I too must miss out on this one due to a scheduling conflict that popped up. Hope for another session in the future.

Excited about this event. Within my business, I need to write often and it just makes sense to learn how to create better documents.

Lindsay, I would say that you are correct and on topic about the "initial" message not being about you-the business owner. However, I would caution those who are reading articles like this to not run away screaming in the direction of taking yourself out of the marketing.

I agree with crafting the message to solve a specific problem. However I feel that a customer is next going to evaluate whether or not they want to do business with "you". That is where you want to have some place on your site that expresses who you are and a bit about why you are unique, talented and able to service the customer in the best possible way.

When searching for a provider for a solution I want to see 2 things.

1. Can you solve my problem?

2. Can you demonstrate or educate me as to why or how you have the skills, background, experience or education to solve the problem?

Personally, I am a bit cautious about the "great sales copy" telling me how they are going to solve my problem without knowing if they have the stuff to back it up.

I have seen a number of articles and discussions about this lately and just wanted to chime in as a warning not to void your site of "about you" and some mild "tooting of one's horn" is a good thing.

Kaya and Judy,

I really enjoyed reading this discussion progression about blogs. For some time now, I have been mystified by the correlation of traffic vs the visitors action. While great at SEO'ing traffic to various sites, I am always frustrated by the lack of "action" by the readers.

The 90/9/1 idea makes sense and it does shoe up very closely in my reporting.

It makes sense to comment on similar subject blogs to gain exposure from people who are interested in that topic.

Tweetdeck is the winner hands down in my opinion. I believe that platform that they use has more scalable opportunities. One of which I hope will be a filter so that I can filter a few people at certain times.

For example those who use #idol chat or #followfriday ect. Those gum up the feed like nothing else.

The new date works much better for me so you can count me in.

Nice breakdown of information Taylor. As a bit of a veteran in the social networking arena I wanted to add a few words of caution, a resource and a few additional hints.

When social bookmarking your own blogs or works, be very careful as to not over do it and never all at once. What I mean is don't post a blog on your own site and then run to 5 or 6 or 10 bookmarking sites to bookmark. If your bookmarking becomes too spammy and or only for your own sites, accounts get suspended or your content refused.

If you want a list of many of the bookmarking sites, you can visit www.socialmarker.com I don't recommend using their tool for the above mentioned reasons, but it lists and links most of the worthwhile sites.

Add buttons or script at the bottom of your articles that will allow your users to easily Digg, Stumble, Furl, Propeller, Fark, Tweet ect. There are a number of clever html scripts that can be added to the blogs and they feature multiple services.

In your postings, encourage the readership to socially bookmark for you. Such as "If you enjoyed this article, I would really dig it if you would Digg (insert html) submit my article."

Final tip would be to have a small network of friends who will socially bookmark your work. I utilize a few close online friends that at times do this for me. I send a link to the article and ask them to Digg, or Fark, Furl Spurl ect. It works out and gets the ball rolling for you.

Sumesh,

Many different ideas come to mind but the success potential comes down to the type of service or product you are providing.

If you could share a bit more about what you are promoting, I am sure the community could better help.

Some of the basics however are to make sure you have good space in your booth area to allow people to step out of the "traffic" and not feel rushed.

You might also consider staffing your space with members of both sexes. Some people are comfortable talking with members of their own sex ect.

Make sure your booth easily conveys what you do and why you are there. We always either create or mock up our booth layout and solicit unbiased opinions about what they see and what message they get and tweak as needed.

Sometimes a random and unique item placed prominently in the booth with your logo or slogan on it gets the browsers to give you a second look.

Rehearse your "elevator pitch". That 30 to 45 second summary pitch of what your business does or can do for the customer. Finely tune that into a few variation that you can use during the trade show. Sometimes that brief into will catch the person you are talking to or someone within hearing range.

Hello All,

This is a great discussion and I am really enjoying my time on biznik since joining.

I am Marc, the 30ish geek that Kaya referred to in the article. One of the points I would like to make on the topic is that a Web 2.0 internet marketing philosophy is one part of an overall marketing plan. Not all tools and concepts apply across the board and into everyone's business model.

Where many of the social networking applications come into value is in creating communities like this and methods to share, collaborate and communicate information. Working with twitter is a nice tool. There are hundreds of twitter apps and clients out there and if your twitter network consists of your true customer, then you efforts are directly seen by those who benefit most and in very close to real time.

Where many of us who get to work with our customers face to face to create relationships, facebook, twitter, friendfeed, squidoo and the myriad of other applications allow us to create and develop relationships with current and potential customers we can not meet face to face.