facebook

Technology has brought us to a place that was hard to imagine just a couple of decades ago. With email being the preferred method of spreading information amongst those in the business of online marketing, there really hasn’t been anything better to com along and shake things up. These days, the social media empire Facebook has begun the process of rolling out a new email system. Will this spell the end for email marketing as we know it? The answers may surprise you.

Last year, the experimentation began on a widespread level; virtual gift cards were becoming part of transactions everywhere, and they also made some surprising numbers during the holiday season’s final results for 2009. Now, with the 2010 holiday rush hurtling towards retailers, it’s becoming increasingly important for sellers – whether they are online, or in physical locations – to start gearing up with marketing strategies and advertising campaigns that conform to the growing trend of virtual gift cards and even gaming credits that can be applied towards real-life purchases. The challenge today is to determine which ones of these sales incentives will be of real value, and which ones will fade away fast.

Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock in the middle of a remote desert for the last few years, you are probably noticing some huge, eye-catching, and powerful changes to the Internet as we know it. We’ve seen things like the deployment of sophisticated VPNs and proxies to help honest businesspeople thwart countless awkward attempts to hamper communications in Internet-restrictive countries like China, and all of us have marveled at the array of new technology like simple-looking but completely Earth-shattering tag clouds, cutting-edge SEO devices, and interoperability features of Web 2.0 environments as they come to the surface. It’s looking like the floodgates are not only opening up… they’re virtually blasting apart, and the Internet community is ready to rise to the challenge, as the torrents of fast-flowing waters of technology surround us. In this kind of situation, there are only two kinds of Internet-based businesses: those who will sink, and those who will continue to swim as they find themselves surrounded by countless new opportunities!

It’s been a rough ride, in an online climate that has seen a dizzying number of historic events in the last few years. There have been political coups allegedly spurred on by twittering and tweeting revolutionaries; the Beijing Olympics, and the uproar caused by promises broken to bring more “openness” to Internet coverage of the Games, and subsequent media interaction; video has exploded onto the mainstream media outlets; newspapers and traditional journalism have apparently finally accepted the fact that online content is nudging them out of the race; and for expats and a growing number of citizens in China, there is still no legal access to sites like facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, to name only three. What’s the good news?

Is it the mother of all trade shows for 2010, or will it be a collision of cultures, as thousands of professionals in a wide variety of industries get together for this monster of an event? Here’s a quick preview of what’s to come in the upcoming Shanghai Expo, and perhaps a few questions and answers that may help to narrow your own search for the right information as you consider the possibilities – and realities – of making a trip out to this historic event for yourself.

It’s a tough world out there, and you’ve got to utilize every possible means of connecting your buyers to you, the eager wholesaler. Internet has been a tremendous development in changing the face of retail and wholesale, but are you thinking of all the angles when it comes to using social networking sites to bring you even closer to your goals? Do your customers — or prospects — know about your ability to blend seamlessly into the fabric of their lives, by being there when they are reaching out to their vast sea of social and professional networks? I’ll point out a few things to consider in the following article.