A Look Inside Virtual Job Fairs With IMASTE

IMASTE Co-Founders: Miguel Fernandez Lapique, Aitor Zabala, Miguel Arias

Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Madrid, Spain, IMASTE has a mission statement that reads, “We create innovative contact platforms for our customers and their potential users”.  According to Miguel Arias, Director-Partner at IMASTE, “We founded IMASTE with the purpose of enabling a bridge between companies and university graduates. We first started organizing real events and after two years we became the Spanish leader in university recruitment events in Spain.”  As technologies began to emerge, IMASTE found it natural to leverage the web to complement their physical recruitment events with virtual job fairs.

Today, IMASTE has three primary product categories:

1. Virtual Fairs – Virtual Job Fairs have been produced in Spain, France, UK, Brazil and Portugal – and IMASTE is working on a sustainability virtual fair in France.
2. Virtual Environments Lab - based on Adobe Flex, IMASTE builds rich internet applications for clients.  Arias notes, “We have developed the virtual corporate office for Deloitte, the virtual campus for Everis, a virtual music festival for Universia and a virtual petrol station for CEPSA.”
3. On-Campus (Physical) Job Fairs – IMASTE organizes more than ten Spanish university job fairs, a primary source for Spanish employers to tap into a pool of young graduates.

Monster Edays Event, Powered by IMASTE

IMASTE worked with Monster to produce Monster Edays, a 2-week virtual job fair that leveraged instant messaging and video chat and enabled more than 90 online company presentations.  IMASTE leveraged Adobe Flex for 3D renderings and animations, as well as the Red5 video conferencing application.  With the event targeting the French market, IMASTE enabled French language support in their platform and coordinated video production activities from Paris.

According to a Case Study posted on the IMASTE web site:

With more than 35 participating companies, over 100,000 unique visitors and over 8,000 collected CVs, the project was a huge success. The media buzz generated more than 350 referring sites and great blogger reviews.  Thus increasing heavily the brand awareness among jobseekers.

Like many providers of virtual events and virtual event technology, IMASTE has a fairly healthy schedule of events.  In the Fall of 2009 alone, they have virtual fairs planned in Croatia, France, Spain, UK and Ireland – with a second edition of a Brazilian virtual job fair scheduled as well.

Speaking of the European market, Arias notes that Europe encompasses many countries, languages and cultures – for virtual event success, “one needs to take into account the cultural differences of each country and localize your platform to each specific need.”  Sprinkling in a bit of humor, Arias concludes, “Therefore, you need to be very flexible and code a lot.”

Arias believes that vast growth opportunities lie ahead, since the European market has not yet fully embraced virtual events – “corporate and marketing executives are not so keen of web innovations and there is a very strong culture of the importance of physical events to enable networking.”

Perhaps IMASTE should leverage their physical job fair business – and prove the ROI and benefits to the European market by turning them into hybrid (phyical+virtual) events.  This way, European exhibitors/sponsors still experience a comfort level (with the physical event sponsorship) and begin to experience the corresponding benefits of the virtual experience.

Related links

1. A list of IMASTE’s products
2. The IMASTE blog
3. The IMASTE Team
4. IMASTE blog posting on SEO and social networks
5. Blog posting: For Virtual Events, Globalization Means Localization

Reflections Of A Virtual Events Blogger

In the 6+ months that I’ve been blogging about virtual events, virtual tradeshows and virtual worlds, I’ve learned a lot.  I’ve learned from the research that I’ve done in this arena, I’ve learned from insightful comments left here by readers and I’ve learned a bit about blogging.  I decided to skim through the nifty historical charting provided by WordPress and thought I’d share some insights into what’s worked well here.  Let’s start with the most obvious one – the top 5 blog postings (by page views – listed by top post first):

1. Review: Lenovo’s eLounge Virtual World – what I learned here is to create timely blog content that associates with major events.  Lenovo unveiled their eLounge virtual world (powered by Nortel’s web.alive) at CES 2009.  I decided to download it, try it out and review it.  Because my posting was a relative first (in terms of eLounge reviews), it got the lion’s share of search engine traffic.  I saw this both in referral data and by tracking relative rankings on the search engines themselves.  Additionally, a large amount of traffic was sourced from a popular blog about Nortel (allaboutnortel.com).
2. Interview With Nic Sauriol, Venture Lead on Nortel’s web.alive Platform – if you strike a chord with an interesting posting, ride the momentum and generate follow-on postings that provide more information (or additional insight).  Nic Sauriol provided me with a virtual tour of eLounge (for my original blog posting), so I followed up later with an interview, asking Nic to provide new information on web.alive since the eLounge launch.
3. Insights And Experiences From Virtual World Experts – here, I summarized a panel discussion for which I was an audience member.  It featured top notch virtual worlds experts – and as a result, this blog posting received a great deal of referral traffic from related blogs (e.g. Wagner James Au’s New World Notes).
4. How To Use Social Media To Stay Current On Virtual Events And Virtual Worlds – this posting had the benefit of being posted on StumbleUpon, which generated a nice spike in traffic.  Hard to say whether the traffic surge resulted in new, regular readers – or whether they were one-time, curious Joe’s.  Regardless, I learned how powerful a single referrer (e.g. StumbleUpon, digg, etc.) can be.
5. Hey Kids! I’ve Got a Virtual World For You – much of the traffic for this posting is due to SEO – it contains terms that are popular in search (e.g. My Little Pony, Webkinz, Club Penguin, etc.) – while I did not write this with the intent to generate search engine traffic, it does demonstrate the importance of writing content with SEO in mind (if your goal is to generate traffic from SEO).

Here’s a chart that demonstrates the power of referrals:

Source: WordPress Data for It's All Virtual

Here are this blog’s Top 5 Sources of Referral Traffic:

1. allaboutnortel.com
2. StumbleUpon
3. Twitter - I promote new blog postings to my Twitter feed, which is kind of like RSS for all of my Twitter followers.  If they’re not subscribed via an RSS reader, the tweet helps nudge them to come back here
4. WordPress Dashboard – very interesting – other WordPress bloggers are finding this blog by clicking on links promoted/suggested by WordPress in the blogger’s dashboard
5. WordPress Tags – tells you the importance of properly tagging your blog content

Top 5 Search  Terms (that resulted in traffic to this blog)

1. Miscellaneous terms related to Lenovo eLounge
2. Virtual Calendar
3. Virtual Events
4. Virtual Worlds
5. All virtual worlds (I guess it’s good to have your blog name closely match a search term)

And finally, the Top 5 clicked-upon links (within my blog content):

1. Overview/download page for Lenovo eLounge
2. My Twitter page – shows the importance of a permanent/prominent placement [top right of this blog]
3. Facebook Group (Virtual Event Strategists) – shows the importance of a permanent/prominent placement [top right of this blog]
4. Project Chainsaw web page (for Nortel’s web.alive)
5. YouTube video on Project Chainsaw

What’s worked well for you and your blogs?  Leave a comment below to let us know.

Product Comparison Guides 2.0

In the world of Enterprise IT, sales cycles for IT products and services tend to be long and complex.  Decisions are made by committee (vs. by an individual) and the process follows an extended cycle that begins with problem definition, progresses to vendor selection and arrives at a final destination of price negotiation and purchase.  Once the problem has been defined, the committee identifies the set of vendors who provide applicable solutions.

It’s at this stage where technology publishers can often help, with the publication of product reviews and comparison guides.  Here’s an example of a product comparison guide for Hosted CRM, published by InsideCRM.com:

Source: InsideCRM.com (partial view of comparison guide)

So this is Product Comparison Guide 1.0.  For version 1.5, you might host this guide on a web site (rather than a PDF) and allow readers to click over to the vendor’s web site — perhaps the vendor’s product page for their Hosted CRM offering.  Maybe you host a registration page and drive sales leads to the Hosted CRM providers.

Now, let’s take it to the next step.  Product Comparison Guide 2.0 is an interactive community site that’s powered by a virtual event platform.  Let’s imagine the same Hosted CRM guide – published as an SEO-friendly HTML page.  Perhaps you leave the high level product information on this page – just enough to entice the reader to continue.  The purpose of this page, then, is to drive traffic into your interactive comparison guide.

Once a user enters the interactive site, you collect some basic demographic information – enough to uniquely identify the user (and contact her), but not too much that the user abandons and leaves your site (e.g. first name, last name, title, email address).  And now, the full product details behind each solution is provided not by you – but, by the vendors themselves – in their product showcase virtual booth!

Within the booth, a vendor might provide:

1. Detailed specifications about the product
2. White Papers that describe how the product solves a given technology challenge
3. Case Studies that describe how customers have used the product
4. On-Demand Video and Webinars related to the product
5. Sales and Marketing staff who staff the booth during business hours
6. Group chat to allow visitors to interact with the vendor – and with each other

Especially in this economic environment, decisions on IT purchases are not taken lightly, even if the offering is a SaaS solution like Hosted CRM.  And what better way to connect with qualified sales prospects than engaging with them while they’re reviewing the solution space?  Having a user enter your staffed booth (to engage with you)  is a much stronger proposition than sending them to your corporate web site to peruse your content.

So vendors “win” in this scenario.  The publisher also wins!  The publisher can sell sponsorships of Product Comparison Guide 2.0, allowing vendors an assortment of features in the environment (e.g. vendor booth, advertising placements, speaking opportunities, etc.).  I’m sure that most vendors listed in your Product Comparison Guide 1.0 (that SEO-friendly web page) will feel pressured to have a virtual booth in the interactive environment – after all, what happens when users click into the environment and interact with your competitors?  Your absence results in a lost opportunity.

With Product Comparison Guide 2.0, the jobs of buyers and sellers now become much easier.

How To Market Your Virtual Event

MarketingSherpa published an excellent primer on Virtual Event Marketing.  The 10 tactics listed were:

1. Partner with assocations
2. Invest in PR
3. Get exhibitors involved
4. Advertise on relevant web sites
5. Market to internal email database
6. Email registrants the day before and the day of an event
7. Use social media to attract attendees
8. Emphasize the value of the event
9. Use the virtual event’s microsite
10. Use sweepstakes as an incentive

Based on my involvement in marketing virtual events to an Information Technology (IT) audience, I’d like to add the following:

1. Promote early and often – get your microsite launched up to 2 months prior to the live event.  Time is critical, because it gives you options to try different tactics, measure response rates and adapt accordingly.  If you leave yourself too little time, your flexibility is limited and your registrations will suffer.
2. Invest in search engine optimization (SEO) – make sure your registration page and microsite are optimized for SEO.  For more insights into SEO for virtual events, see this blog posting: http://allvirtual.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/search-engine-optimization-seo-for-virtual-events/
3. Invest in search engine marketing (SEM) – just like you’d buy keywords to drive visitors to your corporate web site – figure out which search terms are relevant to your virtual event and spend a little of your budget purchasing search engine keywords to drive clicks to your virtual event microsite or registration page.
4. Use interactive technologies to draw attention – with the amount of email received by your target audience, it’s harder and harder to stick out from the crowd.  To do so, use interactive visuals like a screencast (to give users a sneak preview of what your virtual event environment looks like) or a short video clip embedded within an HTML email.
5. Use a variety of promotional vehicles – email is the most heavily used, but not all of your users pay attention to promotional emails.  So try display ads, placement in e-Newsletters, text links on publisher web sites and sponsorship of relevant sections of web sites.
6. Highlight the prominence of expert speakers – in some industries, a well-known speaker can generate the audience all by herself.  If you’ve secured such a speaker, be sure to promote her prominently.  In fact, use her name right in the Subject heading of your promotional emails.
7. Highlight the ability to interact with executives and experts – once you landed that expert speaker, invite her to participate in the virtual event after her speaking appearance.  In fact, in lieu of a Q&A after the Webcast/Videocast, have her appear in the Networking Lounge to answer questions there (via text chat), interacting directly with the audience.  In addition, invite your executives to participate and interact with the audience.
8. Display the list of exhibitors – as you sell sponsorships, display the list of compaines who will be exhibiting.  That may convince some users that they need to attend – what better a way to narrow your purchasing decision than to “meet” with the candidate solutions providers in one fell swoop?
9. Provide a sales contact for potential exhibitors – some registrants of your virtual event may represent companies who’d like to exhibit (sponsor).  So give them an email address or phone number and you might have just sold an additional sponsorship.

What has worked well in promoting your virtual events?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) For Virtual Events

Source: Flickr (martin.canchola)

These days, any publisher of information on the web is very keen to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  If you build it (SEO) into your pages, they will come.  If you don’t, then you’re missing out on page views.  But, with all the effort we place on optimizing our web sites (e.g. corporate web sites, content sites, social media sites, etc.), how much SEO effort do we put into our virtual event pages?  I get the feeling that the answer today is “not much”.

For the external (non-private) virtual event, show organizers and exhibitors often judge success based on the number of registrations, attendees and interactions.  Basically, “the more, the better”.  However, what’s the largest source of registrations for most virtual events?  Outbound email promotions to (usually) large lists of users – where you’re hoping that some percentage of users open your email, click on the email and convert into a pre-registered attendee.  Very low on the list today is organic traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN.

So the opportunity is quite large – improve the SEO of your virtual event and you can make a big impact on registrations, attendees and exhibitor satisfaction.  But where to start?  Well, first identify the pages on which to apply your SEO tactics.  For a virtual event, we’re usually talking about the microsite that describes your event – date, hours, speaker bios, etc..  The microsite often has separate tabs to list the event’s agenda, existing exhibitors, contacts for sponsorship info and (importantly) the event’s registration page.  All of these pages/tabs should have SEO applied.

A nice overview on SEO is titled “Search Engine Optimization 101” by Marketleap, a division of Acxiom Digital.  You’ll want to apply some of the basic concepts discussed here – including the right content on your virtual event pages; the use of meta tags; how to write good titles and strategic use of keywords.

Next, you’ll want to foster in-bound links to your virtual event microsite.  Promote the virtual event on your corporate web site (with a link).  Place links to the virtual event in your social networks (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc.).  Find blogs related to your industry and leave comments there.  Don’t blatantly promote your virtual event in the blog comment, but refer back to it (e.g. when leaving the comment, have your name be hyperlinked back to your virtual event’s microsite).  The more inbound links you can create, the higher your microsite will rank with the search engines.

Correction: comments you leave on other blogs can help with clicks (back to your blog), but do not help with SEO – most blog sites utilize a nofollow directive on the anchor tag, so search engines do not “follow” hyperlinks left in blog comments.

Finally, if your virtual event is not behind a registration wall (e.g. maybe it’s a 365 day, open environment), then make sure you provide “search engine friendly” content pages within the platform that search engine spiders can index.  Stay away from the Flash-heavy page and go with a flat, content-rich page.  Users will land here (from search engines), so be sure to provide easy navigation from this page to the main areas of the event (or environment).

For b-to-b virtual tradeshows, I’d estimate that well south of 10% of registrants are sourced from search engine traffic today.  Make it a goal at your next event to hit the 10% mark.  Your email lists will thank you.

How to Exhibit at B-to-B Virtual Tradeshows

Planning to be an exhibitor at a B-to-B Virtual Tradeshow (VTS)?  Here’s how to become a VTS All-Star:

1. The right people – to attain All-Star status, first find your own team of all-stars from within your company.  You’ll want a good mix of product folks (product managers and/or product marketers), sales folks (direct sales reps or Inside sales reps) and technical folks (engineers or sales engineers).  Prepare your team for the event by bringing them up to speed on VTS (if this is their first time) and give each member clear goals of what you’d like them to do and accomplish.  For instance, the sales folks proactively connect with attendees; the product marketers participate in the public forums; the sales engineers are “on call” to the product marketer in case a really tough technical question is asked.
2. The right content – place content in your virtual booth that is directly applicable to the theme of the event.  Take the time to carefully select your White Papers, Case Studies, podcasts, videos, etc.  Don’t simply repeat what you used at an unrelated event.  Attendees will be on the look-out for useful content, so if you’re selections are on the mark, you’ll generate more views and downloads.  Think of it as a form of search engine optimization – where the “spider” is the visitor to your booth.
3. The right actions – train your booth reps to proactively connect with your booth visitors.  Thank them for their visit, send them a virtual business card, invite them to review your booth’s content.  Ask them about specific challenges they face and have your product marketers suggest solutions.  You’ll come out ahead if you help the attendees, rather than doing a hard sell on your products and services.  Attendees at B-to-B virtual events are not shy about seeking you out, which means they’ll come asking for pricing and product information.  When they do, make sure you have answers – or, be able to find an answer within an hour.  There’s no greater shame than getting hot leads at a VTS and then making them wait for the info they’ve asked for.
4. The right prizes – that’s right, everyone loves the giveaway, even if it’s as small as a $25 gas card or coffee card.  A “big prize” (e.g. Nintendo Wii or HDTV) always attracts attention, but I like doing a large number of smaller prizes – reason being, attendees like the immediate gratification of winning a small prize, instead of receiving a chance to win the big prize.  So whether  it’s 100 USB drives or 50 Starbucks gift cards, you’ll get the attendees’ attention.  The most effective prize I’ve seen – copies of a book (by an expert) whose name was known by all attendees.

So there you go.  Do the “right” thing to secure your spot on the VTS All-Star Team.  Good luck and have fun.