Social Media Strategies

My company (IMASTE - http://www.imaste-ips.com) develops and organises virtual events, like virtual fairs, jobfairs and tradeshows all around Europe.

I completely agree with the key factor that the technology must suit the needs of each virtual event host. And these needs, from our experience, vary a lot deppending on the sector, market or country. Thus, the web based app that you will need to power your virtual event needs to be vey flexible and customisable.

On the other hand, we started to organise hybrid events, with a real face to face and a virtual component. Like our new virtual environment fair in France http://www.planetemodedemploi-sv.fr/ We believe that this trend will grow rapidly during 2010, which seems to be a very exciting year!.

My company InXpo (www.InXpo.com) has powered over 600 virtual events and business environments for corporations, associations and publishers. Based on our experience, I would like to expand on your points and make some additional comments to consider:

1) Virtual events track a lot data but without a lead scoring engine, sometimes the data can be too overwhelming. With our platform, you can weight certain criteria to develop a lead score report which helps you to identify and qualify priority leads for your sales organization.
2) While a virtual event does eliminate some aspects of the event planning process, such as venue visits, negotiating for hotel and catering, and other elements to a physical event, this is still an event. We recommend that customers allow for at least 2-3 months to develop a strategy that takes your objectives and audience in mind and impacts your content development, speaker recruitment and production of the virtual event itself.
3) Besides finding your contacts on your social graph more easily, our platform also integrates social technologies to enable information from an event to cascade to your social networks. For example, we were the first to fully integrate with Twitter. This way, your audience is helping to publicize your content and event to their networks and so on.
4) This in turn highlights the real-time aspect of virtual. With virtual, I can see a link, click on it and register to enter the virtual event immediately; however, I may not be able to jump on a plane to attend a physical conference. You’re now combining the impact of social media with measurable business results!

And to kboode’s point, while we cannot simulate a handshake in the virtual environment, with video one-one-one chat, we are able to provide eye-to-eye contact.

Again, an event is an event regardless if it takes place in the physical or virtual realm.
We believe that eventually, all physical events will have a virtual component to further enhance the experience that we all have at that event.

I’m more than happy to chat with anyone who has any questions.

Best,
Cece Salomon-Lee
Director of Marketing, InXpo.
cece at InXpo dot com

Thanks for the add Salmomon,.... the site looks great. Let's hook up for a chat.

The biggest if in virtual event is the technology. If the technology fails (for whatever reason) you meeting is failing. If that happens $23/person is a lot of money. On top of that the people are frustrated and are going to be more resistant. I have seen it and been there.

If technology is not a factor, I can see the benefits of a virtual meeting. It is nice for all involved to be able to stay home, rather than travel. Of course, the human interaction is hard to replace. You better make sure your agenda is compelling, because you will very easily loose your audience if it gets boring.

This is true, the organizer may have superb broadcast quality but there's no guarantee the participants have a decent connection to not get frustrated with the whole event. I'm happy not participating live at a paid online event, I can just watch the recorded video later but I'd like the chance to leave a comment or a question. Also, I'm in Asia and events are usually at hours when I can't keep my eyes open. It's definitely cheaper and takes up less time than taking a flight over.

Addy - Virtual events can be in a lot of different forms. What I believe Simon was saying here (and of course he will chime in if we are not "getting it"!) is that rather than believing that you have to get people together in the physical world and announce and sell tickets and have the expense of the production, you can get people together in a similar way to celebrate something (a bok or product launch, a life event and even a charity) virtually and actually achieve a much larger impact. If you can rally folks across the globe to get on board for something, then the ability for the "movement" to spread is much more likely than just having a book signing at a local bookstore as an example. I believe that today we will hear Simon's ideas about this as it relates to his book. I think we will experience this firsthand soon.... just hold on!

I get virtual events. I get how it is cheaper than physical events.
I don't get Second Life (kinda spooky) and why virtual events have to be in that form. Maybe you're not saying it has to be in that form. Why not video tape the real thing? People can still participate virtually can't they?

You said: "It’s also easier to locate contacts from your existing Twitter, Friendfeed, LinkedIn or Facebook networks. Those are people you may not necessarily recognize in real life, but will be able to find easily in a virtual setting"

Why is it easier? It's the same. I don't get it. That almost sounds like a way to assume a personality that is not recognizable in real life.

I may be missing the whole point entirely. Can someone explain, please? Thanks.