The last two weeks has been a master class on how to present brilliantly or poorly as that may be. While I am admittedly a Democrat and mainly watched the Democrat National Conference, my points are not based on party affiliation. Rather it’s about the power of speaking simply to convey a message.

This is an issue not related solely to politicians, but any person who presents publicly. A powerful speaker is remembered long after the speech has concluded. And the single quality that all memorable speakers have? Simplicity.

Here are four tips to brilliant speaking:

Tell a story

Telling a story helps to draw your audience in – it has a beginning, middle and end. A story can convey a message so much more powerfully than any talking point. When possibly, weave your key points into a relevant story to personalize it for your audience.

Eliminate jargon

Too often, we fall into the habit of speaking in industry acronyms or jargon. While there are appropriate occasions for this language, from my perspective, the jargon gets in the way. It can become a crutch to using clear language to convey your message.

Vary your cadence

Be mindful of the cadence of your presentation. We tend to fall into one “speed” when we speak, which can lead to a “monotone” presentation. Review your presentation to pinpoint what type of emotion you want to convey. For example, if you want to highlight an important point, pausing for 1-2 seconds before delivering the key point signals to your audience to pay attention.

Whereas, in some points, you may want to use stacatto, brief sentences to quicken the pace and excitement of what you’re stating.

Be direct

Our tendency is to build up to our main point. We lay out the facts. Point out the supporting points. And then with the flair of a magician, ta da! We unveil our key point. Instead, turn this paradigm around. You audience has a short attention span. Start with your conclusion first and then map back to it.

Conclusion

After watching the DNC most of last week, the presentations I remembered did not happen to be President Obama’s. Rather it was President Clinton and John Kerry. Each had his own style. His own message. But each delivered well and incorporated one or more of the above four points.

What tips would do you have?

During the Coachella Music Festival in April 2012, Tupac Shukar, a hip-hop star who passed away in 1996, made a surprise appearance as a hologram, performing “live” along side hip-hop/rap stars Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre. You may be asking yourselves, why is this musical festival relevant to virtual trends, much less the meetings and events industry?

While virtual technology has progressed to become part of a larger strategy to engage audiences, I believe the holographic performance came closest to achieving the goal of this technology – seamless blending of “virtual and live” experiences.

Relevance

Coachella is a 3-day music festival known for its music – up and coming and legends, cutting and bleeding edge, folk/acoustic to rap and hip hop. Levering innovative technology to showcase a performance by a holographic Tupac was relevant to the nature of the festival and its audience.

It evoked an immediate response

Our industry is about evoking a response with our audience through engagement. Tupac’s performance not only evoked a response – initially shock that transitioned into elation, but also promoted conversation and engagement (between the festival and audience members and the general community) long after the festival concluded. That is the ultimate goal for our industry.

Blended well into the “live” aspect of the festival

The technology was used strategically as part of the festival’s penultimate performance that also included Snoop Dog, Dr. Dre, Eminem, and 50 Cent. The temptation to do a whole set by Tupac or have him “walk through” the crowd must have been high. Rather, the festival featured Tupac for two songs – achieving the desired result while blending well into the overall nature of the festival. Any more could have negatively impacted the event.

On my other blog, The Virtual Buzz, I wrote a blog post regarding 10 Tips for a Successful Virtual Press Conference. With web conferencing, webcasting, live streaming and virtual event technology, I believe it’s important that PR and marketing practitioners understand how to hold online press conferences.

Please share you thoughts, expriences and comments below on holding/producing a virtual press conference.

I’m excited to announce the launch of The Virtual Buzz, a new venture that I’m undertaking with Donna Sanford of Sanford Project Partners. I had the pleasure of working with Donna, first as editor of EXPO Magazine and then as part of our work on behalf of the Virtual Edge Summit. 

Our common interest in virtual and hybrid events brought us together. With Donna’s how-to take related to her journalism background and my role on the vendor side to follow and anlyze trends and trend setters, we recognized a synergy and opportunity to blend these perspectives to bring you the best on virtual and hybrid environments.

Our goal is to two-fold: 

• - analyze the trends, report the news and uncover best practices
• - curate the best content on hybrid and virtual environments available online

Simply, our goal is to highlight what people are buzzing about within the industry.

So what does this mean for PR Meets Marketing? I still plan to write about public relations and marketing here; but future posts on virtual events not related to marketing and PR will now live on The Virtual Buzz.

As I wrote in my first post for the site, “The Current State of the Virtual Environment Industry“:

And on behalf of Donna and myself, we hope that you will be a passenger along for the ride, seeing what’s buzzing in hybrid & virtual environments on our new adventure, The Virtual Buzz.

On Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 1 pm PT, I am moderating a Focus roundtable discussion on how marketers can develop and implement marketing campaigns that can drive awareness for their virtual events and attract audiences. Michelle Bruno, Bruno Group Signature Events, and Shannon Ryan, Adviser, Virtual Events, Focus, will also participate on this roundtable.

We’ll address topics such as:

1) When, why and how to leverage social media for your virtual event
2) Strategies to convert registrants into audience members on the day of the virtual event
3) Collaborate with partners, customers and employees to spread the word of mouth

Here are ways you can join the conversation before or during the roundtable:

•  
  • -  submit your own question with FocusMarketingRT as a topic
  • - on Twitter using the hashtag #FocusRT
  • - send questions to me via Twitter (@csalomonlee)
  • - leaving a comment below

WHERE:
Toll-free Dial-In Number: (866) 951-1151
International Dial-In Number: (201) 590-2255
Conference # : 4999006

by alpa auer via flickr

A recent discussion on The Virtual Events & Meeting Technology group on LinkedIn (must join to see the thread) caught my attention recently. It asked what the “highest recorded attendance figure” was for a virtual exhibition.

Unfortunately, many numbers cited in case studies or media articles are all self-reporter. My concern is the use of self-reported numbers doesn’t help our industry. By focusing on the largest number of registrants and attendees, highest number of leads per exhibitor, or longest time spent within the event, the conversation centers around who has the biggest and largest event.

Rather, our industry requires a consistent, standard way to measure the value of a going virtual. In turn, meeting and event professionals can evangelize the benefits of virtual for meeting specific business goals.

But this requires event organizers or virtual event platform providers to open their kimonos on the raw data. To allow a third-party organization to analyze and compare the data in aggregate. For the industry to come to a consensus on consistent terminology and key metrics to ensure we’re comparing apples to apples. That individual interests be put aside for the greater good. And for this to be done consistently on a regular basis.

So who’s game? Who’s willing to take up my challenge open the kimono and share raw data to develop this benchmark?

Let’s begin the discussion and see how we can move this forward.

by jeco via flickr

At the end of February, the Virtual Edge Institute (VEI) announced a new certification program for digital event strategists (Disclosure: I do some consulting for  VEI). While webinars and webcasts are an integral part of the marketing mix, digital events are fairly new for marketers and event practitioners. Besides those who experiment with the new medium, there are not many professionals experienced planning, building and implementing virtual events.

The timing of this new program is just another indicator of the momentum that virtual environments is gaining within organizations – both as a marketing tool and for event marketers. Until now, one of the main obstacles for organizations is to find and employ people with the appropriate expertise to manage virtual event programs. By training people on the ins and outs of digital events, this will further spur the growth within this industry. Here are a couple of responses to date:

Jessica L. Levin, Seven Degrees Communications, “I really like this idea. I think this is an area that is new, technical and requires a lot of education.  I love that they use  ‘Strategist’ in the designation. This tells me that the learning goes beyond mechanics and it a deeper, higher-level approach. All certifications should be taken with a grain of salt, but I appreciate the opportunity to get some formal education.”

Todd Hanson, ROI of Engagement, Catalyst Performance Group, “This is going to be an excellent thing for the industry! I applaud the efforts.”

What do you think? Leave your thoughts below.

via Flickr by Karen Eliot

There has been an interesting discussion on Focus regarding the role of social integration within the virtual platforms. As social media and networking is an integral part of an overal virtual events strategy, including marketing, audience engagement, and event promotion, I wanted to higlight some of the key points mentioned that should be part of your checklist.

Note: Unless indicated, comments are based on my experience going into various platforms and are not indicative of any one platform’s pros/cons:

1. Registration: To date, most of the platforms require a separate registration form and then ask for your Linkedin, Facebook, and/or Twitter login information after you’ve registered. Oftentimes, this is a multi-step process. Points to consider:

Axel Shultze, CEO of Social Media Academy (@AxelS): “We use http://xeesm.com as a bridge between the virtual event platform – in our case On24 – and the social web.”

- Does your platform directly allow people to register using Facebook connect or other social network login?

- If not, do you have a third-party application that can bridge this?

Joerg Rathenberg, VP of Marketing, Unsifair (@jrathenberg): “On the microsite or landing page you have the ability for registrants to forwad the link to their communities using the integrated social media icons as well as email. You can also use twitter and FB icons to increase your followership from here.”

- After registering, can registrants share this with their friends and followers via social media or email?

- If so, can I append a conference/event hashtag to the message?

2. Friends & Family: If you allow the virtual event platform to connect to your social networks, the benefit of this is to evaluate your social graph to determine which of your connections are registered for the event, attend the event in real-time, and/or who might be interested in that event. Taking this a step further, based on your profile, and eventually the types of individuals you connect with online, the platform should then provide you with matches of prospective individuals with whom you should connect. This increases your networking opportunities accordingly.

- Do you have the ability to provide recommended matches based on my profile?

- Can you see which of my connections are registered/attending the event?

- Can you identify which of my contacts may be most interested in this event and send them a personal invitation from me to attend this event?

3. Consistent Social Presence: From my perspective, the social media integration seems to be inconsistent throughout the event. For example, the Twitter stream may be available in the lounge area but doesn’t appear in the exhibit hall or when you’re viewing a presentation. Furthermore, most of the platforms have two different areas for a general chat within the event, usually the Lounge, and for Twitter conversations – separate widget. There must be a way to integrate the two so two separate conversations aren’t happening around the same show.

Dennis Shiao, Director of Product Marketing, INXPO (@dshiao): “This level of integration is the deepest and involves the virtual event platform making calls to the social network’s API. The benefits are twofold: it creates a more seamless user experience for attendees (as they remain within the virtual environnment) and, it allows the platform to capture and track per-attendee activity with social networks.”

Francis Bacon, Director, More Conference: “The focus for us is creating an online space in which delegates can interact with each other, but sometimes delegates want to use Twitter to keep their followers (who are usualyl non-delegates) informed about the event they are attending.”

- Can the Twitter stream be viewed throughout the whole environment, such as during presentations?

- Can people have their comments in a group discussion automatically post to Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook?

- Will a hashtag automatically be appended to the status updates?

- What type of insight can I get from the social conversations?

4. Social Media Analytics: I highlighted some key points in my previous post regarding measurements and analytics, so I will highlight some key points related to social conversations. 

Joerg Rathenberg: “Dedicated Social media reports summarize social media activity by attendee and let you drill down to the content of the individual messages.”

- Can you provide overview reporting regarding the social activity by attendees on various social networks?

- Can you provide insight into the key conversations and trends from the conference?

- Can you pinpoint individuals or influencers I should follow up with based on their social activity?

5. Level of Social Media Integration: While all platforms state they have social media integration, the ”integration” may just be a link to an outside page or full integration. As Dennis highlighted in his response on Focus, there are three types of integration:

“A) Barebones, “non integrated”: Users click on hyperlinks and are then taken outside of the virtual event platform to a URL hosted by the social network…

“B) Social media widgets, “somewhat integrated”: Widgets are lightweight pieces of code that can be inserted into a virtual event platform to invoke social features – the code references operations hosted by the social network service…

“C) Full integration via Application Programming Interfaces (API): see above. ”

- Ask the platform provider what level of integration they are providing?

- How easily is it to “turn” on the features – click a check box or custom development required?

- Are these base features (included in the platform) or an additional cost?

Other Posts in the Series

1. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 1: Event Support & Experience

2. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 2: Planning Tools

3. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 3: Engagement & Experience

4. Virtual Event vendor Checklist Part 4: Metrics and Analysis

via Flickr by Karen Eliot

With any new initiative, the ability to tie results to objectives is instrumental for receiving continued stakeholder support for the initiative. While many vendors tout their capabilities to provide detailed statistics, the question is how to go beyond raw data to actionable data. Furthermore, how easily can I take this data to develop the right reports and analysis for my stakeholders.

This includes insight into the intent of conversations – not just content, lead scoring capabilities, and integration with customer relationship databases. Questions to ask:

1. What type of data do you capture?

2. Can you provide me with industry-specific stats to benchmark my event statistics against?

3. How do I access this information? Online portal?

4. Can I customize the reports? Are these exportable to Word/Mac documents (e.g. Powerpoint slides or excel)?

5. I don’t have time to read all the booth chats and one-on-one chats that my staff engaged in. Do you have a way for me to easily qualify chats via keywords, intent or other type of analysis?

6. You can track people’s activity throughout my virtual event. Is there a way to “heat map” what path people took throughout my event? Note – to my knowledge, none of the providers provide this capability, though this information would be useful for improving the design and experience to drive people where you want them.

7. Is there a way for me to do A/B testing of ads and messages within the virtual event? Note: Again, I am unaware of this functionality. From a marketing perspective, I want to determine which messages resonate best for subsequent virtual events.

8. What lead scoring capabilities are there? How can I update my criteria from event to event?

9. Do you have integration with CRM systems? If so, which ones? And I mean this should be more than the “import excel” sheet functionality.

10. After the virtual event has concluded, do you have email notifications to let me know when people visit my event and/or booth? Or do I have to go back to the portal to find new visitors?

11. If I am doing multiple campaigns within a virtual environment, is there a way for me to determine the effectiveness of each campaign against my business objectives? Compare one campaign against another?

What other questions are your stakeholders asking you about virtual?

Previous Virtual Event Vendor Checklists:

1. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 1: Event Support & Experience

2. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 2: Planning Tools

3. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 3:Engagement & Experience

Virtual events emerged as a technology for meeting professionals and event marketers to consider during the recession. Until now, most of the media coverage and research has been focused on how corporations and publishers have implemented this technology for their respective objectives. A new report, “Association Virtual Conferences: The State of the Sector,” was published in January 2011 that provides the first look into the current use and potential use of virtual conferences within the association and non-profit space.

The report is published by Tagoras, which helps organizations to leverage online learning to grow revenues and engage customers. After reviewing the review, three things emerged for me: generating revenue is a focus; growth within in the association’s space is still nascent; and whether or not virtual conferences will lead to perpetual environments.

“Simply throwing up a virtual platform and attempting to replicate what happens in a place-based event – many of which are not particularly engaging or effective from a learning standpoint – is a recipe for failure. There will be a learning curve as both association educators and association learners grapple with how best to take advantage of virtual platforms, but I have little doubt that they will play an important role in association education in the coming years.” – Jeff Cobb, co-founder of Tagoras

Generating Revenue Is a Focus

Motivation for Virtual Conference (courtesy of Tagoras)

The report provides interesting stats that highlight that virtual conferences are no longer a novelty for associations and non-profits. While driving audiences to the virtual conference may not be an issue for those who have done virtual conferences, the question of generating revenue from virtual conferences is ever present.

The business models range from charging virtual attendees similar prices as for physical conferences, to incorporating exhibiting and sponsorship opportunities to virtual conferences. At this juncture, many are looking to the physical world analogy to develop revenue opportunities for virtual conferences. I argue that this analogy may inhibit creativity to create experiences that are truly unique to online audiences; thereby discovering new ways to monetize the online conference.

Rather, organizers will be challenged to drive traffic to specific sponsors, deliver better insights into online conversations, and better match exhibitor with potential customers:  

“For many exhibitors, however, the different type of interaction that occurs in a virtual booth can feel less productive, and the nature of the environment also increases the likelihood of attendees ignoring exhibits altogether. On the other hand, virtual exhibit halls do offer exhibitors a new opportunity for exposure, and because virtual conference platforms are database-driven applications at their core, there is the potential for collecting valuable data about prospective customers. Whether these benefits outweigh the challenges for most exhibitors remains to be seen.”

Virtual Has Room to Grow

According to the report, the authors state that the rate of adoption of virtual conference will triple in the next 12 months:

“In a survey conducted from November 18 to December 23, 2010, 349 nonprofit membership organizations responded to a question about whether their organization currently delivers any form of instruction via computer, including a virtual conference. Only 8.6 percent, or 30 organizations, indicated having already offered a virtual conference.

While the percentage of organizations that have already embraced virtual conferences is relatively small, association use of this format appears poised to grow significantly in the coming year—among a subset of 257 organizations, 11.7 percent have offered a virtual conference, and 23.7 percent indicated that they plan to implement one within the coming 12 months. In other words, use of virtual conferences among this group may triple in the coming year.”

While the “rate of adoption” will triple within the next 12 months to 35.4%, nearly two-thirds of associations (64.6%) have no plans to incorporate virtual conferences. From my perspective, this indicates that 1) more education is required about the benefits of virtual, 2) associations have no intention of going virtual or 3) associations are still struggling to recover from the recession and virtual is not part of the equation at this time.

Perpetual Environments: Pro or Con?

While not highlighted as a challenge to date within the report, there was indication of how associations may leverage the virtual environment for ongoing activities with their audiences, leading to perpetual environments. I anticipate this to be an ongoing issue that many organizations – both associations and corporations – will face. Organizations that have already developed communities via social media or on their own website are now creating an additional “community” through the virtual environment.

“Representatives from two other associations are working on ways to attract people back into their virtual environment for activities throughout the year. ‘Once it’s built, it’s just there,’ said one of these interviewees, ‘and it’s very inexpensive to host it for a full year.’”

While inexpensive to host the content after the initial event, continuing the virtual conference as a perpetual environment or community presents additional considerations such as proper staffing to oversee the environment, consistency and integration with existing communities, alignment with corporate objectives, and more.

According to Jeff Cobb, co-founder of Tagoras, “Perpetual environments appear to be an emerging trend among some of the early adopters in the corporate world – IBM, for instance – but I have so far spoken to only one association that is seriously considering it. That said, I think it makes a great deal of sense for organizations that hold multiple place-based events and/or Webcasts throughout the year.  A perpetual virtual environment has the potential to become a valuable extension of their bricks and mortar infrastructure – or, for the increasing number of associations that operate virtually, it can become their main infrastructure. I don’t expect to see associations rush to embrace this option, but it has enough common sense to it that I would be surprised if something along these lines did not emerge over time.”

Conclusions: Achieving Full Potential of Virtual

While written for an association-based audience, the report provides useful information for organizations regarding virtual conferences from the typical features of a virtual conference to varying case uses. In addition to the number of graphs on areas about (include the items), the report provides lessons learned from early adopters and 20 top tips about virtual events.

When asked about the role of virtual conferences for learning, Cobb responded, “The most obvious is that they have the potential to increase access to education. As we point out in the report, most associations reach well under a majority of their members through place-based events. Virtual events increase the possibilities for reaching and delivering value to members who may currently be under served.”

And that is the full potential of going virtual.