We Have A New SBA Administrator: Senate Confirms Maria Contreras Sweet

The U.S. Senate has confirmed Maria Contreras-Sweet as new head of the Small Business Administration.

Contreras-Sweet was nominated by President Obama back in January (pictured above).  Her confirmation hearing was held before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship in February.

Today’s action makes it official.  The SBA Twitter account was one of the first to announce the news:

The nomination and voting on Contreras-Sweet was widely supported by both sides of the political aisle.  The voting was done by voice, and the entire voting session was completed in roughly three minutes in the Senate this afternoon. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash), Chair of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, brought the nomination to the Senate floor saying:

“The SBA has been without an Administrator for eight months, and it’s critical that we get this position filled today. We can’t forget that small businesses create two out of three new jobs in our country…. Every single day we need to think about small businesses in our community, and how much we need to help and support them. Everything from Chobani yogurt to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Federal Express… have all been small businesses benefiting from the SBA program and to have somebody like Maria Contreras-Sweet to be this person is critical to us.”

Contreras-Sweet was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 5.  She served as secretary of the California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency from 1999 to 2003.  She founded the Latino-owned ProAmérica Bank with family and friends in Los Angeles in 2006.

Contreras-Sweet may be coming to the helm of a Small Business Administration with somewhat reduced resources. The U.S. House Small Business Committee has recommended the agency’s requested $865 million budget be trimmed by $50 million. That money comes from entrepreneurial development programs meant to encourage innovation.  That budget has not been finally decided, however.

We Have A New SBA Administrator: Senate Confirms Maria Contreras Sweet

The U.S. Senate has confirmed Maria Contreras-Sweet as new head of the Small Business Administration.

Contreras-Sweet was nominated by President Obama back in January (pictured above).  Her confirmation hearing was held before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship in February.

Today’s action makes it official.  The SBA Twitter account was one of the first to announce the news:

The nomination and voting on Contreras-Sweet was widely supported by both sides of the political aisle.  The voting was done by voice, and the entire voting session was completed in roughly three minutes in the Senate this afternoon. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash), Chair of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, brought the nomination to the Senate floor saying:

“The SBA has been without an Administrator for eight months, and it’s critical that we get this position filled today. We can’t forget that small businesses create two out of three new jobs in our country…. Every single day we need to think about small businesses in our community, and how much we need to help and support them. Everything from Chobani yogurt to Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Federal Express… have all been small businesses benefiting from the SBA program and to have somebody like Maria Contreras-Sweet to be this person is critical to us.”

Contreras-Sweet was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 5.  She served as secretary of the California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency from 1999 to 2003.  She founded the Latino-owned ProAmérica Bank with family and friends in Los Angeles in 2006.

Contreras-Sweet may be coming to the helm of a Small Business Administration with somewhat reduced resources. The U.S. House Small Business Committee has recommended the agency’s requested $865 million budget be trimmed by $50 million. That money comes from entrepreneurial development programs meant to encourage innovation.  That budget has not been finally decided, however.

Viewpoints Differ on U.S. Postal Service Trial Balloon To Provide Financial Services

Earlier this year, the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Postal Service circulated a white paper suggesting the post office begin providing “non-bank financial services to the underserved.”

To be clear, at the moment this is only an idea. The cash-strapped post office, which lost a staggering $5 billion last year, is looking for ways to increase its revenue. The report introduces the idea of banking services as a possibility. The white paper says that 68 million adults in the US do not have a bank account, and that they would benefit from the Post Office offering banking services. What is probably tempting them is the $89 billion the USPS says that these underserved customers paid to “alternative financial services” in 2012.

The white paper (PDF) floated the idea of payday loans, check cashing and digital currency exchanges, including Bitcoin. The post office views the future as a cashless economy with digital funds. So it is also exploring the idea of prepaid cards, wire transfers, e-commerce and mobile payments.  See the image above (from the whitepaper) suggesting the range of services that would be provided.

A Range of Reactions

Predictably, bankers got riled up upon hearing the news, telling the debt-ridden USPS to stick to what they are supposed to do and not get involved in an area they know little about.  An NPR story quotes Consumer Bankers Association CEO Richard Hunt as calling the idea essentially stupid.  He says it is “the typical Washington, D.C., mentality. You’ve got an agency of the government losing money, so what do they say? ‘Well, maybe we should go to a field that we know nothing about ’cause there’s possibly money there.’ That would be like my flying a 747 because I slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night.”

Others suggested the plan would be a way to rescue the USPS from financial difficulties.  Time Magazine, for instance, says the idea could “save the Post Office from extinction.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote in an op-ed that if the USPS provided financial services it could make a difference in the lives of the poor.  The poor, she points out, tend to pay high fees.  They frequent payday lenders and check cashing services, instead of traditional banks.

Professor Lisa Savon pointed out in a different op-ed, in the Wall Street Journal, that it’s not so easy to make money on financial services. She writes, “I’m skeptical about whether the Postal Service can provide, on a large scale and at a better price, the financial products and services low- and moderate-income Americans want.”

For its part, the USPS’s Inspector General is insisting that all it wants to do is complement banks’ offerings. ”The Office of Inspector General is not suggesting that the Postal Service become a bank or openly compete with banks,” the paper’s executive summary reads. “To the contrary, we are suggesting that the Postal Service could greatly complement banks’ offerings.”

A Case of Core Competencies

What many Americans don’t realize is that this isn’t exactly a new idea. The Post Office offered banking from 1910 to 1966. Thank William Howard Taft. So in one sense this proposal is suggesting that the USPS pick up from where they left off â€" simply updating for the 21st century.

Still, nearly 50 years have passed since the Postal Service last offered financial services. In that time, financial services have gotten far more technologically complex.  For the USPS it would be like starting all over again at something brand new.

For now, talk about this proposal has died down.  But these proposals have a way of not dying, and resurfacing later.

As small business owners  - often heavy users of the USPS for mail and package delivery â€" most of us are challenged everyday with sticking to our core competencies.

For all of its status as a quasi-private enterprise, the USPS first and foremost owes the public a duty to deliver mail to all. Would you rather have a USPS that does a good job delivering mail and packages â€"  or one that faces distraction, poor operating performance issues and losses that can follow when stepping outside core competencies?

It’s something to think about.

Using Drones in Small Business: Futuristic Dream or Soon To Be Reality?

Perhaps you caught the story last week on 60 minutes on Drones Over America. Or more likely you’ve heard about the interview with Jeff Bezos of Amazon on their plans to begin using drones to deliver packages to your door. Drones are becoming a very hot, and controversial, topic.  As technology advances, this once extremely expensive tool that was used primarily by the military is now available to the everyday Joe. But with strong concerns revolving around privacy and the U.S. government’s insistence on regulating this new technology, we are left to wonder what role, if any, drones will have in small business, and if they are simply a futuristic dream or a soon to be reality.

Let’s back up a bit and give those who haven’t heard anything about drones a bit of information. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. Flight of these objects is typically controlled autonomously by onboard computers or by remote control of a user on the ground. Drones come in a variety of sizes and shapes, and while they were typically used in military and special operation applications, they are growing in use in a number of civil applications including firefighting, policing and search and rescue missions. Drone use is preferred in what industry experts refer to as ‘DDD’ situations; dull, dirty and dangerous.

Domestic drones, although relatively new, are a multi-billion dollar industry and one that is growing rapidly and creating thousands of jobs. We are seeing these devices being used in a number of creative ways by commercial businesses. While some of the examples we’ll share are purely promotional, the fact remains that they may actually be possible as the industry expands and grows. This is probably why Facebook is looking to purchase drone company Titan Aerospace for $60 million dollars to help with an initiative called Internet.org. In keeping with the initiatives goal to bring internet connectivity to the two-thirds of the world’s population that currently lacks access, solar powered drones would be stationed, like satellites, above these areas to provide an internet signal. There is an absolute value to these devices and their technology, which will only grow as the echnology does and our imaginations allow.

Here are some of the unique uses of drones in small business we discovered:

College Textbook Delivery: Australian textbook company Zookal teamed up with Flirtey, the worlds first autonomous aerial delivery company, to delivery textbooks to Australian college students. While this exercise was a bit more about promotion than practicality, due to the cost of running the drone and the capacity of existing battery life, it did display that it is not a far-fetched idea that is very possible as the technology increases in efficiency.

Pizza Delivery:  In June of 2013, a Domino’s pizza franchise in the U.K. revealed a video of their ‘DomiCopter’ - a UAV delivering piping hot pizza to your door. This project, the brainchild of Domino’s independent master franchise company in the U.K. and one not being considered in the U.S., demonstrated that food delivery such as this, although a bit promotional, would be very doable in the near future.

Fighting Autism: Taking Autism to the Sky is a Kickstarter campaign created by Paul Braun of Madison, WI. This project lets kids with autism get a new perspective of the world - from the air - by building their very own hexarotor, flying it and making a film of their journey. As listed on their Kickstarter website, “One major benefit is that this project will showcase a positive, peaceful, enlightening application of “drone” technology that is often viewed in a negative light given the military’s use of it.  The term drone conjures up negative images of surveillance, bombing and description.  This project, however, looks to humanize and personalize the technology.  To shed light on and feed the human condition.”

Drones as Tour Guides: Because many UAV’s can be programmed to follow GPS coordinates, drones can serve as the perfect tour guide, directing you to specific points in a specific area. MIT is using drone technology to give students a tour of their complex campus.

While personal use of drones in the U.S. is generally allowed, commercial use is restricted by the FAA. There are a couple of major hurdles that we’ll need to overcome before we see generalized use of drones here in the U.S. for commercial applications.  The first is the concern of privacy. While there is no doubt that we live in a surveillance society and there are cameras everywhere watching our every move, the introduction of an unknown entity, such as a drone, opens a whole new bag of issues that government regulators need to review. The second is safety and the obvious issues of flying these devices into birds, planes, personal property and people. While other countries, such as Australia and the U.K, have more open acceptance to the use of UAV’s with limited regulation, it will be some time before we see regulations allowing the commercial use of drones. As the industry grows, technology expands and more commercial uses of these devices are discovered that will allow for the savings of significnt amounts of money for businesses, regulation may well be pushed along to allow for their use.

Until that time, we’ll need to keep dreaming about the day our Amazon package drops out of the sky and onto our front doorstep just hours after ordering. And while you may think that the daily use of drones in business is a completely far-fetched Sci-Fi idea that only our great-grandchildren will ever experience, I remind you of another technology that we felt the same way about only 30 years ago: the cell phone.

Here’s to dreaming, technology and forging our way into the future!

1 in 3 businesses swerve cloud due to government snooping

March 27, 2014

A new report released today claims that the rising level of government surveillance is now driving a third of organisations away from using cloud computing.

According to Lieberman Software's report, the bulk of these `cloud defectors' are opting to store their data in local data centre resources, rather than the cloud, thanks in part to Edward Snowden's revelations on the NSA and GCHQ over the last 10 months. 

Interestingly, the Privileged Identity Management specialist says that - in its 2012 analysis on the same subject - distrust in cloud computing was even higher. And whilst trust in the cloud has risen by 15 per cent over the last year or so, the government surveillance reports in the news have caused trust levels to take a dive again. 

Philip Lieberman, the firm's president, said that when his company undertook its survey in November of 2012, 86 per cent of respondents preferred to keep their more sensitive data within their own network, rather than the cloud. 

Delving into the report reveals that the presence of automated hacking tools means that even a small number of improperly secured resources are certain to give hackers free reign on the network - and access to customers' private data - within minutes of an incursion. 

"Cloud service providers face enormous market pressures to deliver high service availability and consistent data security at an absolute minimum cost," says the report, adding that - until now - privileged accounts and other file-based secrets have proven difficult to secure within large-scale, dynamic cloud service provider networks using human intervention and first-generation software tools. 

"As a result, improperly secured privileged accounts provide an easily exploited attack surface for hackers and malicious insiders. For example, a 2012 Verizon survey of larger organisations that suffered data breaches revealed that 84 per cent of records were stolen as a result of compromised credentials," the analysis notes. 

Commenting on the report, Phil Robins, a director with fellow security vendor Encode UK, said that organisations should be less worried about the NSA and more worried about disreputable nation states - and criminal gangs - extracting data from their networks. 

"The question is: do organisations believe that their own cyber-security is superior to those deployed by cloud providers? The majority of organisations don't even know they have been attacked. In every simulated APT attack run on behalf of our clients we've never been discovered," he explained. 

Berta Papp, managing director with Tempest Security Intelligence, pointed out that it is often amazing - to her, at least - how obscure the issue of the cloud is to companies she encounters. 

The problem, she says, is that there is a general misperception as to what the cloud really is, even though the risk surface of most businesses is increasing significantly because of the influx of portable devices within organisations. 

"Everyone needs to understand that the cloud security landscape has changed," she said, adding that risk assessment is always the first step in reviewing whether a moved to a cloud resource is secure enough for a given business. 

Simon Mendoza, CTO with private cloud provider MDSL, agreed with the Lieberman Software report's observations.

"We've definitely seen a few changes in the cloud adoption model over the last few years. We started back in 2003, but have recently seen customers putting a lot more effort into the vetting of their suppliers, often asking for ISO 27001 certification from them," he said, adding that these requests were the driving force behind MDSL's decision to seek accreditation under the ISO scheme three and a half years ago.

Crowdfunding and Peer-to-Peer Lending: Financing Your Business Endeavors

As an entrepreneur or aspiring small business owner, you know that financing can often be one of your biggest challenges. If you’ve explored grants and traditional loans but find that these options don’t meet your needs, there’s still hope. Below are two other approaches to help you finance your small business endeavors.

Crowdfunding

You’ve probably heard this term before. It’s an increasingly popular way for all people - from independent movie directors to small business professionals like you - to raise funds. So how does it work?

With crowdfunding, an entrepreneur can attract a crowd of people, each of whom takes a small stake in a business idea, by contributing online toward a funding goal. In exchange for contributing to your business venture, you “reward” investors with something special. This can be a product or perk, such as a share in your business or exclusive access to events. Whatever you think may be of interest for folks contributing to your success can be offered.

Popular websites like Kickstarter and RocketHub have unique guidelines for use and associated fees, so be sure to read up to find a platform that works best for you.

TIP: Make sure to estimate costs precisely. If you meet your fundraising goal but it turns out you need more money than you originally thought, your business risks getting sued if you fail to deliver on promises in return for investments.

Peer-to-Peer Lending

Peer-to-peer-lending (P2P) is similar to crowdfunding in that you share your business idea in the hope that people will help make it become reality. Popular sites like Prosper and Lending Club connect people who want to lend money with those who need to borrow money, often in amounts as low as $25. The website acts as an online “middle man,” helping make sure you get your funds and your lenders get their payment amounts.

It’s up to you to establish the purpose of your loan request, how much you need to borrow and then post your listing online. Potential lenders explore site listings, checking out the purpose of loans and associated interest rates. As with crowdfunding, more than one person may join in funding your loan.

TIP: Your credit history matters. Usually, you’re not required to provide collateral for P2P loans, so your credit history is taken into consideration to determine if you qualify. So if you’ve had previous financial troubles, you may want to improve your credit history before applying to P2P sites.

Making your small business dream a reality can be tough, but exploring these and other ways of financing can help you find success.

Online Lending Photo via Shutterstock

How to Deal With Google Search Results Page Changes

Google is always the elephant in the room when we’re talking about the success or failure of our websites.

Any changes the behemoth makes are studied, scrutinized and discussed, ad nauseam, so I was more than a little interested when my Google search results screen looked slightly different.

At first I wondered if it was just my imagination, or some update to my browser, but after a little research I found that Google is in the process of tweaking how it displays search results and ads.

The changes have implications for your SEO habits, so let’s take a quick look at the Google search results page changes and then a little broader look at how you can make your web pages perform their best when they are displayed on Google search engine result pages (SERPs).

Google Redoes its Living Room

So far the changes Google has made are like a family moving the living room furniture around on the weekend, clearing out some of the tchotchkes on the mantle and changing the paint color on the accent wall. Here are the changes you’ll probably notice:

• Webpage titles are in a larger font size with more kerning (space between letters).
• The blue is bluer.
• Webpage titles are no longer underlined.
• The green URL under the webpage title is in a smaller font than before.

If you run ads on Google, you’ll find that they are no longer on a pale pink or yellow background. They look more like regular search results with an “Ad” label right before the green URL.

Should We Care?

While these tweaks won’t unleash an SEO tsunami like changes to the Google search algorithm such as the Penguin and Panda have in the past, they should make you more careful about how you title your pages. For a long time the rule has been to limit titles to 70 characters. However, even that rule wasn’t ideal. It couldn’t guarantee that your full title will be displayed in Google SERPs.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve found that sticking to titles that use 65 or fewer characters is much safer. However, with the new font that gives more space between letters, it’s probably a good idea to back off a couple of letters from that.

And since we’re on the subject of webpage titlesâ€"which along with the meta description make up the “snippet” that appears in SERPsâ€"let’s review some information and principles that can help you pump additional power into those potentially magic little strings of words.

First, when you title a webpage and write its description, consider what is motivating the person who you want to find your page. Is there an “action” that person is getting ready to make? This is often the case, so you want the snippet that shows up in SERPs to in some way be a “call to action.”

Words, Words, Words

In an article on QuickSprout, Neil Patel took a look at 63 Google Webmaster Tool accounts to discover the words that resulted in the highest clickthrough rates. He pulled together this “Top 10” list”:

• How to
• List-related numbers
• Free
• You
• Tips
• Blog post
• Why
• Best
• Tricks
• Great

You can see that many of these satisfy a basic human need and I want to highlight one for you before we close this out: the use of the word “you.” Whether it’s writing for the web or a direct mail piece, you’ll always get the best results when you speak directly to the person who is reading what you have written.

If you think you might have some webpage titles that are bumping up against Google’s upper limit for length, now would be a good time to review them and also look over your most important pages in light of this word list.

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.

Photo credit: By Nyshita talluri (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Dell Acquires StatSoft, Continues Push Toward Cloud and Software Services

Dell has announced acquisition of StatSoft. The company is the producer of Statistica, a suite of products and solutions used for data analysis, data management, data visualization, and data mining solutions. The move shows Dell’s ongoing push toward becoming not just a hardware company but a provider of software and cloud services.

In a prepared statement issued with the official announcement, Matt Wolken, vice president and general manager of information management for Dell Software explained:

“With the rapid explosion of data comes the opportunity for organizations to gain deep insight into their business processes in order to facilitate better decision making and maximize profitability. The acquisition of StatSoft gives Dell’s customers access to a proven advanced analytics solution that delivers the predictive and prescriptive analysis capabilities businesses need in order to make faster, more accurate decisions.

Back in December at the company’s Dell World 2013 event, Dell announced its intentions to become more than a hardware company. The latest acquisition is certainly in line with this ambition.

During the event, Dell expressed an interest in positioning itself as a one-stop shop for business IT needs, regardless of the size of that business. The company already has its own growing software business. It has partnered with or become a reseller for a variety of other software providers including Google and Microsoft.

As Small Business Trends Founder and Publisher Anita Campbell observed at the time:

“For the most part, Dell’s software and solutions target mid-market and large corporations. Although Dell has 10 million small business customers worldwide, right now the focus seems to be on serving larger entities on the one side, and startups that can inject innovative technologies and solutions on the other side.”

She added:

“Sure, Dell has plenty of tablets and computers you can buy for a small business and in that respect serves us all well, but in terms of innovative small-business offerings not much beyond that â€" or, at least, not announced at Dell World.”

It’s not yet clear what, if any, impact the acquisition of StatSoft will have on the company’s offerings to small businesses either.

Android 5.0 to support business features?

March 27, 2014

Widely reported changes to the next version of Google's Android are starting to make the operation system "look like a professional platform", say analysts.

Android newswires and forums are abuzz with reports that an alpha developer's program for Android 5.0 - code-named 'Lollipop' - has started, in preparation for a formal launch of the new version of the portable operating system this June at the Google I/O event in San Francisco. 

Of most interest to businesses, however, are the reports that Android 5.0 will be much more focused on business users - a strategy that Apple adopted with iOS v4.2.1 released in November 2010 when full multi-tasking and enhanced iPad support was added. The iPad was first released in April of that year (along with iOS 4.0), at which stage companies started buying the tablet computer in their droves. 

Android - which now supports more than a billion devices worldwide - has enjoyed some support in the business community, but the fragmented and open-source nature of the Google operating system seems to attract malware creators, which has subsequently held business adoption back. 

According to Android Police, however, Android 5.0 will include the ability remotely wipe certain storage areas, allowing for business apps and their data to be erased, but leaving the personal apps and information. There will reportedly also be a business version of the Android app store, which can be customised and locked down for business users within corporates. 

Reports also suggest that Google is working with chip and device manufacturers to make stronger data encryption and password protection at the microprocessor level, as well as moving away from the Holo Dark Theme seen with Android 4.x 

Commenting on the reports, Rob Bamforth, a principal analyst with Quocirca, the business and research analysis house, said that the adoption of business features with the new version of Android - which is expected to be seen on the new Nexus 10 tablet due out in late June - "are not before time". 

"It's starting to make Android look like a professional platform, rather than the amateur and tinkerer's aspect to the portable operating system that has seen to date," he said. 

"Samsung and few others have been going in this direction for some time, but if security features such as containerisation and sandboxing are supported in Android 5.0, then this will propel the platform firmly into the business arena," he added. 

Bamforth went onto say that the key security challenge with Android on mobile devices has been the problem of how to support both business and personal usage securely on the same device. 

"This has been Blackberry's approach for some time. Doing it on the Android platform, however, will ensure widespread industry support, rather than having one or two manufacturers going it alone," he explained. 

The Quocirca analyst told SCMagazineUK.com that the lack of a native ability to run business and personal apps securely on other platforms has been the reason why companies and their business users have hung on thus far to their BlackBerry handsets. 

This is particularly true, he said, of UK BlackBerry users, who have been given their support to the BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) platform, despite the troubles the company itself has been going through. 

"I think it's interesting to note that there has been some support in the business community for the latest Windows mobile phone platform - despite the lack of apps seen on this smartphone and tablet environment. If Google offers business features with Android 5.0, then I think you will see a lot of BlackBerry supporters start looking very seriously at the advantages that Android has to offer," he said.

6 Tactics To Drive Traffic To Your Tradeshow Booth

With the time and expense involved in attending a trade show, you want to take every step possible to get crowds to your booth. Nobody wants to be one of the lonely tradeshow displays no one stops at except to ask where someone else’s booth is. Here’s how to assure your tradeshow booth display is one of the top attractions at the event.

1. Use Social Media 

Social media is really starting to become the way to reinforce and drive traffic to your tradeshow event. 

Your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Google Plus followers are the first step to garnering attention to your booth. Generate excitement ahead of time, and use Twitter hashtags, Facebook Events, and YouTube videos to promote your booth.

During the tradeshow, keep the conversation going. Offer freebies and prizes for anyone who retweets or shares your news. Also, keep an eye out for any comments attendees make about the event or your booth. Address problems quickly so people are satisfied. If possible, set up a live newscast from the booth to let everyone know what’s going on and what’s coming next that they won’t want to miss.

You could even use proximity marketing to engage attendees in addition to your social marketing once they’re at the event. As they near your booth, messages can be sent to their smartphones containing special offers for stopping in, tempt them to play a game at your show booth or any other message you’d like to send.

After the event, keep the excitement up with follow-up posts thanking attendees and touting the success of the booth. Be sure to post lots of pictures and videos for people who missed the tradeshow.

2. Offer Things Attendees Need

People get hungry and thirsty during a tradeshow, and food or drinks can be scarce or expensive. So if you’re providing refreshments, you’ll be a popular stop. Coffee, tea, cookies, cupcakes, muffins, and bottled water are all appreciated.

Even the other vendors will be coming to see what’s going on. 

Booths with lots of visitors tend to attract more visitors, because no one wants to miss the most popular attractions.

3. Construct a Short, Interesting Presentation

Definitely craft an interesting, informative presentation, but keep it short. You don’t want people to get tired of watching and mosey on. Use graphics, video, and sound as much as possible. You can even incorporate augmented reality into your trade show display booth space.

Emotionally uplifting, funny, scary, and useful presentations are all effective, but use emotion to make it intriguing.

4. Use Floor Mats

One way to keep people around longer is to use comfortable tradeshow flooring. Tradeshows are usually held on concrete surfaces, and people get tired legs and feet. If your tradeshow booth is the most comfy to stand around in, people will stick around longer and hear your entire message, even after they’ve been on their feet for hours.

5. Provide Seating

Tradeshows are virtual deserts for a comfortable seat. While your booth may be limited in size, try to get one large enough for a few seats. This will be greatly appreciated by attendees carrying heavy bags, older visitors, and those with back or leg problems.

Also, the longer they sit, the more time they have to contemplate your sales message. Show your compassionate side by reserving special seating for expectant mothers or senior citizens.

6. Use Visual Appeal

Not everyone will hear your social media messages and advertisements on radio or TV, so make sure your tradeshow booth attracts attention from across the room. Use lots of color, attractive graphics, and some music to lure them in.

Start planning your exhibit booth at least six months before the trade show for ample time to get booths constructed, flyers printed, videos filmed, and music chosen. Last minute efforts are rarely impressive.

What tactics have you seen that have been effective in driving traffic to your tradeshow booth?

Why Businesses May Need to Learn To Tango

Move over WhatsApp and WeChat. A new revamped version of  a five year old communications app called Tango offers a combination of services.

Originally introduced in 2009, it has since evolved into a communications tool offering not only competition to other messaging apps, it also offers voice and video  conferencing services like Skype and Google Hangouts. There are features similar to social sites like Facebook and Twitter, too.

Here’s a look at how to Tango:

The company recently announced $280 million in funding from Alibaba Group, a leading Chinese eCommerce company, Re/Code reports.

A post by founders Uri Raz and Eric Setton on the official Tango blog says more than a million users registered for Tango in the first 10 days of its existence. Today there are more than 200 million users. A recent Re/Code report suggests that about 70 million of those users return on a monthly basis.

Tango is available on iPhone, Android, and tablet devices. The app is free on all platforms and works over 3G, 4G, and WiFi connections.

The importance of messaging apps for quick and inexpensive communication has been a constant topic in the news lately. For example, there was the Facebook acquisition of WhatsApp recently, with its hundreds of millions of users. Many of these apps have begun to eclipse social networks like Facebook and Twitter especially as a destination for younger users.

On the Tango blog, co-founders Raz and Setton explain:

“The sheer power of free communication has changed the way we connect with others. Today, the amount of texting from over-the-top messaging apps surpasses carrier SMS. We’re proud that Tango has become a part of this industry disruption …”

The service competes with Skype, which has taken over as an inexpensive alternative for much international calling. It offers free voice and video conferencing. Tango has offered VOIP services from the beginning and the company’s website says a group call on Tango can include up to 50 contacts.

Tango offers a social media experience by offering each user a profile. You can update your status and even share photos and video with your contacts. The social media element also allows you to connect with people you don’t know. The app gives you suggestions of possible contacts based on your mutual friendships. It also makes suggestions based on your current contacts list on your mobile device.