How to Plan a Business Trip – Part II

I wrote a post sometime back on how to plan a business trip. I had mentioned in passing that I would soon be writing a post that dealt with how to plan various events to attend during the

course of the trip. So how do you really go places(excuse the mild pun) during a business trip?

1. Have a clear objective as to what are the type of people you need to be meeting with.  Depending on that you need to choose your target locations and events.These can be networking events, seminars, conferences, referral meetings, unconferences, informal meetups, etc.

2. Plan in advance. Search for events in the cities which you are going to be visting. Some good resources include Meetup, Eventbrite, Upcoming, LinkedIn Events, Gary’s Guide, etc. From our personal experience, I would

definitely recommend Meetup. It’s an excellent resource.

3. When you send out your RSVPs, try to coordinate with the organizers of the event beforehand. This can be handy if you wish to make a presentation or a talk at a networking event, for instance.

4. Make sure you have just the right number of events lined up for a day. Time is a valuable resource when you are on a trip, but you don’t want to wear yourself out either. Also, you need to plan it right in order to meet up with existing clients, because hey, they are as much important(if not more) as prospects!

5. Lastly, a few pointers – give out business cards, be on time, be polite and listen to what others say. Request for 1-1 meetings and follow up with people.

Check out Chaitanya’s post on OpenForum to know more about how to make networking and referral events work for you. Do you have any interesting pointers from your own business trip experiences? Let us know!

SEO for Business Owners Webinar: Recap

We hosted our webinar on SEO for Business Owners this Wednesday. We’re glad to inform that a lot of the attendees found it useful and informative.

Here’s some of the feedback we got:

“Listening to great webinar SEO for Business Owners #p2w2”

“Chaitanya, thanks for your webinar.  Very informative.”

“Everyone should buy Chaitanya Sagar’s ebook due out June 1. GET IT!”

“Attending a great webinar on SEO on #p2w2”

On popular demand, we have also put up the presentation slides for your information. You can check it out here. We had

also recorded our webcast and I will be uploading the video soon! Look out for it!

For those of you who missed out on the webinar, don’t worry. Here’s a great chance for you to get to pre-order our SEO ebook that

will be released on June 1, 2010. All the information presented in the webinar, will be available to you in a convenient, readable format complete with all the links and tools presented in the webinar!
http://www.p2w2.com/seo-for-business-owners.php#pre-order

Don’t miss our next SEO webinar on June 16th. Do send us your suggestions and questions in comments to this post. We would love to hear from you!

How to plan a Business Trip

Chaitanya returned back to India from a 40 day business tour of the US. The trip was a good experience and all of us at p2w2 benefited greatly from what he had to share.

The success of a business trip is highly dependent on the amount of planning that you do beforehand. I’d like to share some insights and learnings that went into planning Chaitanya’s US trip.

1.Have a clear purpose

Make sure you know clearly what the end result of the trip should be(get new customers/expanding to a new geography/learning about new trends,etc). Plan your trip accordingly.

2. Decide the agenda of your trip well in advance

This is essential so that you can book tickets, hotel rooms in advance and thereby save money too. Make sure that you choose your place of stay wisely, so that you don’t spend valuable time commuting.

3. Chalk out events properly

If you’re looking to meet potential clients, attend

referral meetings. If you wish to know more about what is

happening in that geography, what are the new trends, etc. attend seminars and conferences.  But more about planning events and seminars, later!

4.Popularize your meetings

If you’re conducting meetings, plan in advance and make sure it is well publicized. Use tools such as Meetup, Eventbrite, Upcoming, etc. to create buzz around your events.

5. Tweet and blog your experiences!

I hope you found this useful. Keep checking our blog to know what kind of planning needs to go into attending seminars and events specifically!

40 days Dedicated to Knowing Small Businesses

I have just started my 40 day trip around the US meeting small businesses. The objective is to meet and learn from them about their businesses. I will be in NY, LA, Miami and Atlanta during the next 40 days.

I had started off with North Brooklyn Breakfast Club where I met some wonderful small businesses. Hot potato made a demo of their iPhone app.

Today, I attended two events, first was Social Media & the Haiti Disaster. Panelists were as follows:

Moderator:

-Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum and senior technology advisor, The Sunlight Foundation

Panelists:

– Ann Curry, news anchor for NBC’s Today Show
– Rob Mackey, staff writer The New York Times, The Lede blog
– Erik Parker, journalist who was in Haiti when the earthquake struck and used social networks to send images, video, tweets.
– Jason Cone, communications director, Doctors Without Borders

 

The event was good and explored various angles of journalism and social media. Ann Curry spoke about her experiences in Haiti and social media.  Back stage, Andrew Rasiej spoke about why US needs a strategic technology reserve. Overall, a very informative session. It was conducted in New York Times Building, NY.

Later today, I attended “The New Age of Social Media,” a panel discussion.

Panelists:

Mike Street – Zezza Network
Eric Hamilton – Author
Ellie Nieves – Leadership Strategies for Women, LLC
Orietta E. Ramirez – Lawyer, HR Professional & Employment Blogger

Moderator:
Anthony Quinones – CEO & Chief Creative Officer, Q Ball Media, LLC

Overall, the discussion centered around how social media can help – small business and individuals. At times, it seemed like social media got over sold. But panelists spoke about their experiences and asked the audience to focus on connecting with

people behind the profiles.

That is

it for the moment.

SEO: A Quick Primer on the Difference Between Ecommerce and Content Sites – On Amex Open Forum

Did you know that on the Web, 4 seconds is all the time you get to capture a visitor’s attention? Find that fact astonishing? Well, read

more to know how you can get the best out of those critical 4 seconds.

Gone are the times when an ice-breaker topic was “Does your company do SEO?” Now the question has become downright simple – “Which SEO are you?” This in some sense, reflects the inevitability of SEO as a part of

any company’s overall marketing strategy. We as a company, realize the importance of SEO. Learning how to optimize for search engines is a long-term process, just like SEO itself. Based on our learnings,  Chaitanya recently wrote an article on AMEX Open Forum titled SEO: A Quick Primer on the Difference Between Ecommerce and Content Sites.
The article talks about the following:

1. Difference in SEO strategies for Ecommerce sites and content sites

2. Importance of good, targeted landing pages. (To know more about landing page optimization, check out this post)

3. Importance of backlinking

You can read the entire article here. Do let us know your thoughts and feedback!

P.S: Check out our Link Building page to know more about p2w2’s link building services!