The Promo Direct Blog

Starting this October, Promo Direct will keep bringing updates to you about the most prominent tradeshows in your state. With these updates you can now plan where you want to showcase your product or service. You can plan the event, get promotional products planned out, the booth décor, and get your sales team in place. We’ll frequently update you with events all over the U.S., well in advance. All you need to do is to find the tradeshow that is most appropriate to your business and take it from there!

Your business would really stand out with a quality promotional giveaway at the tradeshow. You could choose to go with low-cost promotional items such as promotional pens or key tags; however, to really make a lasting impression your promotional gifts need to be unique, such as promotional calendars, desktop items like pen holders, clocks, book lights, notepads, and notebooks, USB flash drives, or even promotional bags and totes. Choose the one that would be most appropriate to your business interest and you’re all set to increase leads, grow your customer base, and increase sales.

Tradeshows in California

Latin Expo San Jose

Date: 02-NOV-11 to 02-NOV-11

Venue: TBA, San Jose, California, United States Of America

This is a leading exhibition in the education and training industry in California. It’s a great venue for academicians and training professionals to come together and display latest trends, educational programs, and build networks.

Furniture & Accessory Market-Long Beach
Date: 02-NOV-11 to 03-NOV-11

Venue: Long Beach Convention Center, Long Beach, California, United States Of America

Furniture and Accessory Market Long Beach is undoubtedly an event where a large number of furniture dealers and home furnishing companies display furniture as well as other home furnishings. The event travels to a number of states of the U.S. including Texas, California and New Jersey. Manufacturers, architects and designers gather at this fair to get ideas for modern and interesting designs in furniture and furnishings.

Createaspheres Entertainment Technology Expo
Date: 02-NOV-11 to 03-NOV-11

Venue: Marriott Burbank Airport & Convention Center, Burbank, California, United States Of America

This two-day event has been marked as a high profile international exhibition that brings together both educational enterprise and technical businesses. The Expo will showcase the advancements in visual and 3D technology in cinematography.

The Open Mobile Summit & Expo
Date: 02-NOV-11 to 04-NOV-11

Venue: San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel, San Francisco, California, United States Of America

Taking wireless communications to greater heights is the prime focus of this Expo. Regarded as the “largest, most comprehensive show in the wireless industry and the premier venue to exchange ideas, create partnerships and collaborate.”

American Film Market
Date: 02-NOV-11 to 09-NOV-11

Venue: Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, Los Angeles, California, United States Of America

American Film Market is forecasted to be one of the most highly visited expos of the region. Lasting over eight days, this will host seminars on different technologies and advances in the field of movie making. Making, screening of motion pictures and the entertainment factor overall will be the highlights of the expo.

To view a large variety of promotional products for your business promotion and to enjoy low price and discounts    visit our website at www.promodirect.com

The first principle of marketing is that you market what you believe in and what you use yourself. Michael DeGusta recently did an analysis of Google+ and how frequently the senior management at Google uses it. The statistics are shocking because no one would expect the web giant to be so presumptuous about its own offering.

Let’s start right at the top of the hierarchy. Whereas Zuckerberg spends all day on Facebook and Twitter CEO tweets up to even 30 times a day, stats show that since the launch of Google+ in June 2011, Google CEO, Larry Page, has only put up 7 public posts till now.

Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt can’t even claim to that number–he has never posted at all! Several board members have never posted at all either. So much for being leaders!

Of the 6 SVPs, 4 have not posted since August and between them they have only 9 posts in all!

Out of the 18 senior most people who oversee Google, 11 haven’t even joined or have never posted even once, while 5 have hardly used Google+ at all.

With such statistics, one wonders—if Google management does not like or use its own product, should we?! The product simply did not look convincing enough right from the start…a quasi-Facebook attempt, and though it had some features which gave us some hope that Facebook might finally have something to contend with, people just weren’t convinced enough about Google+. Now that we know Google’s top management isn’t either, we know we were right all along!

Facebook is out to give Google Plus a run for its money….once more!! An overhaul of user profiles is in the offing which is beyond anything Facebook has done so far.

What is going to go–

–The single column wall post display will go for good!

–No more divided panels of Facebook profile pages

–No more scratching your head over how to view what a friend was doing a few years ago, what he/she looked like, etc.

What you will see–

–A lineup of tiles that exhibit status updates, photos, links, videos, etc., in a dual column arrangement

–A wide open space at the top of your profile where you can post your favorite image—it’s all about you!

Tunnel into history–

–Browsing posts and updates from anything more than a few months ago is tedious and near impossible on the current Facebook chronological structure

–A virtual timeline on your profile allows anyone clicking on it to go back to any year and view updates or content

Dynamic history–

–FB timeline will allow you to insert events, pictures, etc., for events you missed in the past but wanted to share

Apps galore—

–On viewing your timeline profile, friends can look at a set of new apps through which they get to know which movies you go to, which songs you love, or even your favorite activities

Works great on mobile as well as on desktop–

–It adapts well to mobile devices and their respective screen sizes and looks just as good as on desktops.

Access coming soon for all–

–Right now developers can get access by signing up. However, Facebook is going to launch it for the common user over the next weeks too!

Twitter has come to the rescue of website owners, social media marketers, news organizations, and the like, who want to keep track of how much referral traffic they get from Twitter with the announcement of a new Web Analytics tool, last week.

This tool is currently free and is in beta. It will help website owners determine three basic sets of information:

1.)    How much of their website content is being shared across Twitter

2.)    How much traffic comes from Twitter to their site

3.)    Gauge effectiveness of their Tweet Buttons.

The tool will initially be accessible to a select group of partners and go on to be available to all website owners in just a few weeks, reported Poynter’s Jeff Sonderman.

Twitter has over a 100 million users most of whom “tweet” on Twitter with the aim of increasing traffic to their websites, blogs, etc. Right now there are only a few options available for websites to analyze their Twitter-driven traffic, and what is available is not only pricey but seldom effective or reliable. Third party products like bit.ly enterprise, Radian6, etc., disappoint at best! So this new tool from Twitter comes as some respite for all!

Google has acquired Zagat! Called “The Gastronomic Bible” by Wall Street Journal, Zagat has come to become the loved brand of consumer survey-based reviews and information on where to eat, drink, dance, and stay anywhere locally or across the world.

Google is excited about the acquisition. Says Marissa Mayer of Google, “I’m thrilled that Google has acquired Zagat. Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering…enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world. With Zagat, we gain a world-class team that has more experience in consumer-based surveys, recommendations, and reviews than anyone else in the industry.”

The benefits to Google are clear, but there are lessons to be learnt for businesses from this.

Going Local:

Google is now increasingly giving importance to local searches than ever before. Research shows that 30% of all searches contain a city, state or zip code and the statistic of 2.6 billion local searches online per month shows that Google local search has almost completely wiped out Yellow Pages from people’s minds.

Every business is looking to increase leads and sales and generating targeted traffic to your website is of the essence. So going local is the key. Business owners everywhere must work on optimizing their site for local searches in order to reach the consumers that matter the most!

 

Reviews & Feedback From Consumers For Consumers:

Zagat believes “…that the shared opinions of thousands of avid consumers with real experiences are inherently more accurate than the opinions of just one or two critics.” Stats show 90% of online consumers trust peer recommendations while 70% rely on views and opinions of unknown users. Moreover, by getting feedback, reviews, and recommendations businesses get increased visibility online. Learning from Zagat’s example getting user-reviews is of paramount importance for online businesses.