Last week, we attended and presented at the MarkeTECH conference in Curtis to learn more about marketing and entrepreneurship from Southwest Nebraska's best and brightest. The event was hosted by GROW Nebraska and is part of a series of conferences happening this fall all over the state.

There were three sessions, including:

• "What Flew and What Flopped" - Judith Ogden (Village Piemaker) and Judy Pederson (Pro Printing)
• "Designing for Successful Websites" - Connie Hancock (UNL Extension)

• "Grow Your Business in the Digital Marketing Age" - Michael Mitilier (Rule of Thumb Biz)

  Here are our top three takeaways from MarkeTECH in Curtis:

  1. Know Your Audience. It's important to know who your target market is. If you try a new product or service, and it's not working, then re-evaluate and determine whether or not you should keep it right away. You may think something is a good idea, but your customers might not!
  2. Talk The Lingo. Your website is one of the most important tools in your business and while you may not know the 'ins' and 'outs' of how it works, you can still educate yourself to ask questions. Learning about search engine optimization and knowing what to ask of your developer will help a lot in getting found online.
  3. Get Creative With Your Content. While having new content every day or week is great, you can also re-use what you already have. Get creative with your hashtags and copy to target different demographics with the same article.

  We are looking forward to the upcoming MarkeTECH workshops around the state! See if one is coming to your area here.

  Did any of you attend MarkeTECH? What did you learn?