How Virtual Environments and Events Can Engage and Educate Your Target Audience

For the past few years, virtual technology has captured the attention and imagination of business executives, marketers and technologists, as a great way to save time, money and stay engaged with peers, employees and customers.

What is a Virtual Environment?
A customized, interactive, online destination/landing page where a community can gather to communicate, educate and share information with peers around the world, 24 x7.

Who Should Consider a Virtual Environment?
Monetize, engage and inform an online community:
• Media Companies/Publishers
• Technology Vendors/Software Companies
• Trade Show/Event Producers
• Advertising Agencies
• Social Marketers/Bloggers

Why consider a Virtual Environment?
• Deliver high-quality streaming audio or video, synchronized slides, demos and desktop sharing via a user-friendly, branded viewer interface.
• Qualify your audience with custom registration questions, polling, and surveys.
• Interact with visitors in real time with chat and Q&A sessions.
• Provide supporting resources, such as whitepapers, videos, case studies, articles, webcasts and direct links and follow with a strong call-to-action.
• Generate high-quality lead profile information, by capturing all user activity.
• Available live and on demand to extend reach and interactivity.
• Cost effective, turnkey solution.

How Does it Work? Demo…

Options
• Virtual Trade Shows– Host a large industry event with numerous exhibitors, focusing on several technology or topic areas.
• Virtual Workshops– Host a smaller, more targeted topic area, and share costs and profits with your partners or co-sponsors.
• Corporate Microsite– Focused on a new product, product line or topic area.
• Enhanced Virtual Webinar— Extend the interactivity and supplemental content of your one-hour webinar.
• Job Fairs— Professional networking, cost effective and available 24 x7.
• Training Sessions— Teach via PPT presentations, live demos or desktop sharing.
• “For Pay” incremental revenue opportunities— Integrate credit card technology to charge registrants.

On Target Marketing Offers A Turnkey Solution…
• Virtual platform technology
• Full project management, creating a master timeline and list of deliverables
• Best practice guidance on how to plan, promote and measure your event
• Help to customize the look and feel of the branded interface
• Post all sponsor content, supporting all partners.
• 30-second, custom concierge video introduction
• Webcast production
• Monitor the live event with technical support.
• Provide detailed report metrics for the site and individual sponsors.

For More Information…

Contact:
Steve Paul, principal, On Target Marketing617-795-1992steve@ontargetmarketing.net

Why & How to Integrate Webcasts into Your Social Media Strategy

Listen to the entire webcast or scroll to a particular topic:

• About the Attendees (3:01)
• Why Integrate Webcasts Into Your Social Media Strategy (3:30)
-- Benefits of Webcasts as a Social Media Tool (6:09)
As a content generator (6:17)
As a marketing tool (8:38)
-- So, What’s Stopping You? (12:53)
• How to Integrate Webcasts Into Your Social Media Strategy (20:14)
-- Best Practices in Producing a Webcast (23:32)
-- Best Practices using Social Media (29:18)
· Free Webcast Production Services (31:23)

If you Blog or Tweet, maybe you should Webcast too…

As an avid blogger or Tweeter, you obviously have something unique and important to say, and on a regular basis. You’ve built up, (or are in the process of building), a global audience of like-minded individuals. You post, they comment, they follow, they Retweet. But how strong is that connection?

Most of today’s social media tools enable anyone to be publisher, to post content or broadcast out. There are so many new tools, and many new ways to do create your pallete. Webcasts, a well established presentation and lead generation tool, can help bring your audience together, to have a dialogue, share and interact all in one place. One to one, one to many, many to many… Your virtual water cooler.

Here are some of the many benefits I see to producing a webcast, that exhibit social media qualities

• Communicate with people around the world (talk and type)
• Share info such as ideas, photos, videos, graphics, documents
• Share desktops
• Interact with polls and surveys
• Valuable shelf life as On Demand content

As a marketing tool, webcasts have other key benefits…

• Low cost
• DIY (Do-it-Yourself)
• Measurable
• Lead Generator
• Profitable

Now I can understand if webcasting seems a bit daunting. I usually hear a few objections, such as

• Too complicated
• Too much work
• Takes too much time
• Too expensive
• Too shy
• Not knowledgeable enough
• Not enough contacts

All valid concerns, but if you’re serious about building a community, webcasts are good way to keep the conversation going.

So if you’re intrigued and would like learn here me answer these concerns, please join us on July 23 at noon PT/3 pm ET for a webcast to learn “Why and How to Integrate Webcasts into Your Social Media Strategy”, register here https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/970762634

We’ll discuss best practices to integrating webcasts into your social media strategy.

Attendees are eligible for free webcast services to produce one community webcast.

Or email me at steve@ontargetmarketing.net

Monetizing Social Media webcast

Some initial thoughts on our first webinar. Dodge & Fuller were great, I spoke a bit too long. You can check out the discussion here:

• START: Steve Paul, principal, On Target Marketing 3:50
• John Dodge, journalist first blogger second 25:20
• Brian Fuller, writer and consultant 39:28
• Q&A: 50:28
• Best Practices & Resources: 52:26

Surprisingly, 22% of respondents to our poll, said 10 pm ET/7 pm PT was a fine time to have a broadcast. But I think in the future, we'll most likely hold our discussions at noon PT/3 pm ET.

Ninety percent of attendees use Linked In; 75% were using Twitter and almost 50% had a blog.

I’m thinking of doing a monthly series, with topics such as Custom publishing, PR, video, SEO, virtual events and metrics, anything you’d like to add?

An Education in Education

I spent some time the past few weeks meeting with students and educators in a wide variety of age groups, introducing webcasts. I first spent a morning talking to my son’s First grade class at Angier Elementary school. We had a “What Does Your Parent Do All Day” meeting, sort of like bring your child to work day, but opposite.

I wasn’t quite sure how to explain Webcasting, but after a few animated PowerPoint slides explaining why Evan’s lemonade stand would be more successful than Jonah’s if only he only did a webcast, I think they got it. Wow what energy from that group! and great questions!

Later that night, more than half the class and parents joined me for an actual webcast. I asked a poll question about what was their favorite baseball team, Red Sox of course!, and had a few of them speak and ask me questions.

A week back I met with Sarah Burrows, Internship Program Director of Simmons College, a small women's college in the heart of Boston, noted for its emphasis on a strong arts and sciences, undergraduate education. I’d been speaking with Sarah about introducing webcasts, and more specifically my idea of ResuMecasts to her students to see if they would be interested in my idea to enhance their resume’s & portfolio by embedding a personal audio/visual message.

Sarah told me that most of their senior students were already into Face Book, MySpace or had a website and lacked the resources, usually both: Time & money to try something new. Fair enough, we still may explore this next year with Sophomores & Juniors, maybe offer it as part of an internship program….

Yesterday, I visited Newton South High School, home of the Lions. It’s an impression institution where my older son Drew will be a freshman next year. I met with a mix of freshman to seniors from Brian Hammel, head of the business department, and a class from Carol Ober, head of the Media Lab.

Carol’s group had just completed their 11th Annual Animation Festival Check it out at http://www.nshsmedialab.com/, so I wanted to talk to the creative sorts about MeCasts and WeCasts, my concept for integrating visuals with narration to explain their portfolios and other personal experiences.

Brian’s group offers Intro to Business, Marketing and even a class on Entrpreneurship, He’s using an online platform called Moodle…which is a Course Management System also know as a Virtual Learning Environment. It’s a Free web application that educators can use to create online learning sites. He posts assignments then students can work at their own pace. Brian can track progress and provide feedback online.

All his students have their own blogs, surely not my Father’s High school, nor mine! Check it out at www.moodle.org

I spent about an hour talking, demonstrating and answering great questions from an interested and somewhat enthusiastic group (they are teenagers after all.)

I’ve offered to help produce a webcast for any students if they’d like to try it out. School’s out in a few weeks so I don’t expect any takers now, but we’ll pick it up in the fall and see what happens. Overall, these were all great learning experiences for me, evangelizing about webcasting from grades 1 to 12.

After all, you ain’t living if you ain’t learnin’

What is a Blogcast?

You may be asking, so what is as Blogcast? Well, we believe OTM Blogcasts are a new way to deliver interactive, compelling, multimedia content to your targeted audience.

A while back, I got to thinking about blogs.

I like the concept, a free-form expression of ideas, what’s not to like? However, presentation is an issue. It’s mostly a static html text page. Isn’t there a better way to express the personality and the passion of the writer?

Then I was thinking how unsatisfying audio-only podcasts were. For awhile you just stare into the randomly generated graphics, sometimes you zone out, or check to see how long it’s going to last, before you go check your email. For me, the eternal ADHD, multi-tasker, Focus is an issue.

And then there’s video. Very cool, but a bit expensive to produce, and most of the time you’re only staring at a talking head, more entertaining than informative.

Thus the Blogcast… mini, OnDemand slideshows delivered in the nearly universal Windows Media .wmv or Flash .flv formats.

OTM Blogcasts allow journalists, analysts and other subject matter experts to offer audio and visual content in an easy-to-access format, cost-effectively.

Content developers can post Blogcasts to enhance text-based information such as blogs, interviews and sidebars, and can be linked from email newsletters and other creative traffic drivers to your website.

Now I must confess, On Target marketing produces about 100 Webcasts a year, so we’re big advocates. But we’re also always looking for more ways to make money, ah I mean utilize the technology.

Blogcasts can leverage webcast functionality such as:

• Animated or static PowerPoint slides
• Short software demos
• You can highlight content
• You can incorporate registration to measure results
• And build in a survey for feedback and interactivity.
• For the more entrepreneurial, incorporate a short sponsor message at the end to help pay the bills!

On Target Marketing turnkey services includes:

• Full project management
• Setting up all conference calls
• Initial template design
• Packaging and animation support
• Announcer services (optional)
• Final production delivery (usually within 24 hours)


Thanks for watching and listening to our Blogcast, we’d love to hear your thoughts. For more information on custom Blogcasts requiring additional recording time and complexity, or even live Blogcasts, contact us: 617-795-1992 or steve@ontargetmarketing.net