Social Media Strategies

There has been an endless debate on whether or not to jump on the virtual events bandwagon. We’ve seen examples of how companies like Microsoft and Nokia hosted their virtual events. We’ve also seen how companies like IBM have such a dominant presence on virtual worlds such as Second Life.

If your company has a large enough user-base or prospect lists but you can’t justify the costs of holding live physical events, then you should consider going virtual. It’s time for us to drop our inhibitions about virtual events and face the facts. Here are some to begin with:

1- There are actual calculatable benefits of virtual events, like increased productivity time, reduced carbon footprint, zero traveling time, increased volunteer participation, zero geographical boundaries and bigger audience attendance.

2- Ability to engage people more interactively on a one to one level. When networking, you can have conversations with multiple attendees at the same time (just like in IMs) and yet make them all feel you are talking exclusively with them. 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.

3- During these interactions you can share material, knowledge, presentations, PDFs, photos and other files. You can also add content recommendation systems.

4- One of the biggest post-event challenges is to analyze the attendee’s data. Virtual Events makes it much more advanced and quantifiable. You can see exactly what each attendee did, where he went, who he talked to, what material he downloaded, what questions he asked, what conversations he had with others etc. This is all valuable information that can help you understand your audience better and follow-up with them accordingly.

5- Using all of the information about a prospect or user that you gather, you can then easily categorize them according to how interested they are and how much they already know. You can then add them into your sales pipelines in different lists depending on their current relationship status.

6- Event marketing in virtual events is much lower than live physical events. According to Brent Arlsaner, VP of Marketing for Unisfair, a virtual events coordinator; virtual events generate leads at about $23 per head count.

“Take our client Quest Software’s first virtual event, which generated leads at a $23-per-head count. Marketers know that $23 per lead is a pretty impressive return on investment.”

7-If you are pressed on time, it takes on average one third to one fourth the time to organize virtual events as opposed to physical events. Less organizing time, means lesser headaches and lesser overhead costs.

8- If you want to hire booth staff or volunteers, you can get cheaper options from across the globe instead of being restricted to geographical constraints. All you have to do is put up a job post on Elance or oDesk and review the candidates that apply. You can pay only for the actual work done rather than for the number of hours.

9- The registration and ticketing process of virtual events is simpler in nature since it eliminates the need for paper tickets completely. This can be integrated with a payment system to make the entire registration process a seamless experience. Instead of tickets, you can simply grant access on the doorway when someone logs into the event space.

10- You can market richer content which is available on the spot instead of waiting for the event to be over. Some attendees may immediately add the pictures to their flickr, friendfeed or blogs. Pictures of the event or attendees can be taken and passed around during the event with your clients/sponsors brands visible in the background. This will give the clients or sponsors an added incentive to advertise or sponsor the event.

Is this why companies like On24 are coming up with virtual event platforms for other companies to host their events? What other virtual event platforms can be used?

I would like to take this debate a step forward with you guys. If any one of you has hosted virtual events, please share your experience with us here. If any of you have had a chance to market virtual events, what challenges did you face? If any one of you faces barriers to entering the virtual events world, let us know what they are. Together, let us try to evaluate whether or not this is the future of events. I’m tagging some notable people in this domain, Julius and Eugene to get the conversation ball rolling. Let’s hear all of you out.

P.S: Its okay to disagree.

Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)

Social Traffic - The book

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