Virtual Event Success

After reading Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why and Daniel H Pink’s Drive, I was reminded about my own reason for producing telesummits and multi-speaker virtual events for my clients.

In the video clip below, I share why it’s important to understand how your values influence your telesummit and virtual event success. I have 7 values in total – abundance, connections, vitality, faith, excellence, freedom, joy – and in the vide, I explain how my first value, abundance, helps me produce successful telesummits.

What are your values? Please list 3, 5 or 7 below. The ideal number is 5, but if you’re having a hard time narrowing it down, don’t exceed 7. Click here to see a list of values to help you define your top 3, 5 or 7 (opens in a new window).

While staying in Tucson, the housekeeper wrote messages to me on the notepad that was beside the bed. She thanked me for being an awesome guest (click on the image above to read the notes in closer detail).

Her name was Angela and I never met her face-to-face, but she left an impression on me. And it looks like I left an impression on her.

When I travel, I keep the hotel room as I would my own home. The only thing I don’t do is make up my bed, but I don’t do that at home either. Other than that, I put my clothes away, I wipe down the counter in the bathroom and I wash down any hair left behind by me in the shower.

I know that the women (and sometimes men) who work in hotels are hard-working, law abiding and sometimes God-fearing individuals. They are someone’s sister, mother, aunt, daughter or cousin and I treat them as I’d want others to treat people in my own family.

This is the same attitude I bring to my virtual events…

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When I produce a virtual event on behalf of my clients, I give them a Host Guideline Checklist. In it, I provide tips on how to host their virtual event successfully, especially if they’re doing it for the first time.

The biggest success tip is that you can’t facilitate the sessions as a host and manage customer support issues at the same time. It’s just not possible.

As the host, you need to focus on the speakers and present a genial and pleasant demeanor to attendees. Your positive attitude will be adversely affected if an email comes from an attendee complaining that they can’t find the call-in details or that they can’t access the recordings.

That’s why the role of Virtual Event Host and Virtual Event Customer Service needs to be separated. The host can’t respond to customer issues right away and if he or she can’t, this will most likely increase refund requests from attendees or put a speaker into a panicky state if he or she is missing connection details.

This happened to me recently. I was to speak at a virtual event, but I couldn’t find the details on how to connect to the sessions. I frantically looked at every email correspondence I received from the virtual event organizers to see if I simply missed it.

With only 30-minutes left to go before I took the “virtual stage”, I sent an email to the speaker co-ordinator. Then to the event director. Then, I went on Twitter and saw that both had tweeted something out an hour earlier, so I sent them both a reply.

Nothing. All I could hear were crickets chirping.

With 10-minutes left before I hit the stage, I was able to dig up a phone number for the speaker co-ordinator. Thankfully, she answered the phone and said she was so engrossed in one of the panel discussions that she hadn’t checked email or Twitter in about an hour.

Eek!

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Crave authority? Visibility? Want to attain a power position? Want to be a leader with your own personal brand? Well, you can find out how virtual events can help you do this in an interview I did with Susan Bratton.

Susan is my favoritist digital diva. We met at the 2007 Podcast & New Media Expo and instantly clicked. The Business Journal named Susan a 2009 Woman of Influence in Silicon Valley and for good reason – she’s a connector and knows everybody. So when Susan asked me to share my knowledge about virtual events on her show, Dishy Mix, I just couldn’t refuse.

To listen to the 30-minute interview, click here. And just to let you know, Susan is speaking at Virtual Event Boom on

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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Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia is planning a virtual wedding expo for November 14-15, 2009.  Registered visitors will enter an online space with virtual booths, manned by live company representatives, wedding experts and resources. And if you have to miss a session, the recordings will be available for playback until February 28, 2010.

I like the fact that Martha Stewart is looking at the wonderful world of virtual events to reach out to prospects and consumers. What I don’t like is the time limit on the recordings. Attendees will have just 3 short months to consume all the sessions they missed.

And then what? What will happen to these recordings? I truly hope that the company that’s providing their virtual event platform has given Martha Stewart Omnimedia advice on how to monetize the recordings after the February 28, 2010.  Every virtual event strategy must have a monetization plan that takes them beyond just charging for admission at the door. Please make sure you also have a monetization strategy down pact.

Susan Friedmann, The Tradeshow Coach, wrote an article called 3 Ways to Have Virtual Events Work with Physical Events. Here are the 3 ways:

1. Virtual events can supplement physical events. Host a virtual event in between your physical events so that it’s offered more frequently.
2. They can complement physical events. Host your virtual event first, then drive those attendees to your physical event.
3. Or, virtual events can replace physical events. Instead of doing a trade show in a big room, do it entirely online.

I love how this article is written because it’s simple, orderly and to the point. And while I like the how Susan explains the 3 ways, the supplement and complement could actually be rolled into one point. Any virtual held to try and drive people to your physical event is both complementary and supplementary.

Preview calls, monthly expert webinar interviews, whatever you want to call them, these virtual events do complement and supplement the physical event (should you even choose to host it).

I am pleased that for someone who has made her living off of physical events, Susan is very enthusiastic about virtual events, even offering suggestions on how to get started. Most who hear about virtual anything get nervous and immediately speak of the downfalls. Susan does a good job outlining why virtual events work for keynote speakers and exhibitors.

This is a wonderful video that Cece Salomon-Lee, Director of Marketing for InXpo, put together explaining how to use Twitter for virtual events.

The first part of the video focuses on Twitter basics, such as signing up, following people, retweeting, blocking people and sending tweets or direct messages. So, if you consider yourself to be an intermediate or advanced Twitter user, you can skip the first 5-minutes.

Cece starts to explain how to use Twitter for virtual events at the 5:50 mark. Some very valuable advice, so click on the play button below to hear her tips.

I also blogged about how to use Twitter hashtags to fill your next virtual event.