We recently  stopped into the Javitz Center in New York to check in on the NY Xpo Small Business Conference  and see what’s hot for the SMB market. Event Management’s SVP  Devin Cleary from the Xpo was a big help to us as we toured the floor. The exhibitors included the usual group of local chambers of commerce, government small business agencies and professional services. We kept an eye-out, however, for the new trends and services that could help our clients drive growth forward. And of course we kept a sharp eye out for what was happening with social for small businesses.

One of our first stops was at the Infusionsoft booth. We use their email and lead management system here at Social Jumpstart so we always like checking in with this key partner vendor to see what is new.

In addition to getting some product updates we picked up a couple slick all-in-one mouse pad and screen cleaners (cool swag) and had the chance to chat with the terrific Infusionsoft  team, including Social Media Specialist Heather Dopson who was a delight to meet.

A clear and exciting trend from the show was the emergence of new technologies for lead generation. These systems are leveraging the confluence of social technology and old fashion lead networking with some easy User Interfaces. This makes the services easy to use and potentially very productive as well. Two promising services included herematch – designed for networking live at events and Business Leads and bounty program that rewards people for making connections. Businessleads.com in particular is doing some interesting crowd sourced bounty lead generation that could be useful to many small businesses.

Overall is was a worthwhile afternoon meeting plenty of NYC small business owners and service providers and we look forward to attending their future shows as well.