Virtual Event Success

I’ve blogged many times on the ways you can use Twitter to fill your virtual event here and here. Plus, I shared a video by CeCe Solomon-Lee on the very same topic. Dennis Shiao, a colleague of CeCe, also weighed in on the topic and while I loved all his points, one stood out that caused me concerned.

Dennis wrote about the frequency of using your event’s hashtag in your tweets and warned that you shouldn’t use them excessively. In particular, he wrote:

Be careful not to over-promote to the related hashtags, as constant promotion of your virtual event will surely turn off the followers of that hash tag – you’ll even receive backlash from them.

On the one hand, I see his point. However, there’s a way to use your event’s hashtag on Twitter that will help you avoid this backlash and allow you to tweet out updates from your virtual event.

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CeCe Salomon-Lee posted another gem outlining the 7 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Next Virtual Event (co-authored with Dennis Shiao). As I read through the 7 tips, the big thing that stood out for me is that as an attendee, you have to interact with the exhibitors, speakers and other attendees.

To really apply what you’re learning, you need to brainstorm with other attendees. Often, that’s where some of your best ideas will come from. As CeCe and Dennis state:

Engage in the Group Chats: Besides the content, the best parts of a virtual conference are the group chat and one-on-one chats within the virtual environment. While the presentations can be viewed on archive after the live event ends, the conversations are not replicable. I recommend spending at least 1-2 hours chatting with others in the various group chats.

Yet another advantage to attending virtual events is a chance to speak to exhibitors in a low pressure environment. Most exhibitors who attend virtual events do so to collect information on attendees. Since their priority is to generate leads, you’ll find that most exhibitors at virtual events won’t pressure you to buy something. As CeCe & Dennis point out:

Speak with Exhibitors: Unlike a physical event which would mainly be staffed with sales staff, vendors can staff a virtual conference with more subject-matter experts. Take the opportunity to speak with these experts especially if you’re researching or even in the final stages of selecting a solution.

So, remember that interaction with exhibitors, speakers and other attendees will be key to helping you make the most out of your attendance at a future virtual event.

Anyone who uses basketball as an analogy for any business strategy gets a gold star in my book. And that’s what Dennis Shiao did in a recent blog post on how you can draft the right team to help you pull of a successful virtual event or virtual show. His blog post is just so brilliant, I just can’t believe I didn’t write it first.

As I went through Dennis’ post, all his advice applies to virtual event managers, however, what stood out is the following:

The Point Guard – the point guard is often considered the surrogate coach on the floor – s/he dribbles the ball up the court and commands the offense.  In a virtual event, the point guard is the Event Host or Event Planner – the person who’s responsible for coordinating all the various parties involved in the execution of the event.  Rookie point guards rarely excel in the NBA – so make sure you have a veteran player running point in your virtual event.  If you have rookies on board, have them play the understudy role, so that they can grow into a starting role for the next virtual event.  A virtual event is best produced by someone who’s run the show many times before.

In my years of playing basketball, I’ve played with some amazing point guards. I’ve also played with points guards who were awful. The ones that were awful didn’t shout out the right instructions, had a look of fear in their eyes and performed very poorly.

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I was reading a post written by Dennis Shiao on Virtual Event ROI. Dennis participated on a panel at the 2009 Virtual Edge Summit talking about the return on investment on hosting virtual events.

His post got me thinking about all the ways I measure the return on my virtual event investment (ROVEI?). I’ve used both the phone and webinar technology to host my virtual events and you may think that these 2 tools lack a way to measure your results.

In one sense, yes. But where there’s a lack, I use other tools to help me measure what I’m doing. For example:

• I use Cartville to manage my affiliate commissions, clickthrough and sales. The image below is a screenshot from my 2008 Social Media Telesummit, an 8-day virtual event I hosted entirely over the phone. My affiliates used special links to share with their network to help me promote the event. The screenshot below shows which sales were referred by my affiliates and the total commission I paid out to them.

• I used a URL shortening service that tracked clickthroughs to a summary of the content I heard after the first day of the 2009 Social Media Telesummit. I just love budurl.com and used it to shorten my really long virtual event URL so I can share it on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Not only does it track clicks, but budurl.com tells you where it’s coming from. The screenshot below is a screenshot from budurl.com.

• To measure attendee engagement, I use a hashtag on Twitter. This helps me to monitor how engaged attendees are in what they’re hearing. The screenshot below shows a few tweets from attendees from one of my more recent virtual events. The Twitter hashtag my co-host and I used was #osmt.

There are certainly other tools that I use, but these are just a small sample of what’s in my virtual event measurement toolkit. This helps me to keep the costs low since most of these tools are free or low cost.

What other tools would you suggest to help virtual event managers measure sales conversions and audience engagement?