I enjoy writing small business marketing content here at OPEN Forum, so I was very excited when they asked me to take the show on the road and interact in person with small business owners at this year’s CES being held January 7-10, 2010, in Las Vegas.
I will be participating in a speaker series held in Booth 20925 in the South Hall. The series includes presentations from Guy Kawasaki of Alltop, Tony Hsieh of Zappos, Barb Dybwad and Ben Parr of Mashable, Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends and myself.
If you plan to attend CES I would love to meet you and talk small business marketing.
Specifically I will be presenting my take on the future of small business use of social media in two sessions: One on January 8th and a second on January 9th. In both one-hour sessions I’ll share ideas, tips and tools and leave plenty of time for questions and answers.
While the overall topic of social media has been beat to a buzz killing pulp, the real-life practical strategies and tactics needed by small business to leverage the power of new media tools has gone sorely lacking.
In the first session I’ll present what I’ve been calling “The Simple Truths of Social Media Marketing”
The simplest truth about social media is that it’s great, but requires strategy, planning and work – just like anything you do in your business. It’s time to stop talking about social as some new way to do marketing and start thinking about it as new way to enhance what you already do, collaborate more effectively and leverage your offline relationships.
In fact, perhaps it’s more a behavior than a platform or tool.
In the second session I’ll talk about how small businesses of all kinds can use social media tools to promote their businesses locally and build deeper, more effective working relationships with customers, partners and providers whether your goal is to do business around the world or around the block.
Now that the hype surrounding social media has crested, perhaps we can get serious about finding practical ways to put it to use.
Come take part of the speaker series as CES and watch the OPEN Forum come to life.
John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing.
