Your Virtual Road map by Kevin Olsen

This month, we are going to talk about companies which are using virtual events as a strategic tool in their corporate strategies.

First, what does Kevin Olsen mean by developing virtual events? Virtual events are events that are organized in order to allow people to share a common virtual environment on the Web, instead of meeting in a physical location. Establishing a relevant virtual strategy is a key issue when professionals want to make their virtual events a success as well as promoting their brand and their skills on the event market.

The process of creating an effective virtual event strategy is based on 6 steps:

1- Virtual event objectives
In fact, professionals must deeply evaluate what kind of event they want to set up: they must determine the goals, objectives and functions of this event. The most important thing to know is why this company needs to organize it. The two popular reasons to organize virtual events are to generate results and new leads. However, organizations often have other priorities.

2- Select a Platform
The development of new technologies allows professionals to have the choice among virtual supports. The choice has to be made functions of the event and its goals: is it a fully virtual or a hybrid live-virtual event?
Last thing to do in this step, is to think about the audience: have they already used technology before?

3- Build a strong team
To execute the first virtual event, companies need to build strong partnerships and to surround itself with the good persons: this will decrease the risk of failure. It means knowledge people in the company as well as external partners: use a recommended platform and a good communication firm for example.

4- Develop a communication strategy
The creation of the platform is done, organizers must now create the buzz and make it well known and used. A good marketing strategy is based on a good analysis of the audience: who will experience the virtual event? How will they use it?

5- Craft the experience
The platform is used, organizers have to get feedbacks from attendees and know what a success is and what could be improved.

6- Measure your success
Virtual event technologies offer many possibilities to measure the success: as participants take part of a virtual world, creators can have access to their activities. Organizers are able to know what part of the virtual event worked well and what the most popular partners are. They can check how many times visitors have clicked on for example. It is a good and easy way to measure the ROI.

This article enables us to understand how a company or an event planner can use the virtual world to make the success of an event. We have also learnt the entire process of the creation of a virtual event.
In fact virtual events are the future of the industry. Do you think companies and event planners should develop this new way of making events? Is it a danger for the industry?

Source: http://www.mpiweb.org/Portal/Technology/20110103/Your_Virtual_Road_Map
Source (image): http://bdbblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Make-contact-at-virtual-events.jpg