A Wider Net

Are You Talkin’ To Me? Understanding Your Audience

Scott Kiekbusch — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:57:51 +0000

Your client has spent millions to develop an amazing new product, and has retained you to spread the word to potential customers. The first thing that you need to ask your client about their latest product offering is, “Who cares?” Okay, you don’t have to put it quite so bluntly. But your primary objective before diving [...]

Virtual Event Platforms are not Virtual Events, the presentation

Steve Gogolak — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:10:11 +0000

What does that title mean, anyway? At the Virtual Edge Summit this week I presented a concept that was echoed over and over again by other speakers: objectives first, technology second. The entire idea behind my talk was that you cannot expect the technology provided by a virtual event platform to magically create [...]

Virtual Edge Summit and The Future of Virtual Events Roundup

Steve Gogolak — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:55:40 +0000

One of the most anticipated sessions at the Virtual Edge Summit, now in its second year, was The State (and Future) of Virtual Events. With a whopping eight man panel, including the leaders of every major technology platform, the insight into the industry was unprecedented. I’ll attempt to boil down the key points [...]

Virtual Edge Summit 2010: 5 Major Takeaways

Steve Gogolak — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:03:28 +0000

I just got back last night from the Virtual Edge Summit out in Santa Clara, CA and, despite some minor jetlag, I am completely invigorated for an amazing 2010 in the virtual events industry. Here are five quick takeaways from the conference for those who missed it: 2010 will bring a new focus on “community” [...]

Speaking at Virtual Edge Summit 2010: Steve Gogolak & Darren Ross

Steve Gogolak — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:06:58 +0000

Throwing out a quick, informational post about some upcoming speaking engagements that a few of Cramer’s own have out a the Virtual Edge Summit next week. For those of you who don’t know, Michael Doyle founded The Virtual Edge Institute as an organization “devoted to helping you plan and produce successful virtual events and meetings [...]

Virtual vs. Face to Face: 3 factors you can’t forget

Steve Gogolak — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:46:54 +0000

Forbes recently released a report about the importance of face to face meetings that details results of a survey of more than 750 business executives. Keeping the audience in mind, note that executives feel that meeting face to face is still critically important to build relationships. No argument here, but not every meeting is for [...]

Will having a virtual event hurt my face to face event attendance?

Steve Gogolak — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:23:46 +0000

I’ll be perfectly honest with you, there is very little data available about online events hurting or helping face to face attendance. I get asked this question all the time and, based on the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen, it seems like virtual events either have either no impact or a positive impact on face to [...]

iPad – The Good, The Bad, The Reason to Care (as Marketers)

Rob Everton — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 03:00:34 +0000

One could write volumes about Apple’s unequaled ability to generate buzz to the level they did for this week’s iPad launch. But that’s not the point of this post. Today let’s talk about the device itself, now that the years of (largely inaccurate) rumors and leaks are behind us and we have what appears to [...]

Are blog comments really effective?

Steve Gogolak — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:40:12 +0000

I finished reading Inbound Marketing, an incredible book by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah over at Hubspot, a few weeks ago and it, along with The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott, advocates for new bloggers to begin reading relevant industry blogs and comment on posts to begin to engage in [...]

Do people really stay online all day for a virtual event?

Steve Gogolak — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:50:13 +0000

Good question! Unfortunately, the answer is no, but they stick around for a lot longer than you would think. Perhaps we should rephrase to, “How long do people stay online at a virtual event?” Much better. Recent data coming from events run by Unisfair show that users will stick around for between two and three hours [...]