Photo Credit: Mainely Portrait Photography

Core Zero Creative, your one-stop shop for Maine Web Design & Social Media Marketing Workshops in Maine had a WHOPPER of a day over at the Androscoggin B2B Trade Show Thursday! First of all, Thank You to the LAEGC, The Chamber, and all the businesses and people involved to make this event happen each year. What a wonderful statement of commitment to our economy and local businesses! It was our first year there as an exhibitor and we could not have been more delighted with the experience. We brought a crew of 5 to “work the show” and that really paid off. We all got plenty of face time with visitors as well as enough down time to stay sane. Those that chose not to stay sane spent their free time walking the show visiting other booths, sharing the insanity. And eating cookies. And other good stuff. I may still be touched…

With over 200 vendors plus their crews, and over 2,500 visitors… 3,000 people… what a great day to network and get the pulse on who’s who and what’s what here in Lewiston-Auburn and the surrounding areas. (Not to mention getting to sleep all day Friday!) I highly recommend taking a day out of your busy schedule next year to attend this show. You will be glad you did!

If you really want to know what you should be doing online my recommendation is to network in a real and authentic way. We’re not talking about networking like you see at your local chamber of commerce meet-ups where people whip out business cards and throw them around like ninja stars, but networking as in:

• Finding a networking community that shares your interests (and yes, this can be a Facebook page, LinkedIn or a handful of Blogs).
• Making sure that everyone connected in the community has shared/similar values.
• Adding your own value (insights, news, etc…) that helps to elevate to the community and the participants.
• Do much more for others before asking them to do something for you (I think Chris Brogan’s rule is perfect: do twelve things for others before asking them to do one thing for yourself).
• Don’t ask for business, but try to find business for everyone else.
• Plug into the community. Sincerely. Get to know your neighbors and be helpful.

It’s not sexy and it doesn’t add to your bottom line… today.

And that’s why so few people do it so well, and those that do it very well are the true rock stars of their industry.

That’s what you should do online.

Many thanks to Mitch Joel for this post!

Click here to view the embedded video.

What’s all the fuss about? Can’t Facebook ever leave anything alone? And just because they can’t, what does that mean to me? What is the impact on my business? And what’s with a deadline? Are you serious?

Those are just a few of the questions we’ve been hearing over the last few weeks. Indeed, there really is a deadline. It is March 30, 2012. Really. One thing that all this fuss certainly proves is that businesses are making money on Facebook, and with Facebook. Businesses have become dependent upon this platform, which happens to have the highest amount of traffic in the world at the moment, to promote and sell and endorse and drive traffic, both to their websites as well as affiliate offers and other services that bring in revenue. So what the fuss is really about then, is that people are making money right now, and nobody likes their apple cart upset in the middle of that.

Here’s what’s going to happen. On March 30, 2012, Facebook will do a mandatory roll-out of the Timeline for all business pages. What this means is that Facebook will select a random photo for you or no photo at all to become your Cover Photo. Also, if you have a default Landing Tab set, it will no longer work. So, at the very least you need a new Timeline Cover Photo solution, and you need to have any Facebook Apps that you own updated. At the time of this writing we are seven days away from it. However, you may be catching this sometime after March 30th. That’s okay. There’s still hope for you. We’ve got the solutions you need.  [Continue Reading & Score A Free Intro to the Timeline & Apps Here]

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