7 iPhone Apps to Make Your Next Trade Show More Profitable
by Matt Gratt on 10/05/10 at 5:00 am
If you like forgetting details, spending hours of quality time with your CRM system and feeling paralyzed when your reaction time goes from minutes to days, you should go to a trade show without your iPhone. Now that you have an advanced mobile computing platform in your pocket while you man your booth, you can be as efficient and effective as possible.
An iPhone on its own can’t be effective, however, you must integrate the iPhone into good business process. Here are seven examples of how you can use iPhone apps to make trade shows more profitable for you and your business:
Before the Show
- Notify your professional network that you are attending a show using Linkedin 
. The app has some new functionality where you can add someone in person so you can use it as a business card replacement during the show.
-Tweet your followers and the other event attendees on Twitter using either Tweetdeck or Tweetie . Lots of journalists, analysts as well as prospective clients or business partners are on Twitter.
At the Show
- Evernote is great for keeping track of information about individual accounts, notes competitors, and other market intelligence. The handwriting recognition and OCR technologies are great for taking pictures of signs, business cards, and product literature (particularly your competitor’s).
- If you’re on a tight budget, consider an iPod Touch or iPhone with WorldCard Mobile – Business Card Reader as an alternative to a more expensive custom badge scanner You might be able to run an iPod Touch off of a MiFi from Sprint or Verizon. Make sure you can get your iPod Touch on the WiFi in your venue before you commit to this strategy.
- If you take payments or sell at your tradeshows, you should consider Square for iPhone. It’s a well-done payment system. I particularly like the geo-tagged receipt the customer is instantly sent. I’ve also seen a larger version running on an iPad that makes an excellent cash register stand-in.
After the Show
- You can do your follow-up emails on the way home if you use Dragon Dictation from Nuance. This app allows you to dictate notes and email them directly from the program. The dictation is pretty good but you should still review what was transcribed before you send it.
-After a long day on your feet, you deserve a good meal and a beer. You can use Yelp to find the best restaurant, wherever you are. The ‘Feed’ feature includes pictures of dishes and up-to-the-minute reviews of area restaurants. The app is more effective in some places, like large cities, than others.
As you can see, the iPhone is a valuable tool for your trade show exhibition. These seven apps are only the beginning. iPhone OS 4.0 promises even more helpful features like multi-tasking, better enterprise service including device management, over-the-air custom app deployment and SSL VPN support so you can be assured that the device will only get better and more able to help you in your business.
Do you use any iPhone apps when you go to tradeshows? Please Share with the Community and Leave a Comment.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Preparing to Write Your First iPhone App (theappleblog.com)
- iPhone, iPhone/iPad DevCon and iPad (ztrek.blogspot.com)
Pingback: Perfect Pairing: iPad and Mind-Mapping at a Tradeshow « iPadCTO
Pingback: Chicago Mac/PC Support