Trade Show Guru

A man and a dog were walking along a deserted road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when suddenly he realized that he was dead.

He vaguely remembered dying, and and he knew that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered to himself where the road was leading them. [Read more →]

Here in Santa Barbara, California, we’ve just gone through our fourth big wildfire in two years. The first wildfire was the Zaca fire in 2007 that burned in our “back country” and ended up being the second largest fire in California history. [Read more →]

Trade show exhibit booths are a lot like websites and blogs. If you want traffic at your trade show exhibit booth (and why have an exhibit booth if you have no traffic), then you’d better understand and practice SEO for trade show exhibiting. S.E.O. stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s necessary for blogs and websites if you want to rank high on the search engines and get traffic. [Read more →]

This week I’m taking a break from writing about trade show marketing in order to catch up on a few loose ends. In this post I’ll update on our tadpoles, talk about the Bad Behavior plugin to fight spam, and end with a rather humorous performance review I recently saw. [Read more →]

I thought I’d stick with the “secrets” theme this week, and since I’ve already written about trade show secrets (in general) and trade show booth staffing secrets, I thought I’d write about trade show booth display design secrets. To my mind, creating compelling and effective graphic designs for trade show booth displays shouldn’t require an advanced degree from an Ivy League school. In fact, it’s mainly just common sense. But that doesn’t mean that effective trade show booth displays are really all that common at trade shows. Based on some of the trade show display designs I’ve seen, I have no idea what the designer was thinking. But if you read this post, absorb the wisdom of the trade show guru, and follow these basic steps, [Read more →]

The success of your trade show booth in large part will be determined by your trade show booth staff. Here are my “Top Ten Secrets” to making sure your trade show booth staff, be it just you or a crew of ten, do a great job and maximize your trade show marketing success. Of course, you don’t want to forget the importance of having a compelling trade show display design, and the other basics of trade show marketing. And the truth is, just like my earlier “trade show secrets” post, these trade show booth staffing “secrets” aren’t really secrets, they are more just “common sense”, but “secrets” just seems to have a better ring to it. Plus, based on my experience at past trade shows, believe it or not, from some trade show booth staffing I’ve seen, the ten points below must be “secret” because some of the trade show staffers I saw didn’t appear to be aware of them! [Read more →]

I guess this post is a bit trade show related. I’ve noticed that my blog must be becoming a bit famous, at least based on the amount of spam comments I am getting. It used to be a few spam comments a week, but now it’s dozens a day. And I noticed that the majority seem to be on my post about trade show zombies. Is this just a coincidence, or do spammers know deep in their hearts that they are really just kindred mindless zombies, churning out meaningless spam? [Read more →]

I’m afraid this is going to be yet another week (week three) without a trade show related post, but I’ve got plenty of excuses. First, like most of us, I am working a lot these days. And, given that life is about balance, I’ve spent my small amount of free time on things other than penning more trade show wisdom. I’ve been doing things like gardening, revising zip line designs, and catching tadpoles. [Read more →]

This is another filler post. I don’t have any new trade show wisdom to share this week, but if you need a trade show marketing fix you can read about trade show zombies, trade show giveaway pens, or green trade show displays. So for this week, it’s just filler, but at least it’s funny filler (at least I think so). I hope if I can’t make you laugh, at least I can get you to crack a teensy weensy smile. [Read more →]

I was going to title this post, “A Lack of Appreciation“, but I decided that sounds too crotchety and negative, so I’ll go with “Remember When“. This post is really just a funny video, with a few introductory comments from yours truly. I’ve never heard of the comedian in this clip, and I’ve never watched the Conan O’Brian show, but the comedian is very funny and the video clip is well worth watching. [Read more →]