TradeShowsVegas.com

   1. The more words you put on your trade show display, the fewer times they will be read.

  2. The larger the crowd of people already in your booth, the more other people will want to visit your booth.

  3. The person who complains the most about the value of trade shows is usually the one who knows (and tries) the least.

  4. The more fun trade show attendees have in your booth during the show, the more serious business you will do after the show.

  5. The effort each booth staffer puts forth increases as the distance between them and their boss decreases.

  6. Your best booth staffers are usually the ones who talk the least and listen the most.

  7. The longer a booth staffer stretches out their break, the fewer leads they will take when they are actually staffing the booth.

  8. The colors of your trade show display will likely be determined by: 1. your brand colors, or 2. the latest design trends
3. your company president’s spouse.

  9. The length of time to design your exhibit expands exponentially with the number of decision makers involved.

  10. The greater the distance a visitor has traveled to attend a trade show, the higher the level of hospitality you should provide.

 11. The more years you exhibit at the same show, the more you will have repeat customers visit you in your booth.

  12. The more the trade show leads holder looks like a trash can, the more likely your booth captain will end up screaming
.
  13. The bigger the main visual image on your trade show exhibit, the clearer people will understand your message.

  14. The older your trade show display, the less innovative your booth visitors will perceive your company.

  15. The faster you follow up your trade show leads, the greater the sales you will generate from that show.

Do you like Twitter?

I sure do, along with almost 200 million people. And while I like Twitter, this post will ease the learning curve for newcomers to Twitter, and especially new members to the Event Profs community.

There are great reasons to engage with Twitter. In conversations with trade show exhibitors and my company’s Exhibiting Consultants, I extol Twitter’s benefits:

  * Relationships: Twitter may have started as a way to follow people you know, but it’s blossomed into a great way to start and deepen true relationships with some of the most interesting people you’ve never met before.
  * News: Twitter is a non-stop headline machine. It’s an endless flow from news sources you didn’t know existed. News that is specific to your industry, expertise, and hobbies.
  * Learning: People on Twitter share links to many how-to articles and blogs that sharpen your skills and widen your knowledge.
  * Business: As you deepen relationships on Twitter and publish content that brings visitors to your website, the sales will come.
  * Fun: On Twitter you can find interesting people, new ideas, and even a great community. It’s great fun to participate in all three at once.

Yet even when people hear these advantages to being on Twitter, they still resist. These are the 3 objections I hear the most:

  1. “I don’t understand Twitter.”
  2. “I don’t know how to get started on Twitter.”
  3. “I don’t have the time for Twitter.”

Let’s look at these three reasons for not getting on Twitter, and how to overcome them.

1. “I don’t understand Twitter.”

Unlike other social media sites, when people first visit Twitter they are bewildered. I believe that’s because, in order to keep messages within 140 characters, there is so much shorthand going on that newbies don’t understand. And I’m not talking about texting abbreviations, like “How R U?” or “LMAO!” Twitter has shortcuts users have developed to get more said in fewer characters:

@name: The @ sign has been very elegantly used for email. In Twitter, it’s called the Twitter handle, and is similar to an email address. My Twitter handle is @SkylineExhibits as that’s the company I work for. Many Twitter handles are odd looking because users have shortened their name to fit in the 20-character limit, or because their name was already taken they had to invent a new one.

Also, Twitter is like email, except everyone can read it. For some that’s a big shift, that they would actually hold conversations in public. It’s hard to grasp that people can operate that way.

Also, the @name confuses new Twitter visitors because not only do you have to know that it’s someone’s handle, but that the @name gets used in several different contexts. Here are some examples:

Replies to an unseen earlier message: Rather than type out a longer reply, people just give a short reply, much like they would in email. But when you don’t see the previous message, you see something like this that makes no sense:

Tweets that are short repliesMultiple people referenced: Like email, you can send messages to more than one person at a time. If you don’t know what’s going on, it can look like just nonsense:

Tweets to multiple=Mention someone without writing directly to them: Here @3deventplanning mentioned Skyline in their tweet by including @SkylineExhibits. But they weren’t sending me a message; they were just referring to the company Skyline.

Tweets that mention you indirectly

Retweets or RTs: When people want to forward a tweet they like from someone they follow, they either type RT and the @name of the person whose tweet they are forwarding somewhere in their message, or use the RT function of whatever interface they are using. So instead of writing “I am forwarding this tweet from @tracibrowne to you my Twitter followers” you see the much shorter “RT @tracibrowne.”

Shortened URLs: As you probably know, a URL is the “address” of a web page. An average URL length leaves little room for a message, and some URLs are so long they wouldn’t even fit in within the 140-character Twitter limit. So most Twitter users shorten the length of the URLs they share by using free websites like http://bit.ly or http://ow.ly. For example, bit.ly shrinks this URL from 133 characters: http://www.skylinetradeshowtips.com/6-things-to-say-when-your-boss-asks-%e2%80%9cwhy-are-we-spending-so-much-on-trade-shows%e2%80%9d/ down to only 20: http://bit.ly/a6ZLdo.

However, when a person first views Twitter, it’s highly unlikely they know about URL shorteners. So they see something like this: http://bit.ly/cE5E3w and have no idea it’s a link to a webpage (no .com ending) and plus it’s in blue text while the message is in black. That’s highly confusing at first.

#Hashtags: Hashtags let Twitter users include in their tweets a shortcut that tells readers their tweet is about that subject. For example, if I want people to know that I am directing my tweets at people who are attending or interested in a trade show, such as Blogworld, I can include that show’s hashtag, which was #bwe10. When online, the hashtag then becomes a live link (again, with blue text). Users can click on the hashtag and get updated to a continuously-updating Twitter page with all the recent tweets about that subject.

And it does shorten the tweet. Instead of including “this message is for attendees or exhibitors going to Blogworld 2010” I just say #bwe10. So 67 characters becomes only 6. But to a newcomer to Twitter, it’s just gibberish.

Also, some Twitter users include hashtags to make a tongue-in-cheek joke or statement, ending their tweet with phrases such as #thatisall or #imjustsaying. Once you’ve seen enough of these, it’s no big deal. But to a newbie, it’s another incomprehensible aspect to be deciphered.

So based on the points above, let’s look at a single tweet and “translate it” to the longer text it represents:

The text is written in these 135 characters:

RT @ moonlightbasin: Booths at the 2011 @ siasnowsports show are already sold out. Highest attendance in 6 years?http://ow.ly/3brkK #snow

But it really means, and what a more experienced Twitter reader understands, can be translated as these 364 characters:

I am sharing this previously tweeted message from Moonlight Basin (of Big Sky, Montana): Booths at the 2011 SIA Snow Sports Show (whose Twitter handle is @ siasnowsports) are already sold out. Highest attendance in 6 years? Click on the hyperlink to read the story at http://www.tsnn.com/blog/?p=4525 and click on the blue #snow to see all recent tweets about snow.

That’s the first big hurdle; just understanding what is being tweeted. Once people understand the lingo, they get caught up on the next big hurdle, how to get started.

2. “I don’t know how to get started on Twitter.”

When people say they don’t know how to get started on Twitter, they actually have two problems: They don’t know who to follow, and they don’t know what to say. So let’s tackle both of them:

“I don’t know who to follow on Twitter.”

Twitter makes it easy to follow celebrities on Twitter, yet that’s not going to help you find people you can truly network with or drive future business. (But it will be fun, and funny, especially if you follow Conan O’Brien, whose Twitter handle is @ConanOBrien.)

What Twitter has (but made hard to find) is an advanced search that lets you sift through the 190 million Twitter users like a database to more precisely find people who care about what you care about. To lean more and find everything else you should know go to:
 
http://www.skylinetradeshowtips.com