Social Networking: the Five Biggest Mistakes Nichepreneurs™ Make
Over half of all Americans between the ages of 15-34 consider themselves active social network users. They regularly visit well-known social networking sites, such as MySpace or Facebook, or log onto specialty social networks, like Ravelry (devoted to the fiber arts) or GroupRecipes (for the foodie set). While industry research tells us that television watching is declining, especially among this age group, social network use is on the rise: average users spend seven to eight hours a week online.
This time spent on social networks clearly affects buying decisions. An estimated forty percent of all social networkers say they use social networking sites to learn more about brands or products they like, according to GreenBiz.com, with twenty-eight percent saying they’ve had a brand or product recommended to them by a friend.
The message is clear. Strategic use of social networking can help a company grow. It’s an effective use of target marketing, reaching out to one’s customers where they are.
However, in order to capitalize on social networking’s power, you have to do it right. Execution is everything. Make no mistake. Every time you log onto Facebook, MySpace, or other social networking platform, you’re representing your company in a very visible arena. The world is, quite literally, watching.
There are five common mistakes Nichepreneurs™ make when it comes to social networking. Here’s what they are — and more importantly, how to avoid them!
Mistake #1: Dismissing Social Networking as “Just a Fad”
Social networking may have emerged as a phenomenon only recently, but it is a manifestation of something as old as time — word of mouth! Customers value the opinions of colleagues, relatives, peers and friends above almost anything else. This has been true for generations. Social networking has merely expanded the definition of friend. Technology has made it easier to communicate with more people than ever before — a person could have hundreds of friends they’ve never once met in person. That’s a power and a privilege that no one is going to let just fade away.
Mistake #2: Mistaking Social Networking for Advertising
Social networking is a form of relationship marketing. It works best when you view it as an opportunity to build your brand, a prime platform to let your customer base know who you are and what you represent.
At the same time, you’ve got a fantastic chance to learn about your customers. If you actually stop and read what they post, you’ll learn a tremendous amount about who your customers are and what’s important to them. Where else do you get your customer’s pure, unvarnished opinions served up to you on a silver platter?
Don’t spoil this prime market research opportunity with unwelcome advertising. It’s fine to let people know you’re in business, but that can’t be the only thing you bring to the conversation.
Mistake #3: Failing to Connect Online Interaction with Real World Consequences
This mistake is often a generational problem. Nichepreneurs who grew up before the Internet was such an omnipresent force can have a hard time understanding how words on a computer screen can have real consequences on the every day course of business.
Compounding the problem is the fun, freewheeling atmosphere prevalent on many social networking platforms. It’s easy to forget the potential results when the commentary’s flying fast and furious. However, your words can come back and haunt you later. Remember — it all counts! The days where an organization can dismiss poor behavior with “It’s just the internet” are long gone!
Mistake #4: Using Sock Puppets
Sock puppets is the term applied to social networking accounts that are created with the intent of hiding the poster’s true identity. Individuals often create sock puppets in an effort to avoid the real life consequences discussed in mistake number three!
Sock puppets can be used to boost, support, or defend a company’s position. Conversely, they can be used to tear down, disparage, or make negative commentary about a competitor’s organization, products, or services.
Either way, it is a bad idea! Many denizens of social networks are incredibly tech-savvy, and it won’t take them long at all to discover who is really behind a string of negative or hostile commentary. Exposure can be a public relations nightmare.
Honesty is the best policy. Either be willing to own your commentary, by posting under your own identity, or don’t say them at all!
Mistake #5: Overestimating Social Networking’s Role
Social networking is powerful. It is influential. It is, in many cases, free to participate in. However, it is NOT the end all, be all solution to your marketing needs. While it is tempting to try to solve many of your marketing challenges with social networking, it is important to remember that social networking is a tool, not the only tool.
Use social networking efforts to augment your existing marketing efforts. There are small, start up companies that market themselves solely via social networking. However, this is a self-limiting strategy: even if you reach every single person on that network, you’re still missing out on a large number of potential customers who never log on.
Keep your perspective. Social networking might not eat into your budget, but it does take time. Realize that at best, social networking can significantly augment and enhance your marketing and promotional efforts — but it will never wholly replace it!
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/networking-articles/social-networking-the-five-biggest-mistakes-nichepreneurs-make-536883.html
About the Author
Written by Susan A. Friedmann,CSP, TheNichePreneur™ Coach, Lake Placid, NY, internationally recognized niche marketing expert working with service professionals and small business owners to increase their target marketing potential.
Author: “Riches in Niches: How to Make it BIG in a small Market”
and “Meeting & Event Planning for Dummies.”
Claim your free copy of the special report, “The NichePreneneur™ Mindset” at
www.richesinniches.com
General Gordon of Khartoum – A British Icon
At school in 1960′s England one of the heroic failures from British history was General Gordon who was murdered and decapitated by the Sudenese natives on 26th January 1885. Major-General Charles George Gordon, CB (28th January 1833 – 26th January 1885), known as Chinese Gordon, Gordon Pasha, and Gordon of Khartoum, was a British Army Officer, of the Corps of Royal Engineers and an excellent administrator. He is remembered for his campaigns in China and his death in northern Africa.
Gordon was born in Woolwich, London, a son of Major-General Henry William Gordon (1786–1865) and Elizabeth (Enderby) Gordon (1792–1873). He was educated at Fullands School, Taunton, Somerset and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He was commissioned in 1852 as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers and completed his training at Chatham. In 1854 he was promoted to full Lieutenant.
From: Eva March Tappan, ed., The World’s Story: A History of the World in Story, Song and Art,1914.
“In I882 there arose in the Soudan, a province of Upper Egypt, one Mohammed Ahmed, who called himself the Mahdi or Messiah, and invited all true believers to join in a holy war against the Christians. Thousands of wild tribesmen flocked to his banner, and in the following year he annihilated an army of eleven thousand English and Egyptians that had attempted to subdue the revolt. Rather than send more soldiers to die in the deserts of the Upper Nile, England decided to abandon the province. But first the thousands of Europeans who had taken refuge in Khartoum and other towns of the Soudan must be rescued from their perilous position. In this crisis the Government turned to the one man who could effect the withdrawal if it was still possible, and in January, 1884, appointed General Gordon to superintend the evacuation of the Soudan.
GENERAL GORDON arrived at Khartoum on February 18th, and spent his time between that date and the investment on March 12, in sending down women and children, two thousand of whom were sent safely through to Egypt, in addition to six hundred soldiers. It was stated by Sir Evelyn Baring (English consul-general to Egypt) that there were fifteen thousand persons in Khartoum who ought to be brought back to Egypt—Europeans, civil servants, widows and orphans, and a garrison of one thousand men, one third of whom were disaffected. To get these people out of Khartoum was General Gordon’s first duty, and the first condition of evacuation was the establishment of a stable government in the Soudan. The only man who could establish that government was Zebehr. Gordon demanded Zebehr with ever-increasing emphasis, and his request was decisively refused. He had then two alternatives—either to surrender absolutely to the Mahdi, or to hold on to Khartoum at all hazards. While Gordon was strengthening his position the Mahdi settled the question by suddenly assuming the offensive. The first step in this memorable siege was the daring march of four thousand Arabs to the Nile, by which, on March 12, they cut off the eight hundred men at Halfaya, a village
to the north of Khartoum, from the city. A steamer was sent down to reconnoiter, and the moment she reached the front of the Arab position a volley was fired into her, wounding an officer and a soldier. The steamer returned the fire, killing five.
Thus hostilities began. “Our only justification for assuming the offensive,” wrote General Gordon on March 13, “is the extrication of the Halfaya garrison.” The Arabs, however, did not give him the chance. They cut off three companies of his troops who had gone out to cut wood, capturing eight of their boats, and killing or dispersing one hundred to one hundred and fifty men. They intrenched themselves along the Nile, and kept up a heavy rifle-fire. Retreat for the garrison was obviously impossible when the Arab force covered the river, the only line of retreat, with their fire. Twelve hundred men rere put on board two grain-barges, towed by three steamers defended with boiler plates, and carrying mountain-guns protected by wooden mantlets; and, with the loss of only two killed, they succeeded in extricating the five hundred men left of the garrison of Halfaya, and capturing seventy camels and eighteen horses, with which they returned to Khartoum.
The Arabs, however, held Halfaya, and on March 16 Gordon tried to drive them away. Advancing from a stockaded position covering the north front of the town, two thousand troops advanced across the open in square, supported by the fire of the guns of two steamers. The Arabs were retreating, when Hassan and Seid Pashas, Gordon’s black generals, rode into the wood and called back the enemy. The Egyptians, betrayed by their officers, broke and fled after firing a single volley, and were pursued to within a mile of the stockade, abandoning two mountain guns with their ammunition—”sixty horsemen defeated two thousand men”—and leaving two hundred of their number on the field. After this affair he was convinced that he could not take the offensive, but must remain quiet at Khartoum, and wait till the Nile rose. Six days later, the black pashas were tried by court-martial, found guilty, and shot.
A very determined attack upon one of the steamers coming up from Berber, at the Salboka Pass, was beaten off with great slaughter, Gordon’s men firing no fewer than fifteen thousand rounds of Remington ammunition. Meanwhile, his efforts to negotiate with the Mahdi failed. “I will make you Sultan of Kordofan,” he had said on arrival to the Mahdi. “I am the Mahdi,” replied Mahomet Ahmet, by emissaries who were “exceedingly cheeky,” keeping their hands upon their swords, and laying a filthy, patched dervish’s coat before him. “Will you become a Mussulman?” Gordon flung the bundle across the room, canceled the Mahdi’s sultanship, and the war was renewed. From that day to the day of the betrayal no day passed without bullets dropping into Khartoum.
Gordon now set to work in earnest to place Khartoum in a defensible position. Ten thousand of the Madhi’s sympathizers left Khartoum and joined the enemy. The steamers kept up a skirmishing fight on both Niles. All the houses on the north side of Khartoum were loopholed. A sixteen-pounder Krupp was mounted on a barge, and wire was stretched across the front of the stockade. The houses on the northern bank of the Blue Nile were fortified and garrisoned by Bashi-Bazouks. Omdurman was held and fortified on the west and Buri on the east. On March 25, Gordon had to disarm and disband two hundred and fifty Bashi-Bazouks who refused to occupy stockaded houses in a village on the south bank of the Blue Nile. The rebels advanced on Hadji Ali, a village to the north of the Nile, and fired into the palace. They were shelled out of their position, but constantly returned to harass the garrison. They seemed to Gordon mere rag-tag and bob-tail, but he dared not go out to meet them, for fear of the town. Five hundred brave men could have cleared out the lot, but he had not a hundred. The fighting was confined to artillery fire on one side, and desultory rifle-shooting on the other. This went on till the end of March. The Arabs clustered more closely round the town.
On April 19, Gordon telegraphed that he had provisions for five months, and if he only had two thousand to three thousand Turkish troops he could soon settle the rebels. Unfortunately, he received not one fighting man. Shendy fell into the hands of the Mahdi. Berber followed, and then for months no word whatever reached this country from Khartoum.
On September 29, Mr. Power’s telegram, dated July 31, was received by the “Times.” From that we gathered a tolerably clear notion of the way in which the war went on. Anything more utterly absurd than the accusation that Gordon forced fighting on the Mahdi cannot be conceived. He acted uniformly on the defensive, merely trying to clear his road of an attacking force, and failing because he had no fighting men to take the offensive. He found himself in a trap, out of which he could not cut his way. If he had possessed a single regiment, the front of Khartoum might have been cleared with ease; but his impotence encouraged the Arabs, and they clustered round in ever-increasing numbers, until at last they crushed his resistance. After the middle of April the rebels began to attack the palace in force, having apparently established themselves on the north bank.
The loss of life was chiefly occasioned by the explosion of mines devised by General Gordon, and so placed as to explode when trodden on by the enemy. Of all his expedients these mines were the most successful and the least open to any accusation of offensive operations. The Arabs closed in all round towards the end of April, and General Gordon surrounded himself with a formidable triple barrier of land torpedoes, over which wire entanglement and a formidable chevaux-de-frise enabled the garrison to feel somewhat secure. On April 27, Valeh Bey surrendered at Mesalimeh, a disaster by which General Gordon lost one steamer, seventy shiploads of provisions, and two thousand rifles.
General Gordon was now entirely cut off from the outside world, and compelled to rely entirely upon his his own resources. He sent out Negroes to entice the slaves of the Arabs to come over, promising them freedom and rations. This he thought would frighten the Arabs more than bullets. On April 26, he made his first issue of paper-money to the extent of ,2500 redeemable in six months. By July 30, it had risen to ,26,000 besides the ,50,000 borrowed from merchants. On the same day he struck decorations for the defense of Khartoum—for officers in silver, silver-gilt and pewter for the private soldiers. These medals bear a crescent and a star, with words from the Koran, and the date, with an inscription,—”Siege of Khartoum,”—and a hand-grenade in the center. “School-children and women,” he wrote, “also received medals; consequently, I am very popular with the black ladies of Khartoum.”
The repeated attacks of the Mahdi’s forces on Khartoum cost the Arabs many lives. On May 25, Colonel Stewart was slightly wounded in the arm, when working a mitrailleuse near the palace. All through May and June his steamers made foraging expeditions up and down the Nile, shelling the rebels when they showed in force, and bringing back much cattle to the city. On Midsummer Day, Mr. Cuzzi, formerly Gordon’s agent at Berber, but now a prisoner of the Mahdi’s, was sent to the wells to announce the capture of Berber. It was sad news for the three Englishmen alone in the midst of a hostile Soudan. Undaunted, they continued to stand at bay, rejoicing greatly that in one, Saati Bey, they had, at least, a brave and capable officer.
Saati had charge of the steamers, and for two months he had uninterrupted success, in spite of the twisted telegraph wires which the rebels stretched across the river. Unfortunately, on July 10, Saati, with Colonel Stewart and two hundred men, after burning Kalaka and three villages, attacked Gatarnulb. Eight Arab horsemen rode at the two hundred Egyptians. The two hundred fled at once, not caring to fire their Remingtons, and poor Saati was killed. Colonel Stewart narrowly escaped a similar fate.
After July 31, there is a sudden cessation of regular communications. Power’s journal breaks off then, and we are left to more or less meager references in Gordon’s dispatches. On August 23, he sent a characteristic message, in which he announces that, the Nile having risen, he has sent Colonel Stewart, Mr. Power, and the French consul to take Berber, occupy it for fifteen days, burn it, and then return to Khartoum. All the late messages from Gordon, except a long dispatch of November 4, which has never been published, were written on tissue paper no bigger than a postage-stamp, and either concealed in a quill thrust into the hair, or sewn in the waistband of the natives employed. Gordon seems to have been the most active in August and September, when the Nile was high. He had eight thousand men at Khartoum and Senaar. He sent Colonel Stewart and the troops with the steamers to recapture Berber. A steamer which bore a rough effigy of Gordon at the prow was said to be particularly dreaded by the rebels. OnAugust 26, he reported that he had provisions for five months, but in the forays made by his steamer on the Southern Niles he enormously replenished his
stores. On one of these raids he took with him six thousand men in thirty-four boats towed by nine steamers.
After his defeat before Omdurman, the Mahdi is said to have made a very remarkable prophecy. He retired into a cave for three days, and on his return he told his followers that Allah had revealed that for sixty days there would be a rest, and after that blood would flow like water. The Mahdi was right. Almost exactly sixty days after that prophecy there was fought the battle of Abu Klea.
Stewart had by this time been treacherously killed on his way down from Berber to Dongola. Gordon was all alone. The old men and women who had friends in the neighboring villages left the town. The uninhabited part was destroyed, the remainder was inclosed by a wall. In the center of Khartoum he had built himself a tower, from the roof of which he kept a sharp lookout with his field-glass in the daytime. At night he went the rounds of the fortifications, cheering his men and keeping them on the alert against attacks. Treachery was always his greatest dread. Many of the townsfolk sympathized with the Mahdi; he could not depend on all his troops, and he could only rely on one of his pashas, Mehmet Ali. He rejoiced exceedingly in the news of the approach of the British relieving force. He illuminated Khartoum and fired salutes in honor of the news, and he doubled his exertions to fill his granaries with grain.
On December 14, a letter was received by one of his friends in Cairo from General Gordon, saying, “Farewell. You will never hear from me again. I fear that there will be treachery in the garrison, and all will be over by Christmas.” It was this melancholy warning that led Lord Wolseley to order the dash across the Desert. On December 16 came news that the Mahdi had again failed in his attack on Omdurman. Gordon had blown up the fort which he had built over against the town, and inflicted great loss on his assailants, who, however, invested the city closely on all sides. The Mahdi had returned to Omdurman, where he had concentrated his troops. Thence he sent fourteen thousand men to Berber to recruit the forces of Osman Digma, and it was these men, probably, that fought the English relief army at Abu Klea.
After this nothing was heard beyond the rumor that Omdurman was captured and two brief messages from Gordon, sent probably to hoodwink the enemy, by whom most of his letters were captured. The first, which arrived January 1, was as follows: “Khartoum all right.—C. G. Gordon. December 14, I884.” The second was brought by the steamers which met General Stewart at Mentemneh on January 21st: “Khartoum all right; could hold out for years.—C. G. Gordon. December 29.” On January 26, Faraz Pasha opened the gates of the city to the enemy, and one of the most famous sieges
in the world’s history came to a close. It had lasted from March 12 to January 26—exactly three hundred and twenty days.
When Gordon awoke to find that, through the treachery of his Egyptian lieutenant, Khartoum was in the hands of the Mahdi, he set out with a few followers for the Austrian consulate. Recognized by a party of rebels, he was shot dead on the street and his head carried through the town at the end of a pike, amid the wild rejoicings of the Mahdi’s followers. Two days later the English army of relief reached Khartoum.”
Gordon was killed on January 26th 1885, around dawn, fighting the warriors of the Mahdi. As recounted in Bernard M. Allen’s article “How Khartoum Fell” (1941), the Mahdi had given strict orders to his three Khalifas not to kill Gordon. However, the orders were not obeyed. Gordon died on the steps of a stairway in the northwestern corner of the palace, where he and his personal bodyguard, Agha Khalil Orphali, had been firing at the enemy. Orphali was knocked unconscious and did not see Gordon die. When he woke up again that afternoon, he found Gordon’s body covered with flies and the head cut off. When Gordon’s head was unwrapped at the Mahdi’s feet, he ordered the head transfixed between the branches of a tree “….where all who passed it could look in disdain, children could throw stones at it and the hawks of the desert could sweep and circle above. After the reconquest of the Sudan, in 1898, several attempts were made to locate Gordon’s remains, but in vain.
Many of Gordon’s papers were saved and collected by two of his sisters, Helen Clark Gordon, who married Gordon’s medical colleague in China, Dr. Moffit, and Mary, who married Gerald Henry Blunt. Gordon’s papers, as well as some of his grandfather’s (Samuel Enderby III), were accepted by the British Library around 1937.
Please visit my Funny Animal Art Prints Collection @ http://www.fabprints.com
My other website is called Directory of British Icons: http://fabprints.webs.com
The Chinese call Britain ‘The Island of Hero’s’ which I think sums up what we British are all about. We British are inquisitive and competitive and are always looking over the horizon to the next adventure and discovery.
Copyright © 2010 Paul Hussey. All Rights Reserved.
Best Man Wedding Toast Quotes
Being asked to serve as best man for a good friend or family member is an incredible honor but also a huge responsibility. Planning a bachelor party, liaising with caterers and vendors, and putting out all manner of fires are a few important tasks that you may be expected to take care of, but the one responsibility that causes the most stress for many a best man is giving the best man wedding toast. It can help to seek out best man wedding toast quotes for inspiration.
You want your speech to be touching, memorable, and reflective of your relationship with the bride and groom, yet you must also be mindful that your role is to shine the spotlight on the happy couple and to avoid hogging the attention of the attendees for yourself. This is no easy task. Take heart, though – plagiarism need not be a big concern of yours, and swiping material liberally is perfectly acceptable. If you’re not a word-smith, it’s fine to find examples of best man speeches that say what you want to say and use them for yourself. The internet is full of best man wedding toast quotes and best man speech jokes, just waiting for you to discover them. Spend some time curled up with Google, and see what “best men,” throughout the ages have had to say about love, marriage, friendship, and weddings themselves. Surely, you’ll find all of the wisdom, humor, observations, or inspiration that you’ll need to express your heartfelt feelings in a new and meaningful way.
If you’re uncomfortable “recycling” best man wedding toast quotes wholesale, take an a la carte approach, snapping a sentence here and a sentence there until you’ve created a unique and personal toast from any number of best man wedding toast quotes. Believe it or not, my wife and I constructed our entire wedding ceremony this way, including our vows – and we feel that our wedding was as personal and special as any that we’ve been to. Examples of best man speeches, combined or altered to fit the situation, can be wonderfully warm and personal. Your personal touch – simply in selecting, ordering, and organizing the existing best man wedding toast quotes into something from your heart – will shine through with every word that you speak during your toast. One thing that the occasional best man forgets – your job is to make the bride and groom look good. The occasional good-natured joke is fine, but now is not the time for a roast. Save that for the stag party.
One of the key elements that people look forward to in a best man toast is a good joke or two. Much like the rest of the speech, best man speech jokes can be found by the hundred in books and online. It’s alright if you don’t have a joke or anecdote ready to go when you begin to prepare your best man speech. Borrow from the masters and those who have gone before you. Be genuine, be honest, be yourself, and you’ll do fine. Best man wedding toast quotes aren’t boilerplate, lifeless speeches, ready-made for you; they are tools – jumping off point, really – that can help you to craft your personal message to the bride and groom with relative ease. Just because you have an important role to play doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy this wonderful day to the fullest, and give a speech or toast to remember
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/weddings-articles/best-man-wedding-toast-quotes-4394434.html
About the Author
Brian Emuss knows that giving a best man speech can be a very nerve racking thing to do. If you want to give an outstanding best man speech on the big day then you can find loads of great tips and examples at http://www.52glider.com
Best wedding cake makers of New York City
Weddings are an important part of community. It is once in a lifetime experience, so everyone wants it to be the perfect occasion. Food especially wedding cakes are an integral part of a wedding ceremony. New York City offers one of the best and most fascinating wedding cakes you will find only here! Millions of wedding organizers and food caters co-exist in New York City.
Enjoy the services of latest entry into the wedding business–Alice’s Tea Cup that is gaining fame for its unique and imaginative designs yet being graceful & elegant. The designs are predominated by flowers, butterflies and mod dots. If you want to have a cake that is most impressive and etches in one’s memory for its unique look and taste get into contact with New York City’s premier wedding baker—Ann Wood!
If you want, to have a wedding cake that is outlandish and marked by truffles, handmade flowers, sweet peas and magnolia blossoms; then the April Reed is your answer in New York City. April inputs a lot of effort in making the client’s original requirement to sketch and finally into the perfect reality, that makes your mouth water and turn insides flutter.
Bake and More located at Broadway is one of the most efficient wedding food caters in New York City. The cake designers Beth Sullivan and Madalyn Purcell are best known for creating classic and traditional butter cream, cheesecake and apple cinnamon. Baked is the classic place for you to get custom-made wedding cake New York City within short deadlines. They can offer a variety of cakes from traditional to classic wedding cakes with bold themes to sultry and romantic colors!
Enjoy Victoria-style with chocolate beads and valentine hearts at Bijoux Doux Specialty Cakes. Cake Alchemy is a rock wedding crasher of New York City that provides one of the most impressive wedding cakes with floral and unique serving arrangements.
Cakeline located near Rockaway Beach Blvd, Cake Man Raven near Fort Greene, Brooklyn, The Cake Studio, Ceci-Cela Patisserie, Cheryl Kleinman Cakes, Collette Foley Specialty Baking and Colette’s Cakes are other marvelous wedding cake makers of New York City that are worth contacting if you want your wedding to rock!
Protecting Your Interests: Using Competitive Intelligence Gathering Techniques at Tradeshows to Safeguard Your Bottom Line
“This looks absolutely amazing!” The attendee was smiling, eyes bright, a wide grin. “If this is what I think it is, I’m pretty sure this piece of equipment will solve all of our problems.” He turned to the booth staffer, a young woman at her very first show. “Could you tell me how it works?”
The staffer, thrilled at the possibility of selling a piece of equipment that sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars, was more than accommodating. She answered every question, even the most technical. When the prospect wanted to take some pictures, she helped him get good shots — from every conceivable angle.
When the prospect left, he had every relevant piece of sales literature. He also had a dozen great digital pictures, the card of the booth staffer, and a promise that someone from the exhibitor’s company would be following up directly after the show.
However, the attendee didn’t let the grass grow under his feet. His organization was in touch with the exhibitor’s organization within days.
However, instead of a purchase order, the communication was coming from the attendee’s legal department — who had a pretty good case that the exhibitor’s display model was based on their proprietary design!
Tradeshows offer the most overt intelligence gathering environment imaginable. There is no other place where you can find all of the companies in one industry gathered in a convenient location, with all their offerings on display. Helpful booth staffers will answer questions, often those questions that should raise red flags among an exhibiting team.
This can work against you, or, as illustrated in the story above, it can work for you. The world is getting smaller every day. Ideas are stolen. They’re copied, reverse engineered, you name it. However, as the owner and originator of these ideas, you may have no idea that this has happened — until you stumble across the results at a tradeshow or industry event.
In an increasingly competitive world marketplace, you can’t depend on chance discoveries! Savvy tradeshow exhibitors and attendees know that they have to take the initiative, and carefully approach tradeshows with one eye toward protecting their own intellectual assets.
Determine a goal for your staffers or employees you’re sending to attend a show. Make it clear to them what type of thing they’re to look for: products that duplicate your own, for example, or that incorporate proprietary technology without permission.
It is never your employee’s role to have a confrontation about these topics at the show. Instead, their role is, as illustrated above, to gather as much information as possible about the product and company, and relay that data back to your headquarters, where it can be acted upon by the appropriate personnel.
Preparation is essential. You can’t send your staffers in with the command to protect your interests without equipping them to do so. Here’s how you start that preparation:
Prior to the show, study the exhibitor list. Identify which companies you already know, and make special note of any new names. It is far more common for emerging, smaller organizations to engage in unscrupulous activities — if only because the larger, behemoth firms have legal firms that keep them from getting into trouble! Sometimes show organizers make this easy by listing exhibitors by industrial categories, but other times you’re left facing an alphabetical list.
Create a ‘hit list’ of companies that you absolutely have to see. Of course you’ll want to visit your major competitors – but don’t be myopic. It is important to pay careful attention to any unfamiliar exhibitors, even if they are only tangentially related to your industry.
Augment your target list with pre-show research, including what readings from trade publications and industry knowledge. This will generally give you a starting point for your investigations. Pinpoint those items you definitely want to know more about, and include these on your team’s list of goals and objectives.
At the same time, it is vitally important to remain aware and open to any information that may arise serendipitously. It is impossible to know ahead of time what your team will encounter while they’re walking the show floor.
Having the skills and wit to recognize copyright infringement and intellectual property theft, no matter what form it takes, is a valuable asset in any employee. Make sure you recognize and reward your team appropriately!
About the Author
Written by Susan A. Friedmann,CSP, The Tradeshow Coach, Lake Placid, NY, internationally recognized expert working with companies to increase their profitability at tradeshows.
Author: “Riches in Niches: How to Make it BIG in a small Market” and “Meeting & Event Planning for Dummies.”