Webvent blog

Why Do Suppliers Join an Association?

2012-02-15T08:02:00.001-05:00

Regardless of all other stated intentions, suppliers join an association because they believe it helps them drive more business to their doorstep. Membership in the association provides them with programming and services, which can result in new business opportunities.
To accomplish that, associations offer several tools to their members:
•    Networking events
•    Membership directory
•    Suppliers directory

In the offline world, these tools are valuable but limited - by time and location. But when placed online, these limitations disappear. For example: members presenting webinars of interest to the association community brings networking opportunities regardless of location and time. And members sharing content like webinar recordings, videos, and white papers through the buyers guide, makes the guide a valuable source of information – far beyond simple contact details.

When the Association’s programming and services are such that any supplier member can ‘push out’ information – to demonstrate thought leadership, share content, and deliver a positive experience to potential buyers or business partners, it will help them feel good about their involvement in the association.

Webvent provides networked webinars and buyers guides for associations – please comment below and let us know what issues your association faces with your online events and suppliers directory.

Schools Abroad Benefit from Webinars

2012-02-01T13:30:00.030-05:00

Many countries have school networks outside of their homeland, designed for their citizens working abroad who want their children to learn its home culture and language. Typically, these schools are located around major world cities and schooling is offered for around 3-5 hours weekly outside of regular local school hours.

The main reason for teachers at these schools to join webinars about topics related to schooling is to achieve a higher level of education for their students. These part-time teachers and school directors are isolated within their city, and want to learn and share best practices with their sister schools around the world.

The home country may schedule annual conferences with workshops and in-person meetings, however, because of timing issues and traveling cost, it’s only feasible for a limited number of teachers to return home to join these conferences.

Webinars can be scheduled on a frequent basis, and when recorded these can always be viewed afterwards from any timezone. Additionally, webinars allow the schools to keep in touch with each other, and collaborate on a more personal level.

At Webvent, the Dutch schools are united into a global community, which makes it easy to connect any time for specific questions. Regional teams meet regularly online, and participants who otherwise would not meet get to know each other over time.

Recently, the Dutch schools community (NTC schools world wide) got media attention with their advanced online initiative in using webinars to educate and network with each other:
1. Dutch online expat magazine

2. Dutch education abroad magazine (Stichting NOB)

To Buyers Guide Publishers: "Allow Your Vendors to Join the Conversation"

2012-01-11T17:08:00.002-05:00

Traditionally, Buyers Guides are static publications ranking the products of different vendors according to the insight of an industry expert. The publisher generates income by selling the publication and its updates, and by selling advertising space to vendors.

Sometimes these publishers are criticized for having a selection process of products determined by only a few individuals, and not actually having used all the products in contention. Also, people bring into question the accuracy of the information provided, and a bias towards certain vendors based on advertising revenue.

On the other hand, just listing contact information of all vendors in one place, without any selection process, misses several benefits. One of these benefits is search optimization: based on keywords or categories defined by the publisher, a buyer quickly gets focused search results.

With Webvent’s dynamic buyers guide technology, however, associations and publishers can allow any vendor listed in the Buyers Guide to join the conversation among buyers, industry experts, and competitors - and let them speak for themselves. Vendors can demonstrate thought leadership on specific topics through webinar presentations, and share success stories through videos, case studies, and blogs, without ‘harassing’ potential buyers with their sales pitch.

Buyers Guides are a great tool for organizations searching for a new vendor, or starting a new RFP process for a complex product or service. In a well-organized Buyers Guide, a buyer gets to hear all sides of the story and enters the purchasing process as a better-informed party.

The ‘Social’ Buyers Guide

2011-12-05T13:00:00.000-05:00

Online “Buyers Guides” offer a one-stop shop for buyers to find and compare vendors in specific markets. These often are used both as a service for their community members and a revenue source for the host organization, which include: Industry or Trade Associations, Chambers of Commerce, Online Marketplaces, Procurement Networks, Magazines and Media, Franchise Organizations, etc.

Today’s Buyers Guides are often static listings of vendors’ contact information and a brief description, surrounded by an abundance of flashing banner ads. Companies pay to be listed and pay extra for prominent placement or advertising. These guides seem to be designed to sell as much as possible advertising space, rather than being the most user-friendly website for a buyer to search and compare different vendors.

We recently used Webvent to create a “Social Buyers Guide” for a large association. Vendor listings in the buyers guide are connected to community members, digital content, and live Webinars. Educational content remains separate from sales pitches, but sponsors receive enough promotion to generate leads from those who are actively interested in their products. Within Webvent, listed companies can demonstrate their thought leadership on specific topics within their industry and participate in the ongoing conversation among members in the community.

A Social Buyers Guide is designed to balance the needs of the buyers first, and then the needs of the vendors. Vendors become active participants in the industry, rather than sitting on the sidelines trying to “pitch” their message into the market.

Turn Temporary Efforts into Permanent Assets with an Events Archive

2011-09-28T11:30:00.000-04:00

Events require time and money to organize, advertise, collect registrations, arrange speakers, and host. Typically, this effort is lost once the event ends – the content and interactions that made the event so valuable no longer benefit the host.

Today, an effective events archive allows you to convert your events into permanent assets that drive search engine traffic and participants to your site long after the event ended. Viewers can find information about past events and content in a variety of formats – including videos, recorded presentations, audio transcripts, and questions and feedback from the audience.

Here’s what Webvent.tv looks for in an Events Archive:

1. Video Playback: Most live webinars are recorded and made available either for free, or for purchase at an additional cost. You should convert your webinar recording into a YouTube-compatible video, and store text transcripts of the content. This will boost your content’s usefulness to your audience and visibility to search engines.

2. Presentation Materials: Slides, documents, and links that session Presenters used should be posted in the archive and available to participants.

3. Public Content: We won’t join the debate about free vs. paid content here, but at least some of the webinar material should be public, for improved search engine optimization if nothing else.

4. Organized: Content should be automatically organized into a consistent layout, on the same page as the event announcement and online event itself.

5. Post-event follow-up: After each event is archived, the host should send links and updates to all participants and no-shows. Also, work with your Presenter to promote the recording to their social network (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc.).

Archiving your events not only creates permanent assets for your community, but also can help grow your future events by moving your site onto page one in Google.

Webvent.tv believes that online events excellence should be easy and inexpensive. Click here to receive a FREE “Webvent Score” that rates your events program against these best practices and more.

Comment below if you’ve found other best practices for your Events Archive.

The Event Landing Page Turns Invitees Into Attendees

2011-09-16T13:43:00.000-04:00

Your event’s landing page must do three things—give the complete context so the viewer can immediately decide if they should participate, provide a simple path to register, and allow participants to expand your audience through social networks and viral invitations.

Here’s what Webvent.tv looks for in the Event Landing Page:

1.    Event Context: The event’s landing page should have at a minimum: Title, date/time, description, intended audience, cost, presenter, photo, and biography. Content is an important part of a landing page, but knowing what to include and what to omit is very important. It is important to keep in mind who your audience is and make sure that the information you provide is relevant to them.

2.    Registration: The event’s landing page is useless if your audience cannot register for the event. The registration form should be simple, with a submit button that is visible “above the fold”, without the need to scroll down.

3.    Appealing: Content should include an appealing reason to join, with an attractive presentation that is consistent with your web site

4.    Sponsors: Sponsors name/logo should be listed on the event’s landing page with links to sponsor-specific information - to keep educational content of webinar separate from sales-oriented messages.

5.    Social: To expand the audience beyond your existing community, participants and presenters should have a clear, single-click method to share events with their social network.

6.    Invitations: The option to invite others via email to join, branded consistently in the same look and feel, and getting them on the event’s landing page in one-click.

7. Reminders: Participants often register days or weeks in advance, so the landing page should let registrants add the date and time (in the viewer’s time zone) to their calendar with reminders and links to join when the event is live.

Each event serves a different purpose, so each event should have a separate landing page. Organized this way, the event landing pages become a key part of your community growth strategy.

Webvent.tv believes that online events excellence should be easy and affordable.

Click here to receive a FREE “Webvent Score” that rates your events program against these best practices and more. Comment below if you’ve found other best practices for your Event Landing Page.

The Events Calendar Demonstrates Activity In Your Areas of Expertise

2011-09-12T09:21:00.000-04:00

Whether a simple list or graphical calendar, the events calendar charts your organization’s activities. But it can be much more: by including topics and presenters, you demonstrate your expertise, leadership, and active participation in specific subject areas.

Here’s what Webvent.tv looks for in an organization’s Event Calendar or event list:

1. Visible: The calendar is worthless if your audience cannot find it; it should be obvious from your web site’s home page how to view your events.

2. Up-to-date: Automatically list and update events – nothing ruins a first impression like month-old events listed under “Coming Soon”

3. Inclusive: Include future and past events, web-based and in-person events, to show your audience when and where they can connect and learn

4. Comprehensive: Besides the obvious date and title, each event should include brief information about the presenter, description, and host - in an attractive and concise listing

5. Detailed: Click on any topic or presenter to view more details of what the event is about, biographies of presenters, who should participate, and how to register.

6. Permanent: Past events should have direct links to view recordings, slides, transcripts, questions, etc. This converts your temporary content into a permanent, searchable asset.

7. Subscribeable: Your most die-hard fan won’t be visiting your events list every day to anxiously await the next posting. Add a “Subscription” option with an RSS or email delivery mechanism to stay updated on additions to the events calendar.

Organized this way, the events calendar becomes a key part of your organization’s ongoing conversation with your community. It becomes a central place from where you schedule, invite, prospect, alert, and engage; and not a mere listing of dates and times.

Webvent.tv believes that online events excellence should be easy and inexpensive. Click here to receive a FREE “Webvent Score” that rates your events program against these best practices and more. Comment below if you’ve found other best practices for your Event Calendar.

Webvent version 6.7 continues to update our platform for online events

2011-09-07T21:55:00.000-04:00

Webvent.tv believes that online events should be easy and inexpensive. This week, we will release version 6.7, which continues our progress towards these goals.

We have added Adobe Connect as a conferencing platform alongside our existing Webex option. Connect allows up 100 participants with an excellent VOIP option for presenters and participants. We have also added “Single Sign On” (SSO) for both Webex and Adobe Connect, so that Webvent users pass seamlessly from your event page into the live conference room without having to re-enter their name or email.

This release updates the HTML title and “meta” tags on the events landing pages, so that users who Share the page on LinkedIn or Twitter will have better default text descriptions on those networks.

Another major enhancement is the Participants search, located under “Edit Site” > People. Organizers can now quickly assemble lists of past Participants by name, webinar, and the status of their invitation/registration/attendance. I use this to send a follow-up email for people who have been invited, but not yet registered for an upcoming webinar. Please don’t annoy people with excessive email, but when appropriate you can now send messages to smaller groups.

We also fixed 16 bugs and modifications. I won’t list them here because no customers reported any of these; they just bothered me and I think the result is better now.

Let me know what you think of this release, and suggestions for future versions. Our next release will be in about 2 weeks, and will focus on improving the event archive layout and making it easier for anyone to add new Sites and schedule Webvents.

by Rick Borry, President Webvent.tv

Another Advisor’s Tech Company going public

2011-07-12T09:14:00.000-04:00

Webvent is very proud to have another advisor on board who recently saw the company he co-founded listed at the NYSE.

Scott Curry was co-founder of Active.com and The Active Network (NYSE: ACTV). In 1997, he founded EnterOnline, the event registration component of The Active Network, which provides registration and management services for diverse events and organizations like marathons, triathlons, Little League Baseball, and the National Park Service.

Congratulations to Scott on this successful IPO!

LinkedIn's successful IPO validates Social Media as Investment

2011-06-22T08:45:00.000-04:00

On May 19th, LinkedIn listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol LNKD, at a price of $45 per share. The stock peaked at $122.70 on the opening day, showing investor excitement in the business social network model that LinkedIn dominates.

Webvent offers a hearty congratulations to our Advisor Eric Ly, who was a co-founder at LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) and the founding CTO. He helped create some of LinkedIn’s core product features, and built the team that created LinkedIn’s third-party platform. His work helped LinkedIn to achieve a quickly-growing user base now reaching more than 103 million. Mr. Ly is now CEO and Founder of Presdo Match, a revolutionary product that creates social networks around conferences and trade shows and enables event exhibitors and attendees the opportunity to develop valuable business relationships through face-to-face interactions.

LinkedIn is the first of several anticipated social media IPOs, so watch for Zynga, Facebook, and Twitter yet to come.

Production checklist for successful webinars

2011-05-05T13:10:00.000-04:00

Even though webinars are rising in popularity in all sorts of industry areas, how many have you participated in that have been done really well? What do you want the participants to learn and how can you set up the expectation for engagement that keeps them listening. And even more important, how can you boost webinar attendance rates?

Last week I was happy to attend Hubspot’s webinar about quick tips on producing your first webinar. The entire process of webinar production, from selecting your webinar platform through post webinar actions were included in this highly interactive online event. The most challenging subject for all attendees was how to promote and boost your webinar attendance rate. Check it out and learn best practices for crafting and promoting your webinar to drive the most leads and informed attendees.

http://www.hubspot.com/how-to-produce-a-webinar-thanks

Here at Webvent.tv, we strive to embed these and other best practices into our webinar network platform, to create the easiest way to produce webinars within a community.

Why does Webvent.tv share revenue with the community owner?

2011-04-29T12:54:00.000-04:00

Community owners are the experts who know their community and deliver relevant content to their audience. They are the ones who make the investment to build and maintain the community, whether it is part of their daily job, part-time activity, or personal interests. These passionate people know and love the community's topic.

Vibrant communities require commitment from a dedicate core group, and these people should be rewarded for their time and passion. We think that many communities can benefit from a live, online component - where people meet and interact when the cost in time or travel makes face-to-face meetings impractical. On Webvent.tv , community owners can run high-quality webinars to engage and attract attendees into their community, while providing sponsors the opportunity to present themselves to these attendees. We share the revenue generated from sponsorships with the community owner, because 'paying' community owners for their time and passion leads to more interesting content, spurs quality conversations and connections, and most importantly: it builds the community.

by Nick Kuppers, CEO Webvent.tv

How Dutch Schools world wide connect

2011-04-14T13:26:00.000-04:00

The NTC (Nederlandse Taal & Cultuur) Schools community is a network of Dutch schools outside the Netherlands. These schools offer extracurricular lessons in the Dutch language and culture for children in the age of 4 to 12.

In February, the community kicked off on the Webvent.tv platform with their first webinars in the U.S. region. On the first Thursday of each month, teachers, parents, and school directors gather around a specific topic, which is presented by one of the schools. Topics include things like: how to optimize homework, how to get sponsors, and how to organize a Dutch culture day. The most recent webinar was presented by the NTC school ‘t Klokhuis, located near New York City.

One of the directors told me that Webvent is a great platform to get together, collaborate, and learn from each other on a frequent basis. Once a year in June, teachers and board member gather in person in the Netherlands during a live event with training and workshops. But travel time and cost make it hard for everyone to attend each year. For me, it has been 5 years since my last live event, and the most valuable part of being there is to connect with teachers and hear their stories.

“We love the live component in the community NTC schools world wide and how the community is organized. We can upload and download documents, refer to recorded webinars and during webinars we get to know each other better which makes it easier to connect anytime for any specific question. We all have the same objective, which is to improve the quality of the Dutch education for our children”.

http://ntcschoolsworldwide.webvent.tv/

Ingeborg van Rooij, is Secretary of the first Dutch school in Boston, Community owner of NTC schools world wide, and Community Manager at Webvent.tv

Webvent.tv: Matching online and offline social business networks through web-based conferences

2011-01-25T08:11:00.000-05:00

Every business revolution brings a new way to reach potential customers. Before the Internet, vendors mailed out thousands of letters, and then followed up with cold calls to prospects. The Internet revolution brought a Web site for everyone, and it became easier to find and reach potential customers through search and email. Today we are in the social revolution, where individuals and organizations present and promote themselves to the world through online social networks.

Technologies come and go, but in business the social behavior patterns of people has been the same for decades, especially for businesses that sell their products nationally or internationally. These businesses network through trade shows and conferences, they sponsor analysts to create white-papers, they participate in Request For Proposal processes, and they pitch their companies and products directly to potential customers. Today our challenge is to provide technologies to accomplish sales goals through social networks.

We aim to do this, not by replacing in-person meetings or events with a different distribution medium (the Internet). Webvent.tv supports moderated communities (collaboration) that produce webinars, break-out sessions, and one-on-one communication, enabling connections year round, and thus increasing the visibility into potential business opportunities for all parties involved. Revenue generated from leads and sponsorships gets shared with community owners, rewarding their efforts and knowledge as moderator, while providing new income opportunities for subject matter experts to create a business for themselves around a topic or product.

Eventually, the whole social graph around the topic or product will collaborate and contribute to the success of that community for all parties involved: buyers, vendors, subject matter experts, influencers, event planners, government, media, etc. The social networks that we are creating online today simply mirror and enhance the social networks we have seen in the physical world for many years.

2xhib is now webvent.tv

2010-12-16T11:11:00.000-05:00

If you haven't noticed yet, we officially changed our name from 2xhib to webvent.tv, which means we will be opening up our first platform for collaboration to the public soon. Keep watching :-)

Open invitation to Subject Matter Experts to generate income through Web Events

2010-07-06T13:51:00.000-04:00

Are you a subject matter expert (SME)? Would you like to create a series of Web Events around your area of expertise, complete with vendors, speakers, and industry members, while generating income in the process?

If your answer is “yes” to these questions, I invite you to register on www.webvent.tv and create a business community for free.

Creating a community on 2xhib.com provides vendors in your industry a year round opportunity to present themselves to the world through videos, images, downloads, and chat, in one central place. It provides visitors a rich media experience and interactive self-education opportunities, while having complete control of how they engage in those presentations. This is extremely valuable for companies who want to affiliate themselves with your name and expertise, and wants to reach out to your followers. It is also valuable for companies who are making a jump to another geographical market, or for companies who do not have huge marketing budgets to be present at every trade show or physical event. And it is a way for you to offer a vendor neutral overview to your followers or clients, who can search and compare the different vendors, access their content, and get feeds of updated information. Buyers (e.g., line of business managers looking for solutions or making a short list of potential vendors) will flock to your efficient and educational forum.

By running Web Events periodically, presenting topics of interest to your audience, you drive traffic to your community. The community engages in two-way communication and networking, while making the visitor metrics collected in your directory of vendors more valuable.

The more key vendors who join your community, the more buyers will visit your community, the more valuable the visitor metrics will become, the more lead reports will get purchased, the more revenue you generate.

Be among the first to join and share in the revenue. Until January 1st, 2011, 50% of the revenue of every lead report purchased from a community on 2xhib.com will be shared with the community owner (see terms on our website). Don’t miss the opportunity, and register your community today or take a tour on 2xhib.com. If you do not create the community of your choice, sooner or later somebody else will.
There is no maintenance, and no risk. We host the technology to run a community, and your vendors maintain their content. You focus on attracting virtual offices into your community, and running periodic Web Events and Webinars. Leads will follow quality content. There is no financial risk: the SME or community owner do not have to invest in technology to run the business community; vendors only pay if they decide to purchase a lead report from their virtual office in that community; and buyers can decide to share their contact information, or not, with vendors they visit.

Corporate personality

2009-11-25T12:32:00.000-05:00

There has been some discussion around the term ‘corporate personality’ that we use regularly at 2xhib. As originally formulated (we learned from Wikipedia), it dealt with areas of the Old Testament where the relationships between individuals and the groups that they were part of were treated.

At 2xhib we added another interpretation, which I guess is similar to the original, but more contemporary: that of showing the real people behind a company presented through videos, blogs, and tweets - and how they represent the company. Showing the flesh and blood of sales folks, engineers, and leadership of a company. The products, services, and customers, and the relationships with their partners they pitch – online.

In our definition, the corporate personality is part of the corporate identity: the branding, logo, trademarks, etc. of a company. It is how individuals (real people) of a company communicate their message to the world through new media, and are accountable for that.

Virtual events: YES, but why 3-D?

2009-09-30T11:43:00.000-04:00

In economic challenging times it becomes very clear that virtual trade shows are a great way to reach out to your customer base and prospects. The successes of virtual event vendors are proof of that.

However there is one thing I cannot understand. Why do most of these virtual event technologies simulate the real venue in 3D? Sometimes they even add background noise to simulate the real event. Why is it that they force you into a sort of gaming environment, which adds a lot of overhead to the technology and makes it inefficient and proprietary?

Google didn't create a virtual library when they designed their interface. Amazon didn't create a virtual shop with isles and coffee corners when they designed their online bookstore, nor did Facebook create a virtual student lounge when they designed their interface. It also reminds me of the first airplane designs where the engineers copied the flapping of the wings of real birds. 3D is great for gaming and helpful in certain situations, like when a mechanic needs to fix complex equipment, but not really relevant in a virtual trade show.

The virtual event should focus on supporting lead generation, making informed buying decisions, and attracting more visitors to the event. This should be supported by the tools we all are familiar with, like drop down menus and search boxes, uploading and downloading of documents and videos, and posting blogs and tweets, etc. like we do on Google, Facebook, and Amazon.