Conference Necessities &#8211; Being Prepared for Your First Tradeshow With Custom Stickers and Custom Decals

Conference Necessities – Being Prepared for Your First Tradeshow With Custom Stickers and Custom Decals

What to bring to a conference? — Custom Decals and Custom Laptop Skins

So, you’ve started a blog or a business and you’re building a following – now what? Now is the time to start really learning from the experts. Tradeshows and conferences are a great way to meet other entrepreneurs in your business area and learn from the best in the industry. For example, conferences such as Blissdom and BlogHer are for the women bloggers, SxSW for music, film and interactive, Blog World Expo for all bloggers, and many more tradeshows are great opportunities to learn from others. Sticviews is sponsoring Amy Locurto and Angie Arthur of I Heart Faces for the Blissdom conference this February, and we wanted to pass along some useful hints for being prepared to attend your conference.

Business Cards – We just got some really awesome business cards from moo.com and we’re really excited to get them shipped in. Hopefully we’ll have them in time for the next Social Media Club Dallas event with Chris Brogan on the 21^st! Business cards are a great way to give your contact information to people you meet and helps you follow up with people after the conference is over. You can always go with innovative creative designs like the ones on Web Designer Depot. TIP: Make sure to put your social network contact information on your cards (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) – many people forget! And you could always be creative. Amy Locurto handed out her business cards with a little Valentine’s Day sticker gift – no one threw those away!
Create a list before you go of questions you’d like answered or specific people you want to seek out. You don’t want to miss the opportunity to talk to someone who has more experience in particular areas that could really be of benefit to you and your website. TIP: You can tweet about your questions too! If you don’t have a smart phone or a laptop for the weekend I recommend you borrowing one for the weekend.
Laptop skins – If you are a known blogger, or a beginner, getting a laptop skin with your blog name or banner on it really helps people put a face to the name of your blog. What a great way to promote your blog through technology. Angie and Amy from I Heart Faces received their laptop skins from sticviews. Remember…it’s hard to recognize faces, but it helps when people can recognize your blog banner or twitter profile photo. Amy Locurto recommends putting your blog banner and your Twitter photo on the laptop skin works great.
iPhone skins – Do you have an iPhone or another smart phone? You can get custom decals to fit on the back of your phone (see below) to also promote your blog.
T-shirts – This is always a fun thing to have around. Another great way to make your brand known while walking around a conference. Nomee handed out free t-shirts at the Twestival event last year – great way to build awareness and recognition of your brand.
Camera – You never know who you are going to meet at the conference, and it’s a great way to showcase things you saw when you blog about your experience.
Do some research on the presenters of the conference. It’s good to come in well prepared to soak up the knowledge they have to offer without having to figure out who the people are before hand.
Mints or gum – you are going to be doing a lot of talking, and you should pay the favor to your neighbor!

There are always lists on the conference sites of extra things to bring, but this list is pretty comprehensive of things you need to bring! Is there something you won’t go to a conference without? Let us know.