Thus, the acid test:

Can a competitor’s product name be substituted? If so, you haven’t differentiated yourself.

The seminar also included some excellent overviews and self-assessments entrepreneurs ought to be taking while refining their messaging and taking their product to market. Definitely worth a read.

On related news, here’s a quick shout out to a few of the very cool entrepreneurs I’ve met at the NVBC seminars over the past month. All of these people seem to have big ideas, solid business plans and bright futures (Angel investors, where are you?).

Bradley Coleman, co-founder of ProxyDemocracy. Think “corporate governance”. ProxyDemocracy provides a set of tools to help investors use their voting power to produce positive changes in the companies they own. Seems timely, eh?

Eric Brooke, owner of Ignitia. Eric is frequently engaged in a leadership capacity or as a strategic adviser to executives, as well as to offer his wealth of expertise in communications and marketing. Very smart guy.

John Gray, CEO of SKRIPT Foundry. SKRIPTfoundry specializes in multifaceted solutions using Web standard coding practices. John’s got serious ambitions for this company and it sounds like they’re on the cusp of big things.

Ian Clark, President of RealSpace. His company creates innovative solutions for interactive 3D. Good for training in a virtual 3D world for employees in a range of industries. Their offering sounds awfully useful.

Positioning: How to Stand Out in a Cluttered Market

* Content is king. Keep your articles and descriptions relevant and interesting. Cool flash graphics and streaming video are no substitute for bad text.

* Be authentic. If you’re going to use social networking platforms to reach a wider audience, you’re going to have to actually be social. Have real conversations.

Panel organizer Liz Gaige of Market Navigators also had some excellent points about ensuring you have clear goals about your marketing campaign. Given the nature of the seminar, it made sense for us to talk about social networking and SEO, though Liz was quite correct to point out that more traditional marketing methods such as print advertising placements, direct mail marketing and other tactics also still have a place in any marketing toolkit.

One topic I also pursued was the ease of syndication of content. I’m a big believer in the ability of social networks to extend the reach of messaging. Blog posts become RSS-fed tweets, which become Facebook fan-page status updates, LinkedIn updates, and more. With a few quick emails or phone-conversations, or just by filling a form, you can make arrangements to get your content streamed to high-profile websites and media sites. Sure, Google will downgrade duplicate content, so you’ll need to tweak your headlines and your lead paragraphs a bit to prevent that from happening.

Finally, I also stressed the importance of building links back to your site and making sure those links go back to the right page. Remember, your social networks are just hooks to bring eyeballs back to your anchor website where you can change minds, evangelize and most likely, try to sell stuff. When you run campaigns, you may want to link back to custom-designed landing pages rather than a home page or other section. This makes it easier to track metrics in Google Analytics (or whatever else you’re using to track hits).

I’m looking forward to presenting alongside these very talented women again sometime. If you were present at the event or have any other questions (or comments) about driving traffic to your online store, go ahead and leave a comment. Cheers.

So if you are a blogger in Vancouver and you’re looking to share some war stories or just learn from others who have achieved some small measure of success in this upside-down crazy world of new media, join the Vancouver Blogger Meetup group and come on out.

Whether you’re blogging for business, for fun or some mix of both, I can guarantee you’ll learn something at these events and probably have a lot of fun to boot.

Hope to see you there.

Don’t get tricked or traded into a blogger sweatshop!