Unlearning means being Authentic

Okay, I wanted to wrap up my thoughts about what I "Unlearned" at the BMA conference. In my last post, I highlighted this tweet of mine: "Sessions at #bma09 feel like a twitter stream about social media."

Yes, the repeated chatter pushed the 'social media' agenda. Unfortunately, for industrial marketers like myself, 'social media' itself is in the someday/maybe pile. Hard to implement, and with limited direct benefit.

But lets not throw the social media baby out with the bathwater.

Authenticity is needed
The first challenge in approaching social media is also what one NEEDS to approach in marketing today. Social media tactics require authenticity. AND they need to align with your existing marketing/brand. THEREFORE we need to make sure our marketing/brand is authentic.

So our marketing needs to be authentic as a minimum standard to be up-to-date. Then we stand ready to move toward social media (if/when we choose) without having alignment issues.

Those industrial marketers that talk in third-person, arms-length language about being 'an industry leader' with additional non-specific marketing-speak, are not only looking dated, but are becoming irrelevant. No one is listening. A possible advantage of social media is the chance to find an authentic voice.

"Real Real"
In fact, one presenter, Joe Pine (link to Amazon), said that we need to render authenticity. Much like how we would control how our logo is used by other departments, we need to control the tone of our outbound communications to assure authenticity. Of course, this is much easier if the culture and in-house communications uses the same authentic tone.

Joe laid out a chart of authenticity, and I think industrial marketers have no choice but to be in the 'real real' quadrant--where the customer's experience matches with the real company behind their product. Its as simple as 'do what you say you will do' (Joe calls this the Polonius test: "to thine own self be true.")

Unfortunately, this is bigger than a marketing problem, it becomes a systematic, cultural, and management challenge. Lucky for me that I work in a very flat organization that has no choice but to be authentic, but for others with top-down bureaucracy and a detached C-suite, authenticity is going to be a struggle. (Reference the challenges of Twitterer @comcastcares.)

Functional Bonus:
Authenticity requires meeting, listening, and connecting to the marketplace, which enhances the quality of our communications. Great. But there is a greater value

Being connected to the market, along with the instant access social media provides, enables us to launch incomplete campaigns and tune them on-the-fly, based on response. In the past you had to have everything ready to go at launch, because you didn't have that chance to fix things.

Starting points:
I'd look at the written content you are using. Is the tone and message authentic? Websites are the best place to work on this. If it is just cut/paste from a brochure, you've got work to do. Outbound emails and blogs, too.

Start Unlearning now, or I truly think you will find yourself behind the eight-ball very quickly. (I'll talk more about that eight-ball soon.)

UnLearning: The Twitter Stream

Snips from my Twitter stream while at the #BMA09 conference last Thursday (edited for blog-reading clarity):

• Does Linked-In benefit companies like mine? No. Me personally? Could.
• @Thor_Harris Linked-In ... Maybe for local sales reps, I'll consider that.
• I wonder ... Industrial marketing = business marketing?
• For B2B Experience Economy, I think we have to target the "real-real" place.
• Google presentation: search usage much more pervasive ... web content has to be efficient, then let face-to-face work efficiently.
• Sessions at #bma09 feel like a twitter stream about social media.
• @lrh actually most people in the room have 'company blogs', but not many admitted they suck.
• The web-presence session undersold the message from Getty Images about adding visual content. How do we look authentic?
• @amylillard Outlaw marketing! Management lesson most actionable so far today!
• Social-community session scares me about the top-down use of blogging. It's about numbers- users, posts, $$. Ugh.
• @jaymce Will social media "automation" just pollute? Each site/media has a different context.
• @b2bcommunicate glad my vibe came thru. At #bma09 authenticity repeatedly came up. Johnny Cash is certainly a great example! (cues iTunes.)

What's it all mean? Well that's part of the fun of Twitter. Big hint in bold above. Hopefully I can discuss here at length later this week.

This was my first event using Twitter. It was fun to see what others thought or observed, and gave a reason to meet people in person. Beats whispering to the person sitting next to you.

(More Twitter and actual session summaries are posted by the BMA.)

Meet me in Chicago, Margo (this week!)

For any readers out there going to the BMA Conference in Chicago this week who'd like to meet-up with me:

• I'll be at the awards banquet Wednesday night.
• My panel discussion starts at 11am Thursday.
• I'll be attending the BizBash event Thursday night.
• I'll tape a B2Blog logo on my attendee badge.
  

I'll be using Twitter @b2btw to post anything worthwhile, or to communicate with attendees. Drop me a line if you'll be there, or when you are there.

Business blog example 3: It doesn't have to be hard

My last business-blog example before heading off to BMA Conference in Chicago this week.

A likely excuse for not blogging about your business may be 'my product is too boring. Who wants to read a blog about it?'

Actually I probably fall into that camp. And it's probably a poor excuse.

Well, in the rather boring-sounding market of material handling (conveyors, warehouse racks), QC Industries has been blogging along rather well. With a mix of product info, company news, and application discussions, their blog strikes a good balance of readability for the folks who are interested.

I think what makes it work is that you get a sense that there is a human, and company insider, posting on the blog—Chris Thompson and Chris Round are the guys. And his activity commenting on blogs like mine, and posting regularly at Twitter (@QCIndustries) gets that vibe across, as well.

Here's a sample post talking about an upcoming show, ATX East - NY “Excited and nervous”:

"I asked Albert Sabbah, Group Sales Manager for Canon Communications, for his thoughts. “Excited and nervous” were his two quick words of choice. “Since the show is wide spread through many industries from medical to automation to green, really many of the companies are having good years.” Albert was quick to show the numbers as well and they are up and down, depending on the show. I quickly summarized and noticed medical (MD&M), packaging (EastPack), and automation (ATX) are good; plastics industry, questionable."

The net result is a sense of scope, direction, and activity at QC Industries. And that this is a brand with an authentic voice.

While I don't expect their blog has a ton of followers, I do think that prospects involved in considering their QC can look at their blog, and get a sense of the brand. While many smaller B2B companies struggle to communicate their brand at all, or just throw money at ads and PR hoping it helps, I think a blog like this shows an alternate way of building a brand efficiently and effectively.

It doesn't have to be hard, just a willingness to communicate.

Claim your Google listing, now!

I saw someone last week on Twitter complaining that getting their new site listed on DMOZ was taking forever.

Um, DMOZ was slow to list, and basically useless, ten years ago. Except for a little link-love, I don't see the point.

Now here is something useful: From a post at Bumblebee Marketing's "Notes from the Hive": Protect and Promote

"Well, for safety reasons go to the Google local business add page and make doubly sure that your business is listed and if it is, start the claim process. If it is not listed, start the claim process! It is easy and fast and if you are a single practitioner of yoga or a multi-million dollar tech firm, you should still take this step. And if you have multiple locations, don’t stop at your headquarters, do this for each and every location."

Doesn't matter if you are a 'local' business or not. People are going to Google you, or Google-Map you to get basic contact info, ala Yellow Pages.

As a consumer, I just used this data-feature today on my iPod Touch to find out the hours of a local appliance-parts dealer via Google Maps. Slick!

I claimed & updated my company's listing, uploaded a picture of our building, a link to my YouTube video, and added our office hours. I need to go back and figure out what to do about two other listings for our company that are erroneous--if I link those, will they go away, or can I fix them? (They call your main phone number and give you a PIN number to confirm ownership, so warn your receptionist.)

As Mardy says to end that post: "So stop whatever it is that you are doing, spend 5 minutes and protect and promote yourself. This is a critical step in securing your Google listing and promoting your company and web site search engine ranking improvements."

Yellow Pages finally dead? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Business blog example 2: Be a consultant

There are a frustrating amount of blogs by consultants out there.

Frustrating because they outnumber us 'in the trenches' marketers. And because they all do the same thing ... give out tips on how to do marketing right.

Consultants are smart, and they are used to telling others the best way to do something. This doesn't always work in a blog.

Maybe this works for their target audience. Maybe its good enough to help someone googling for answers to a marketing problem.

But I don't think it's enough to develop a following.

I'm a manager. I got here because I already know the basics. I'm looking for what's new on the radar, and for meaningful discourse on the gray-areas of decisions. Or something fun.

So, of all the consultants' blogs that I read, I'm going to single out Jim Logan's B2B Rainmaker blog as one done right. There are a couple others getting close, but I find myself drawn to commenting on posts over and over at Jim's blog. That means he's engaging me.

Here is a good example of a typical Rainmaker post titled Patel Leads: "No one is responsible to generate leads - Incredibly, every company I’ve worked for had this problem."

Look at that, a gray area--responsibility for leads! I've gotta read this post!

Interestingly, Jim himself helped point to the reason his blog is engaging with his latest post: The obvious answer to who is the smartest kid in school

"But is it the answers we have or the questions we ask that truly demonstrate our intelligence and understanding? ...

The answer is obvious, it’s the questions we ask - not the answers we give - that define our level of understanding and earn greater respect. The smartest kid in school is the one that asks the best questions."

(And that Marketing-LOLcat, its an inside joke, or sorts. Another way of engaging readers.)

Two questions for Gary Slack ... Q2

Here's my second question to Gary Slack about the BMA Conference (PDF brochure)

B2Blog:
What's the scoop about BMA's theme of UNlearning? The conference's banner shows a voltmeter at zero, does this mean we have to wipe out everything we know? What are we supposed to be relearning?

Gary Slack:
Dave, the entire conference is going to be one hell of a discussion on these questions, with many opinions to be shared.

Ralph Oliva, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, our profession’s “think tank” or “research department,” will kick off the conference with 30 minutes of scene-setting remarks on certain things he believes b-to-b marketers have learned and take to the bank, some things we may need to relearn and some things he feels we need to unlearn.

I don’t want to steal Ralph’s thunder (nor could I copy his thunderous voice), but I will offer up one thing I personally think b-to-b marketers may need to relearn—and that is the importance of investing in early-stage marketplace familiarity with your company, brand, and products and services.

That’s the message, of course, of McGraw-Hill’s classic “Man-in-the-Chair ad (click for jpeg), created in 1958, where the gruff buyer responds to a hapless (and unseen) sales person by saying in so many words, “I don’t know who in the hell you or your company area.”

This message is important to relearn, as, in my opinion, we’re in an era in which way too many marketers (or the c-level execs they report to) think they can go from no or low awareness to a sale in just a few touches or sometimes even one, only to see their demand generation efforts under-perform or fail miserably trying to do the impossible.

With McGraw-Hill’s permission, we’re actually going to bring the “Man in the Chair” to life on stage during Ralph’s kickoff remarks on Wednesday, June 10. Without letting the entire cat out of the bag, don’t be surprised if there isn’t a second, modern-day but equally gruff buyer who might just say something (again to a hapless sales person) about how he Googled the sales person and his company in advance.

Sounds like the kick-in-the-pants us marketers, isolated from the day-to-day struggle of our salespeople, need. I submit my behind for some sorely needed kicking. :)

Well, based on their ad campaign for the conference, It looks like brains are what is going to get zapped. I'm a little less sure about being UNlearned, now!

What do you think? Are we too focused on the low-hanging, response-driven leads, and giving up on that early nurturing Gary thinks we need to tend to?

Magazines aren't dead, but the biz model is

Rick Short (who will be joining me to talk about blogging at the upcoming BMA conference) asks Are magazines dead?

Maybe not dead yet, but if you read my last post, some trade publications are in a scary place. While they still hold a unique position as a content delivery system, their revenue model is broken. Rick tackles this problem:

"So, let's rattle the traditional model. The question for advertisers, clients, and media to each ask themselves is, 'Is what I'm purveying valuable enough to my target audience to get them to pay for it?' And the very same question (altered slightly) should be asked of our target audience. 'What content are you willing to purchase?' After all, shouldn't the party that derives value do (some of) the paying???"

Not just a good read, an important blog post to ponder. We're left with two problems:

• Publications need to crank up the value of their content.
• Subscribers need to be willing to pay for the value of the content.

Go read Are magazines dead?

When you see staples on the side of a trade pub ...

... you can tell the page count is down.

I received an automotive engineering trade publication today with a stapled binding. I've seen this during other recessions, and that means ads, and content, are cut back.

As I flipped thru it, I started noticing how articles were on facing pages. Hmmm. Now fully aware, I noticed the only ads were by supporting groups. I got to the back of the magazine, and the advertiser's list showed just six companies. SIX.

(Four of those were cover/premium positions, meaning only two ads in the actual meat of the publication.)

That's almost as scary as taking a drive thru the city of Flint, here in Michigan.

Two questions for Gary Slack ... Q1

Okay, I'm going to be a part of a panel discussion about B2B blogging at next month's national BMA event. So I had a couple burning questions to ask the man who invited me, Gary Slack, to find out his ideas and expectations.

Here's the cream-puff question and answer. The much meatier one I'll post next.

B2Blog:
I'm happy the event isn't rolling blogging in with a '’social media'’ session. Do you see blogging as a different medium? Or is the hype of of social media something B2B folks aren't interested in?

Gary Slack:
I don’t know if blogging is or isn’t a different medium or even a “medium” (I’ll leave that question to experts like you, your fellow panelist Rick Short and session moderator Bob Pearson), but I do believe and know this: blogging is an important and big enough topic to b-to-b marketers to warrant its own breakout session at the national BMA conference.

I’m sure blogging will come up in a number of other sessions, including the one being led by Bill Furlong about building b-to-b online communities and the one being led by Robin Fray Carey on business uses of social media. But we needed one session just on blogging alone. And, with Bob Pearson, former vice president of communities and conversations at Dell and now president of The Blog Council, leading your session along with Rick Short, yourself, and Obama America blogger Kevin Flynn as panelists, I know we’ll do the subject justice!

Hopefully we can dispel some of the myths about blogging that will come up during the event, and talk about reality.

Business blog example 1: sharpen the saw

As part of the lead-up to my panel discussion about business blogs at BMA, I'm taking a look at business blogs:

This is the kind of blog I like.

Industrial Quick Search launched a 'newsroom' blog around the beginning of the year. In the past it was mostly press releases by customers and IQS marketing content.

But now it is a newsroom. A couple of the SEO team at IQS are blogging there.

Here's a great post of original content, that isn't a shill for their business, or fake punditry. It is reporting, observation, and commentary worth the read:

Is it springtime for US Manufacturers?

This piece is nice to read just because it gives a helpful vision of the potential end of this recession. Hmm, not too many business bloggers doing that.

Other times the articles are less newsworthy, but they are interesting discussions of the products their advertisers sell.

At first doing such a newsroom seemed like a waste of time to me. Too much content for not enough value (traffic). Admittedly, Marjorie from IQS told me they don't really do it specifically for the SEO value anyway.

But I now realize: what better way to let an SEO staffer 'sharpen their saw' than to let them write freely about the products they are trying to help sell by being found by Google.

I'd see it as an opportunity for a company's staff to step out from behind the curtain a little and see what happens. Maybe like Google lets its staff work on side-projects for 20% of their time.

Play, learn, share, experiment, & connect.

Its an investment in the company and the staff.

Meet me in Chicago, Margo (BMA Conference)

I don't get out of the office much. And going to marketing events isn't usually my shtick, either.

But Gary Slack, VC of the BMA, has invited me to be a part of a panel to discuss business-blogging at this year's BMA Conference, so I'll have to take a break from my office life. The event is in Chicago the second week of June. Maybe I'll get to meet @B2BNinja!

Here's the scoop on the panel I'll be on:

Why B-to-B & Corporate Blogging Matters: Best Practices & Key Trends

When 500,000 people are going online every day for the first time in their lives, we are in a time of rapid change. Leaders are realizing that blogging and social media provide one of the most direct ways to build relationships and personalize their story. This expert panel, led by one of the most experienced corporate blogging professionals around, will examine how business marketers benefit when employees and executives blog, how to start and sustain blogging efforts, how to measure their value and lessons learned along the way.

~ Bob Pearson, President, Blog Council, and former Vice President of Communities and Conversations, Dell (Moderator)


~ Rick Short, Director of Mar-Com, Indium Corporation


~ Dave Jung, Marketing Manager, (some un-named industrial company), and Creator, B2Blog


~ Kevin Flynn, Member, Blogging Team, Obama for America

Wow, Bob Pearson, the voice of bloggers in the media? And Kevin Flynn from the Obama campaign? Cool. Plus Rick Short who is another in-the-trenches marketer, and in a related field to mine? This should be a fun session!

Will we be able to get out of the session without saying 'Twitter'? You'll have to come and find out!

I'll be posting additional thoughts leading up to the conference on business blogging, so stay tuned!

SAE show will screen exhibitors for innovation

Our company dropped out of the SAE World Congress a couple years ago. It is/was the largest automotive engineering events that was the place to be, ten years ago.

I find this announcement at the close of this year's event fascinating:

Changes on horizon for SAE 2010 World Congress

“The whole idea is to go to three days on the event and focus only on those exhibitors who have truly new and innovative technology and can qualify by way of writing a several-page white paper submitted to a committee of OEMs,” said Thomas J. Drozda, Group Director, SAE International. “Ford is the host, and they’ll participate, and we’ll recruit other OEMs to sit on a panel and look at these papers and decide, ‘yeah, that’s new technology that’s good to have at Congress.’”

Catch that? The exhibitors will be selected based on having new/innovative technology to display, as well as technical/white papers that back up that technology.

Makes sense ... people come to shows to 'see what's new' primarily. If they crank up the quality of the reason people come, I think it could make for a more interesting place to be. Of course, this means the exhibit becomes a side-show to the conferences and sessions going on during the Congress. But maybe that's how it truly should be.

Like lots of other 'old-school' media, the trade show needs to change dramatically. While this is an obvious down-sizing of this event (which used to fill every nook and cranny of Cobo Center), the change of focus actually increases the value of the show.

What do you think? Is this a smart move? Or just an excuse for a dying event?

YAD: Industrial Web Search.com

YAD is my short-hand for 'Yet Another Directory'.

As such, I won't spend a lot of time analyzing it. It promises all the benefits of '.tel' domain ownership matched with keyword tagging to connect businesses with searchers. I kinda get it, but not sold on any value. What do you think?

The World's First .tel Industrial Search Engine: "Industrial Web Search is like no other industrial search tool on the market today."

Twitter for directory sites?

The Twitter thing is everywhere! Here is a new application from my inbox:

"Twitter may be all the rage, but for BtoB marketers who need to reach a very specific audience - not the masses - it holds little value. Now, there's a micro-blogging tool for BtoB professionals - a way they can keep up-to-date about what's happening now in their vertical market. For marketers, it's a great real-time communication tool, where they can "chatter," knowing industry buyers are listening."

... So MediaBrains introduces their new "Business Chatter" tool ...

"Business Chatter appears on every page of the MediaBrains Business Directory for your vertical market. It's a simple, yet extremely effective way to reach out to customers and prospects, drive leads and expand your business. When you make a post, it links directly to your Company Profile page. So anyone who reads your Chatter can click directly to your Company Profile."

The link I followed in the email dumped me to a page where I could immediately post chatter on behalf of my company. I tried it and it worked exactly as promoted, my chatter showed up on the directory site my company is listed in immediately.

Sample MediaBrains directory site

It did tell me that I could post another 'chatter' on 5/15, a month away. That seems like a fair way to throttle postings. RSS feeds are available for chatter.

The chatter links to your company profile, but as an un-enhanced listing, there is no link to my site from there. Even so, the chatter would make more sense if you could link it to further details. That said, the beauty of Twitter (and Chatter) is that you have some freedom to post news without having to make sure a full collateral set is ready to back it up.

And for those who wonder if this service could be abused, the answer is yes. But their TOS make some pretty fair ground rules, and since the chatters are linked to your company profile, it's pretty easy to trace those who abuse it.

Gimmick or gadget?
As much as I want to like this tool and its application, it isn't Twitter. It is a firehose of information for directory visitors, but I wonder about the real value and interest in its content. And without the relationship of 'followers' that Twitter provides or direct links to your site, there is no feedback to maintain its use.

Now maybe the real benefit will be the flow of keywords to MediaBrian's sites.

Did you know you are already using Twitter?

Okay, I played the Twitter game for a while, then got tired. It's a fire-hose of status updates and pushes of information you never knew you needed. It's hard to tell if anyone is listening to anything you share, too.

People say Twitter is hard to explain. But you are already using a pre-cursor of Twitter.

I just realized this yesterday. Let me explain:

Inbox Twitter:
There are dozens of email newsletters I subscribe to. Well, some I didn't ask for. Trade pub. newsletters, marketing services, vendors, new product updates, webinars, skills & training offers, etc.

I'm sure you get a lot of the same.

I delete most after just reading the subject line, without opening (or even previewing). Don't you?

So why don't I unsubscribe?

These emails serve as a continual feed of information of what the outside world is doing as it relates to the scope of my job.

A continual feed of information? Hmmm, just like ... Twitter!

So what does this mean:
That all said, I'd say email marketers should maybe reconsider how they write their subject lines, to help feed Twitter-like bits of information to their subscribers who don't open their messages.

Sample:

• Current subject line: "Amazon.com: Top 10 Deals in Electronics"
• My suggested subject line: "Amazon.com: Canon A123 enters top 10 deals in electronics"

Some may call this 'the scent of information'. Always a good thing, but if you realize your readers are using Inbox Twitter, all the more important.

Making our first video for our website

It looked easy at first: an idle piece of equipment on our 'final test' line. "Let's shoot a quick video of it operating," I said.

The final production was more work than that, but I think this sets us on a trajectory to do more, and do better.

This video was for a less-common, but more interesting product, so the risk-factor was low in doing this. In the end, it is a video that does so much more than the rest of the web page that I've posted it at does.

Here's what we did to make the video:

1. Shot video, with our digi-cam & a tripod, of the unit operating.
2. Created 'powerpoint' slides to cover product description, plus openings & closings.
3. Shortened text on slides to absolute minimum.
4. Used Windows Movie Maker to lay out the video & slides.
   
5. Made the video in two sections: product info, and demonstration.
6. Led the video with a snip of the demo, to interest the viewers.
   
7. Recorded voice-over of the video (using WMM's narration tool) three times.
8. Wrote down what I said during the voice overs, and recorded a final take.
9. Overlaid the voice-over with a music track using Audacity (music from Wired's Rip Sample Mash Share CD)
   
10. Adjusted timing of 'slides' in WMM to fit the voice-over.
11. Export to WMV file and upload to YouTube.

It's not the 'YouTube' style video that I imagined--it's actually pretty bland and corporate. But it is quick (just over 2 minutes), and covers all the bases on the product.

Covering 'all the bases' slowed down the the production, and made this format much easier to complete. And as much as I wanted to be in front of the camera being all glib about our product, doing a voice-over worked much better. Saying it first, and writing it second, made the voice-over much more listenable and authentic than using a script.

Take a look: YouTube -Dust Chambers

(FYI: that's not me in the video, that's my assistant Chris. He did all the fun stuff with WMM to put this together. )

Dave tests 'content-match' on Yahoo, proves the obvious

The easiest way to explain my 'test' is to let you read the following email I just sent to Yahoo Marketing Solutions customer support:

My account was turned off for a while, since 11/12/08, I don't know why. I restarted it last week by manually drawing money from my credit card.

When it was restarted, 'content-match' was enabled, although I never used it before. The 'bid' was set at $5.15. The result is 1,191,689 impressions and 213 clicks, resulting in $281.01 in charges in one week. (Sponsored search was much more reasonable $25.58.)

I have turned off content-match, but am concerned about these charges. While we can debate the problems with my account, I also want to point out that the content-match 'bidding' screen showed that monthly estimates for my campaign would be: Impressions: 628,800 - 1,257,600, Clicks: 180 - 660. I have hit this in only one week. I am concerned that this amount of activity may have been fraudulent.

To recap, three things went wrong:
My account was disabled for unknown reasons
When reactivated, content-match was turned on without my knowledge
Traffic and clicks for content-match were excessive based on Yahoo's estimates.

Also, please look at the attached stats from Yahoo to my site: 93% bounce rate, and average time on site of 12 seconds. Those clicks were worthless, which is why I've kept content-match off for almost ten years.

If you can shed any light on the causes of this, I'd be interested to know. I'd also like to see the $281 refunded.

Thank you for taking a look at this and understanding my situation.

Okay, that sucked! I could have guessed that, but now I've proved the obvious.

IQS gets patent for online directory websites

Back in the day, I came across a one-page web page that served as a directory of the major players in my marketplace. All the webpage said at the bottom was "Copyright Industrial Quick Search".

After IQS came out of 'skunk works', they proudly said 'patent pending' on all their promotional materials. A lot has happened since, and patents on web site functionality has become the norm, although it still makes me scratch my head.

And now IQS has received a patent for their web-directory tool, proudly posted at

www.iqspatents.com

Here's the summary of the 'invention':
(I have added paragraph breaks and bullets to make it readable without falling asleep, or wandering-off to check your email.)

"The present invention includes a supplier identification and locator system whereby a user can identify a supplier of goods or services over the Internet. The supplier identification and locator system includes at least one directory Web site with a directory Web site domain name.

The directory Web site domain name typically is at least partially descriptive of a class of goods or services. The directory Web site also typically has

• a plurality of links where activation of a link accesses a supplier's Web site;
• a supplier descriptive portion located substantially adjacent to the corresponding supplier link;
• a descriptive title portion substantially corresponding to the description of the class of goods or services described by the directory Web site domain name;
• and a rollover window that displays information about at least one of the suppliers corresponding to a supplier identified by at least one of the supplier links."

The big thing at the time was that 'rollover window' which previewed an ad for the supplier. It was just a clean way to give some worthwhile content in a standard format.

They've added additional small-print listings for non-advertisers and some technical content, but today's IQS product-specific domain pages look a lot like they did when they first came out. But Google still likes their content, as must their visitors & advertisers, which has established IQS as a serious player in the online directory business. The patent just becomes a badge of honor.

Don’t Gamble With Your Show Booth

I've been to more than one show where one company goes all-out with their booth. They're the talk of the show, and everyone goes to see it.

How about if a number of booths followed the same creative, interactive theme?

QC Industries Conveyor Blog posted on about the upcoming ATX South Expo:

"CFC’s booth will feature a gambling theme and many of us will have gambling related fun going on in our booths. I have seen the Epson craps table, and it is one you’ll definitely want to come check out and try your luck."

Very cool idea. Everyone likes a game at a trade show, and I love this picture of a robot doing all the table-work. And it's great that the companies are all working together on this.

Hints for making a little money on the side

Starting a new site to earn money requires time in the beginning. The easiest to start is a home affiliate business site, I think. It will require research to be carried out to see which companies offer good products and nice referral fees. But before you can start, domain registration and website hosting research has to be done. The best web hosting packages can be easily located online. I'd also consider running through companies that are offering reseller hosting so you can have more than one domain, if needed.

If you don't have it already, get a wireless internet service so the site can be uploaded and maintained conveniently wherever you are. Actually creating the site itself will take some work, but there are some neat free tools that make it easier, like WordPress. By learning to constantly manage SEO and search engine submission, the site can do well in search engine ranking and develop enough traffic that proposals will fly in for banner advertising on the site.