If you’ve ordered some branded USB memory sticks for your sales conference, show or exhibition and really want to squeeze the maximum value from them then you should consider loading data onto the memory stick as well.

Whilst the printed USB memory stick will do a great job at showing off your brand or logo loading data onto the sticks is a easy and cost effective way to give your customer easy access to your sales, pricing and promotional material.

After all the most expensive part of any branded memory stick is the flash memory housed within the stick itself so it makes sense to make use of it. Any file that can be digitized can be stored on the memory stick. As a good rule of thumb any data that can be stored on your PC or Mac can be stored on the memory stick but its best to stick to file or data types that most people will have the application to open.

Files that are typically pre-loaded onto a memory stick before distribution include things like PDF versions of sales brochures or price lists, PowerPoint presentations, Movie files, audio files and other Microsoft Office files.

These files can either be “locked” onto the memory stick so they can be viewed or copied but not deleted. Or they can be loaded without any protection so that they user can delete them when they have finished with them and then make full use of the available memory on the stick for their own use. There are two schools of thought on the merits of which approach is best but if you do load lots of data onto the memory sticks and then “lock” this data you make it less likely that the stick will be used and therefore negate the benefit of the user carrying it around with them.

Its always easier (and cheaper) to load the data onto the memory sticks during the manufacturing process but if this is not possible then don’t panic because most supplier of branded memory sticks offer a local, post-production data loading service as well albeit this tends to be a little more expensive.

One of the simplest and most effective things to data load onto a memory stick is a link to your website. Loading these links onto the memory sticks is very very simple. If you are loading web links yourself just connect the USB stick to your PC and wait for the PC to allocate a Drive Letter to it and generate the “pop-up” window so that you can see what’s on the stick. At this point you just “drag and drop” the bookmark of your website from your browser to the memory stick and that’s it. What you should then see is a link stored on the memory stick that when clicked will open you web page.

Don’t ignore the opportunities to load data onto your memory sticks even if it’s something as simple as your web site URL. After all you’re paying for the memory storage on a promotional memory stick so you ought to make best use of it.