If you are an avid reader of this blog you will already know that I am fascinated with Virtual Worlds and Virtual Events – but I was never truly enamored with Second Life and was not in favor of it for business from the start (must have been that scary looking penguin that tried to strike up a conversation with me)

All that aside – I encounter a virtual world from the moment I step foot into my house with my two boys being avid RuneScape players. So I can’t help but think there must be something redeeming here for businesses.

One thing I am investigating and heavily considering for 2009 is a Virtual Events Strategy. It’s like a virtual tradeshow but a space all your own for your own business events.

Because of this I decided to speak to Stuart Bowen who has put into place a virtual events strategy a few times now and is currently doing this for ON24. Don’t miss his insights into what you should be doing.

Putting in place a Virtual Events strategy

About Stuart

Stuart Bowen, Senior Director of Virtual Events, ON24

In his current position, Stuart overseas the Sales and Business Development of ON24 Virtual Show, working with Sales, Executive Management and Product Development. ON24 is a global provider of webcasting and virtual events solutions.

Stuart has spent his working life in the B2B media space. Stuart has held a number of positions including VP Sales in which he was responsible for creating the first ‘online-only’ sales team at UBM (formerly CMP Media) and then pioneering the original cross-product (print and online media) sales team. In his last position at UBM Stuart oversaw and evangelized the use of virtual worlds in a business environment to internal and external customers

ON24 Virtual Show. Learn more on http://on24.com/products_virtualshow.html

Two years ago less than half of all consumers used search to find a local business but today that number is upward of 74%!

However, most small businesses today still don’t have a website in fact less than 10% of small business owners are online. For them the problem is not just that they don’t have a website but promoting their website as well.

Enter Yodle

Yodle helps small service based business get a web presence and then help them promote their business by buying lots of niche keywords and syndicating the results to local businesses. (ex Teeth Whitening Union Square NY)

Yodle growth has been outstanding (around 700% year over year) which should come as no surprise since their customers are long tail and so are the keywords they buy for them.

Check out my podcast with their CEO Court Cunningham …

Yodle: Managing the Long Tail for the Long Tail!

About Court

Court Cunningham is the CEO of Yodle, Court oversees all aspects of operations and strategy, including technology, product development and sales and marketing. Prior to joining Yodle, he held the position of COO at Community Connect, a niche social networking company, where he lead consumer marketing, product management and development efforts. Before that, as SVP/GM of the Marketing Automation group at DoubleClick, he was instrumental in establishing DARTmail as the industry leading email marketing solution.

Court received a BA in English from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Imagine an event where all the content is delivered online, either “live” or recorded. This “virtual event” is delivered with an easy-to-use, game-like interface, and it includes features for social networking.

Unisfair, a company based in Menlo Park, Calif., is offering a virtual event product and service that can revolutionize how we deliver information to large audiences. After reading some recent FactPoint research on virtual events, I decided to explore this further with Brent Arslaner, VP of Marketing at Unisfair. I wanted to figure out what marketers should be doing with virtual events in the coming year. Enjoy …

Virtual Events: What should you be doing?

About Brent

Brent Arslaner oversees all Global Marketing ensuring Unisfair maintains its leadership role providing Virtual Event solutions.

Prior to joining Unisfair, Brent was Vice President of Marketing at Jamcracker, a leading provider of On Demand Delivery solutions. Before Jamcracker, he was Vice President of Product Strategy at Kana Software where he defined corporate strategy and built strategic partnerships.

Brent went to Kana through its acquisition of Broadbase Software. At Broadbase, he was instrumental in driving the IPO process, successfully acquiring and integrating six companies and growing the company to over $100 million in sales. Earlier, Brent held senior marketing positions at PeopleSoft and Intrepid Systems.

I met Tom Pick through my blog when he identified me as an emerging blogger with good content on B2B marketing and decided to link to me. When Robert Lesser and I put out our survey to identify which Web 2.0 tools are most popular with B2B marketers, Tom was one of our first responders.

I asked Tom about his experiences with Web 2.0 and what his clients are asking him for. I wanted to get a sense of how on-target our survey results were compared to his experiences, as well as elicit some best practices in using Web 2.0 tools to share with you. Enjoy …

B2B Marketing with Web 2.0 tools, a podcast with Tom Pick

About Tom

Tom Pick is a marketing and PR executive with more than 15 years’ experience in the technology industry. Previous to his work as a B2B marketing communications, product marketing and Web marketing consultant, Tom was director of corporate communications at reinsurance intermediary Collins Associates. There he was responsible for developing and implementing an integrated marketing strategy that included media relations, Web marketing, sales collateral and event marketing programs. Under his plan, the company increased website traffic by 400% and tripled its press coverage.

Prior to joining Collins, Tom spent nine years with the manufacturing software company SoftBrands (formerly Fourth Shift), managing trade shows, analyst relations, PR and Web marketing. As director of Americas marketing, he led a team that successfully launched two new products while producing a 50% year-over-year increase in qualified leads for a mature product in a consolidating market.

Tom has authored numerous articles on Web marketing and social networking for various publications, and he writes the award-winning WebMarketCentral blog.