Business Information for Entrepreneurs by an Entrepreneur

Trade show marketing can be a great way for your small business to find and open new markets around the country and promote your products to those who are unfamiliar. And while we've talked before about the benefits and how to find the right trade show for your industry and product, there are a few trade show tips and secrets that will improve your success.

Here are a few trade show tips that will give you an edge at your next showing:

Booth Design

During small business trade shows, you want to grab the attention of attendees and participants. While your product is the star of the show, a well-designed booth is the stage for your showpiece.

Whether you build your booth space yourself on a budget or pay a specialty shop to construct your booth, keep these elements in mind:

• Walls - First, be sure to color coordinate with all booth elements, starting with the walls. Your walls could be heavy-duty cubical material, or simple cloth stretch between PVC piping. Keep the color warm and inviting.
• Banners - Include graphic banners for your booth display. A banner with your name and logo is great, but to stand out at small business trade shows, include graphic banners and displays with photos of your product, people enjoying your product, etc. Make them full color and put these at eye level to attract attention.
• Tablecloths - A trade show will likely provide you with a table or two, and maybe even a plain tablecloth. But you should bring your own that complements your color scheme. White is the trade show tips top choice because it highlights the objects on top of it.
• Flooring - Likely the trade show will be on concrete flooring. If possible, bring your own flooring. It could be carpet squares, fiberboard, or even a cloth flooring. A brighter color is also recommended, as it will help reflect light and brighten your booth.
• Lighting - As well, small business trade shows will likely provide plenty of shadowy overhead fluorescent lighting. Consider bringing your own light stands to project spotlights on targeted areas on your display.

Use Interactive Displays

During small business trade shows, you will attract more customers with interactive displays. It could be a sample of your product that people can handle and touch, a cooking display, or even an iPod monitor where folks can use the touch screen to go through a quiz, an interactive PowerPoint, or display product photos.

Don't Forget The Giveaways

At small business trade shows, be sure to help people who stop at your booth remember your product. Provide them with product samples, business cards, pens, magnets - whatever you think can make an impression and carries your business name and logo.

Stock Up on Brochures and Order Forms

You don't want to run out of literature at small business trade shows. Bring enough brochures and product information sheets to pass around.

Likewise, if you plan to take orders at small business trade shows, always keep enough order forms on hand.

Cookies!

Of all the trade show tips available, one secret to almost assuredly get people to stop by your booth is to have a small basket of cookies available. It could be name brand like Oreo, maybe Girl Scout cookies, or homemade cookies. Cookies are hard to pass by and can be that simple trick that makes a passerby say, "oh, cookies! What else do you have here?"

Have Backup Attendants

Trades shows typically run long hours, usually from morning until evening. It is unfair and unwise to ask any single person to have sole responsibility of attending your small business trade show booth the entire time.

Among the smartest of trade show tips is to be sure you bring backup. At least two people should attend. That way, one person can attend to the booth to meet and greet, while the other can walk the floor, do competition research, attend the seminars, or network.

The key to small business trade shows is to have someone on duty to answer questions, do demonstrations, and take orders at all times.

Without your constant effort to promote your small business blog and the help of search engines pointing to your blog, it is nothing more than a lonely online business diary. Much like the philosophical question, "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there...", the same goes for your small business blog; if you write a blog and no one is there to read it, did it really happen?

Keeping your blog updated is a crucial step in improving your website SEO. However, what blog promotion steps do you take to help improve your readership?

Here are 3 tested blogging tips to drive more traffic and boost your readership.

1. Feed Your RSS

   RSS is the acronym for Real Simple Syndication. RSS technology was developed around the turn of the century as a means to distribute online publication media. Using RSS your published content can be syndicated, or fed to readership programs, automatically.

   RSS is a free syndication tool. For absolutely no money, you can get your new small business blog posts in front of readers instantly. RSS works on many platforms that are able to receive the RSS format, such as email, subscriber applications, or right to a reader's desktop. Luckily, RSS is the most popular online publication syndication application, so putting RSS on your small business blog is a no-brainer.

   While RSS works for you to broadcast your newly published content, it doesn't make people subscribe to your small business blog. That is still your responsibility. As part of your small business blog strategy, establish how you will encourage readers to subscribe to your RSS feed. Offer the RSS icon on your website and every blog page. Promote RSS subscriptions through your other social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.

2. Ping Search Engines After Each Update

   While you can get a RSS feed to instantly broadcast and syndicate your new blog updates, it doesn't notify search engines about your new content. It is easy for people to think that major search engines like Google and Yahoo! are savvy about new website content the moment it happens. The truth is that while search engines of all sizes regularly send out crawlers or "bots" to scan for new website content, it doesn't happen every day.

   To get your new small business blog content available for search engine results quickly, you need to notify them with a "ping". Pinging search engines is an electronic means of getting their attention that something new is on your website. That way, they will know it is time to log your new content and get it ready to present it as results to web surfers.

   If your small business blog is already on a platform like Blogger, WordPress, or TypePad, their system will automatically ping search engines after every post. Otherwise, you will need to ping using third party tools such as:

   • Weblogs (weblogs.com)
   • Feed Ping (feedping.com)
   • King Ping (kingping.com)
   • Feed Shark (feedshark.brainbliss.com)
   • Pingates (pingates.com)

3. Using Shortened URLs

   If your small business has a Twitter account, you know a 140 character limitation prevents effectual linking to your website blog. But you've probably also noticed how other Twitter accounts easily post links to website pages using shortened or "snipped" links.

   Snipping your blog update URL is easy using a third party tool like the ones listed below. By doing so, you can take a link that is dozens of characters long and reduce it to about 10 or 12 letters and numbers. That way, you can easily include it in a quick update to Twitter and on any other social media platform.

   Here are a few of the popular snipping services:

   • Bit.ly - Helps you shorten and track your links for hits and number of clicks.
   • TinyURL.com - URLs that you shorten with this service never expire.
   • Ow.ly - This is a link shortener offered by Hootsuite.

   Note that there is a downfall for using shortened links. By using a third party service, you lose potential branding of your small business blog and website since the links do not contain any mention of your business name. However, the benefits of blog promotion on multiple social media sites far outweighs this disadvantage.

Marketing your small business online requires a solid social media strategy, and part of a successful social media strategy must include a Twitter account.

While there are many different varieties of social media, Twitter is a must for any small business. The sheer number of Twitter accounts means that a small business can acquire a potential barrelful of followers. And through hashtags, a small business can go from a few hundred followers to reaching millions via the viral aspect of Twitter hashtags.

What is a Hashtag?

A hashtag is like a keyword. On Twitter, a keyword can be found by using the hashtag mark "#" in front of the word. For instance, if you were writing about eco-friendly marketing strategies and wanted the keyword "Green Marketing", simply create it in hashtag form, #GreenMarketing. This makes the keyword searchable topic on Twitter and can be found and read by potentially millions of Twitter searchers.

How does a small business utilize hashtags in a Twitter social media strategy? Here are a few tips:

Keep up with Hashtag Trends

It is important to know what hashtags are trending on Twitter. Before you can make good use of a potential hashtag, you must know if it is a popular topic.

However, since Twitter is a giant worldwide database of hashtags, how do you know what is trending at any given time, or even if a certain keyword is of interest? Luckily, there are 3rd party websites that are aimed at providing hashtag data. Here are a few of the more popular ones.

• WhatTheTrend.com - Here you'll find data on what hashtags are trending right now on Twitter.
• Hashtags.org - This site can give you categorized list of trending hashtag topics.
• Twubs.com - This helps people connect on certain aggregated popular topics.
• Tagal.us - This resource can help define vague or other hashtag phrases.

Choose Strategic Hashtags for Your Niche Products/Services

With your hashtag intel, you have the tools to choose the trending words and phrases that work with your products. However, you should avoid using general hashtags. Consider the strategy of avoiding utilizing general and overused keywords on your website. Search engines find too many other websites with general keywords, and your search results get lost in the millions of results.

Much like an SEO website strategy, choose hashtags that are relevant to your business, but are not so general that it would be futile to try and compete against larger and more prominent tweeters.

Create Your Own Hashtags

Why not create your own hashtags? You use hashtags to build your company's reputation on Twitter and establish trends of your own. To decide on a hashtag, you must consider something that is memorable. Remember to keep it short. Phrases are usable, but only if they are short enough to include with a 140 character tweet.

With your hashtag chosen, start using it. Promote it frequently, and encourage your followers to use your hashtag and re-tweet as well. You could even encourage followers to use your hashtag to win a random contest for a gift certificate.

Respond To Your Hashtags

Don't make the mistake of starting a hashtag trend and ignoring it. Be sure you monitor your hashtag retweets and usage. Make use of the hashtag trending site mentioned above. A favorable response to others can help keep followers loyal and add new ones to your roster.

Hashtag At Conferences and Events

Keep your Twitter followers abreast of where you are right now and why it's important. For instance, if you are a small brewpub owner and are at a local ale festival in Portland, you might post frequent tweets with the hashtag #Portlandalefestival.

Or similarly, if you are at a popular conference show, you can demonstrate your presence. A popular trending event may be the #ConsumerElectronicsShow, or just #CES to fit a 140 character tweet.

The proper use of hashtags on Twitter can be beneficial to your small business. The viral aspect of hastags could even get your small business known around the world. But be sure you choose them wisely and use them sparingly.