I love finding great examples of how companies have thought outside the box to find ways of attracting visitors, press coverage, links and oh yes – winning more business.

The trade show marketing niche is a competitive one. We should know because we provide an innovative service to help companies with their trade show follow up and that’s how we discovered this story.

Skyline is a trade show marketing company, established in 1980 and so could typically be put into the ‘old skool’ box – your average company, stuck in the dark ages, with a sceptical view of the internet. Not so. They have embraced the power of search and have done something anyone reading this article could and should do to generate more leads.

They have decided to invest in a blog and when I say invest, I’m not talking financially – because it costs next to nothing to set one up… they’ve invested in time and energy. They’ve identified the sort of people they would like to attract and have provided a huge amount of free information to try to attract those visitors.

So – let’s take a look at what they’ve done.

1. Back in June 2009 they decided to set up a site dedicated to giving away trade show tips  at www.skylinetradeshowtips.com
2. They have focused on their marketplace to Tweet, post stories and provide valuable insight into the world of trade show marketing
3. They have generated a site in under a year with great Google authority (PR5), over 1300 backlinks to their site and hundreds of comments, again, creating authority
4. They capture email addresses by giving away (seriously) valuable information in the form of 9 free white papers, whilst at the same time taking people back to their main corporate site and exposing them to their main brand
5. They naturally position themselves as market leaders in their niche

If you had never heard of Skyline, yet through search find an article on the Skylinetradshowtips site, what would you think? Are they generating trust by providing valuable insight to you? Are they demonstrating they know what they are talking about through action? Would you be interested in giving their email address in return for serious insight? Would you follow their Twitter stream to continue receiving advice?

Are you more likely or less likely to call them for a quote do you think?

When businesses quite rightly question the ROI on social media, that last question is the key one. You should always focus on that end result and if an activity is not directly linked to that end goal, don’t do it!

So – what could you do today to attract more visitors to your site?