International Business and Technology Blog

The State International Development Organizations, Inc. (SIDO) is the premiere U.S. organization dedicated to supporting state international trade agencies, whose mission statement states “SIDO provides state trade promotion professionals with a forum for collaboration and sharing best practices as well as advocates for states’ international trade development issues so that U.S. companies remain globally competitive”.

SIDO recognized IBT Online with the “Champion of Trade” Award for its successful Online Global program, working directly with small to medium-sized exporters, helping them grow their sales, brands and businesses globally. The award was presented to John Worthington, IBT Online CEO, by Manny Mencia, SIDO President, (Manny is also SVP International Trade and Development at Enterprise Florida, the public-private partnership between Florida’s business and government leaders and is the principal economic development organization for Florida) at the annual SIDO Best Practices and Training Forum in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Did you miss it?

Walking around any place in the UK it is hard not to see someone looking at their smartphone, therefore it is not surprising that the UK’s Ofcom(1) report out in August 2015 heralding in the official status that the UK is a “Smartphone society” went largely unnoticed. So if you missed it (buried in the depths of a 435 page report) here it is…  “For the first time, the smartphone has overtaken the laptop as the device internet users say is the most important for connecting to the internet; in 2015 33% chose their smartphone…” and there is even a funky graph to go with it.

We are continuously looking to see how effective our online marketing is, and one of the great benefits of digital marketing is that there are some excellent tools to tell you just that. We are running a series of webinars which are very popular, with over 50 people registered for the last one. Now, my challenge is to set about doubling that number. We share some of our own online marketing activities to help you improve your marketing return on investment.

Last week I spent four days attending the Paris Air Show, supporting Business Oregon and their three companies exhibiting, as well as Northeast Pennsylvania and their five companies attending the show. If you have not been, it is an enormous seven day event. This year there were 2,260 exhibitions from 47 countries. The USA had 320 exhibitors, 230-plus in the US International Pavilion where I was based. Around the show itself there were many side events, receptions and evening networking parties.

Most people assume that B2C ecommerce is the “big brother” and B2B is trailing way behind, but it is time to think again. Research from Forrester shows that, in the US, B2B ecommerce is now twice the size of B2C ecommerce and predicts that B2B ecommerce sales in the US will reach $780 billion by the end of 2015. That represents 9.3% of all B2B sales!  

I read an interesting article by Jayson DeMers in the Forbes that shared a report from Shareaholic. Based on the 340k websites in the Shareaholic network then, as of December 2014, social media is now the #1 driver of all website referral accounting for 31.24% compared to the 22.71% from the same period in the previous year.