Live from eComXpo!
Wow… I tell ya when I first heard of this online trade show I figured it would be a walk in the park. Just sit at the computer doing what I normally do, wait for people to chat with me.
Oh how wrong I was. You have to hustle. Engage people who visit your booth. As THEM if they have questions, and offer up your services. This is no passive-aggressive event. This is as real as any other trade show… without the stuffy clothes and sore feet. The trade off for the sore feet however is dried out eyes. And the peeking sensation that a headache might be coming on.
Otherwise it’s a great show! Seriously there are a lot of great vendors and I’ve already made some promising connections, so you still have two days to check out the show. And come on, it’s free, and you don’t have to travel anywhere so really there’s no excuse!
Go Now!
Read MoreCalifornia Association of Realtors Expo THIS WEEK!
Realtors® in California, come on down! You’re the next contestant on Name That Expo! Yes, it’s finally here.. the California Association of Realtors® Expo starts tomorrow at the Anaheim City Convention Center in lovely Anaheim, CA. Weather.com predicts highs between 75°F and 78°F for the three day convention, two of which I’ll be in attendance.
From the CAR.org website: CALIFORNIA REALTOR® EXPO 2007, the state’s largest real estate trade show, draws thousands of California’s key franchise execs, top producers, and movers and shakers every year for educational, networking and professional development opportunities.In addition, hundreds of top industry vendors
(like PsPrint) and service providers showcase their latest products and information in the Exhibit Hall. And, a special pre-EXPO event, Tech Tuesday, features a full day of comprehensive training geared toward assisting today’s REALTOR® to stay on the cutting edge of real estate technology.
This should be a good event. I’ll be up here in Oakland staffing our virtual booth for eComXpo tomorrow, then jetting down tomorrow night to relieve our senior marketing director of booth duties and taking over Wednesday and Thursday. Not a lot of seminars this time around that I’m overly interested in, but I will be attending a seminar called Brand Yourself: Podcasting, Vodcasting and Vidmail and another later that same day called Feng Shui: Top Secrets (okay… admittedly that one is just for my own personal enlightenment). Most of my time will be spent schmoozing in our booth. I’d tell you the booth number so you could stop by and say Hi, but then I’d have to kill you.
Okay, I really can’t remember it and there’s nothing on CAR’s website that has a map of exhibitors or anything. That being said, seek us out! A little birdie told me that prizes in the genre of gift cards, booze, and the Apple (and not the fruit) variety may grace our booth so we’ll make it worth your time.
Pulling double duty on trade shows this week, I’ll be taking the laptop with me and blogging with a recap of the show as well. Wish me luck!
BlogWorld – Las Vegas – Worth Going?
I’ve picked up that there will be a conference in LV next month just for bloggers, but I’m wondering if it would be worth it for a starting pro blogger like me to go.
If I do go, that makes the tally 4 times in 6 months going to Las Vegas. Three of which for work and one was my vacation this year. Had I known about all the conventions and such I’d be attending there for work, I think my friend and I might have decided on another destination for our vacation.
I digress… BlogWorld Expo seems like it would be an incredibly beneficial event for me to attend. Lots of great networking opportunities and a TON of useful information for me to get things off the ground here at PsPrint with our Social Media Marketing project that we want to get started on. I’d love to go, but realistic obstacles prevent me!
- It’s not local so it requires a plane ride and hotel.
- Being at the end of the year we probably don’t have the money in the budget.
- We’re already going to Las Vegas in November a week or so afterward for the National Association of REALTORS® Conference and Expo.
- Aside from my modest attempts here and another coworkers blog on ActiveRain, we haven’t officially launched a company blog yet.
So what to do? I’d hate to pass up such an awesome learning opportunity, but unfortunately I don’t have the money to go on my own… I’d have to ask the company to foot it. The price of attendance isn’t all that bad in comparison to other shows I’ve seen attendee pricing for, but it’d be the airfare and hotel that would be the major cost.
I’d love to hear from some people who’ve gone in the past to see if they enjoyed it or not. Maybe enjoyed isn’t the correct term since, well, how could you NOT enjoy yourself in Las Vegas? So, did you find it as beneficial as it seems and is there a great case to be made for going?
Read MoreeComXpo is NEXT WEEK!
PsPrint is a featured exhibitor at eComXpo, the virtual tradeshow for eCommerce marketers. We will be featuring in our booth our great products, amazing variety of services, and of course our affiliate program.
eComXpo will feature more than 100 exhibitors including Google, Double Click Performics, Digital River, Microsoft adCenter, LinkShare, ad:tech and more.
If you stop by on day 1 between 10am and 6pm PST you can even chat with ME! And come by for the freebies too… register to win a $200 Visa Gift Card just in time for the holidays!
When?
– October 9-11, 2007
Where?
– Online at www.ecomxpo.com from the comfort of your home or office PC
Why should you attend?
– Hear from top industry experts at keynote, feature and panel presentations followed by live Q&A on topics of interest to affiliate, search, and interactive marketing professionals.
-Network with thousands of your peers .
-See the latest offerings from hundreds of exhibitors on two show floors.
-Win great prizes such as iPods, flat-screen TVs, vacations, and more.
-Enjoy all the benefits of a top trade show for FREE, without leaving your home or office!
Click here to learn more or register.
Take a video tour online here.
Read MoreOne Fish, Two Fish…
Brickfish! This is a nifty little website that Anne stumbled upon. They describe it better than I can, so here’s their spiel:
- Create content for your favorite brands and bands.
- Win exciting rewards for reviewing, voting and sharing content across the web.
- Earn rewards like the chance to meet your favorite bands, clothes, scholarships and even cold, hard cash.
The best incentive to participate in viral marketing I’ve seen in some time. We’re kicking around a campaign to launch on Brickfish, and it might be ready as early as Monday! Stay tuned for more details next week!
In other news to wrap up the week, I’ve booked my flight to John Wayne Airport in Orange County for the California Associations of Realtor’s Expo next month. I’ll miss the first day of the show, but will be there staffing our booth October 10th and 11th. I figure while I’m down there I’ll see some friends in the area and enjoy a slight change of pace from Nor Cal life. The day before the show I’ll be staffing our online booth at eComXpo from the comforts of my office here in Oakland. So two shows in three days… that should be an interesting week to say the least!
Trade shows seem to be going well, customer acquisition is doing okay but could be better, and the affiliate program is pretty stagnant. We had a two and a half hour metrics meeting this morning, only half of which focused on the affiliate program, which I felt like a moron during. I guess I’ve been more focused on the quantity of affiliates than the quality, so that ends now.
We want to help our affiliates to be better affiliates. We’re also considering some BIG changes to the structure of payments, but I’m not at liberty to announce them yet. We’re going to start looking more at our affiliates individually and see what they’re doing and what is working. Hopefully this helps everyone. Me, because I won’t look like a goober when asked questions and I’ll have the answers, the affiliate, because they’ll be making money, and the other affiliates, because they can learn from the big money makers.
That makes sense, right?
Read MoreAvoiding Former CoWorkers in San Jose
Sometimes it’s pleasant to see an old coworker… other times, it’s best to avoid them. Which is what I did at Search Engine Strategies last week in San Jose. I’m not necessarily proud of what I did, but I successfully avoided what could have been a rather awkward situation, so it worked out for the best.
I spent the majority of the day in the Social Media track of the conference, learning more about the inner workings of Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us, and Wikipedia than I ever thought I wanted to know. Of course, one of the first things I did when getting back to the office was apply some of this and set up a Digg profile and a Technorati profile and an account on Del.icio.us. Since PsPrint doesn’t sell it’s content, I don’t really see Wikipedia as being that huge of an opportunity for us. But the others… well I’m shocked I wasn’t on them personally for awhile.
Now, my roots in social media lie in the likes of MySpace, message boards, and chat rooms. I’m not the seasoned internet user you’ll hear speaking at trade shows that’s been online since 1997… but that’s mostly because back in ’97 I was still writing history essays and doing math homework in High School. I’ve been online since about the time I got to college, Fall of 1999. Going away to college and having to make all new friends, I immediately found chat rooms as a place to connect with like minded people. A friend introduced me to Live Journal back in ’03 and I’ve been blogging ever since. When MySpace came around big time in ’05 I jumped on that bandwagon and haven’t looked back.
Has it really been 2 years on MySpace? How time flies. But, I digress. SES was a great show for me to attend. Very informative, and my favorite part was how organized all the panelists were. Everyone had a neat & tidy Power Point presentation that will be available online this week, so I barely had to take any notes. I’ve also decided that the next time I go to one of these shows and attend the educational panels I’m going to be bringing a laptop. Since there was really no need for me to take many notes, it would have been great to be able to surf the websites that the panelists talked about while they were talking about them. I’m all about multi-tasking, so getting some work done while learning is my ideal.
This is becoming an exciting time for me. Learning more and more about the field I’m working in and exploring social media marketing is really exciting me to be moving onward here at PsPrint.
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