit of kit, but more than that “it’s my preferred tool of trade”.

Working Hard

Sitting at the keyboard for hour after hour, staring at your wonderful BIG monitor, checking keywords, building products, making posts and watching the money flood in. Can you see yourself in this picture. Think how much activity you do other than in your brain. Got that picture in your mind? Great!

This might be you view of your ideal day. Working for yourself, sitting there doing what you love. Just think for a moment…are you loving your body and is it loving you back?

While the alure of being an internet marketer is that you are your own boss, keep your own hours, and do whatever you want whenever you want it, is an attractive proposition. Can you honestly say you doing enough exercise to be healthy? I thought I was okay until I changed my routine and made a slight adjustment to the food I was eating.

My day now looks like this:

Wake at 6:30 and take some time to enjoy waking, exercise for 30-40 mins from 7:30-8:15, a nice warm breakfast after your exercise, from 9-1 get stuck into the major things you have planned for the day. By the time 1 comes around I have drunk lots of water but I barely notice the time. The I realise that I am hungry again and head out for a balanced lunch, just not sandwiches or other wheat products, lots of vegetables, then I am recharged and ready for the 2-5 push getting all the small tasks done. Now around 5 I take a break before having dinner around 7. This could be family time, read a book, talk to your partner, even go and socialise (just don’t exercise heavily). Eat around 7 then around 10 head off to bed for a good nights sleep.

I’ve been doing this routine now for coming up to 3 weeks. I have not felt as healthy and as full of energy for a very long day.

I realise some of you are saying that this is too structured. My experience is that the structure is good for me and I am getting more done.

Just wanted to share this with you. Try it – find your own rhythm for your body and mind, you might also be surprised!

(disclaimer – I am not a health professional, just a normal guy trying to make my life better)