"What's the best story you have heard?"

Over the weekend, a couple of items on the web caught my attention because they provide a valuable lesson for the virtual event as it tries to legitimize itself as the new marketing medium required to give traditional marketing the required boost.

One was the story that the sandwich-board job hunter found a job by going to a trade show where he met his new boss. The trade show industry perhaps is not highlighting this benefit as they try to justify the power of their current business models because they do not want their exhibit halls swarming with the near-homeless and the jobless, instead of power-buyers with open purchase orders in their hands.

The other was an interesting video presentation by Scott Berkun, author of "Confessions of a Public Speaker". He closes his presentation by telling the conference participants to go to a booth and instead of listening passively to the exhibitor's prepared statements, ask them "so what's the best story you have heard?"

Now let us ask ourselves the same question. In any of the virtual events that you may have seen, are you able to go and ask the exhibitors or the virtual event organizers..."so what's the best story you have heard?"

The last time I saw a public virtual event, the public chat room, or networking lounge, as some vendors call it (add social to it if you prefer - social networking lounge) was overflowing with sales people and PR people trying really hard to keep the attention of the online visitors. They were trying hard to draw the visitors to their respective virtual booths. At the virtual booth itself, it was just more of the same - more salespeople, more sales brochures, pitches after pitches.

Virtual events need story-tellers.

Of course, there are constraints. Sometimes the best stories have to remain untold. For example, when we at iTradeFair.com do a closed corporate trade show, and a company gets a trial order for half a million dollars through a purely virtual interaction, we can't talk about it. Both the event organizer, which in this case is the corporation, and the vendor that was awarded the contract do not want to publicize ther success story because they consider it a part of their competitive strategy. A non-disclosure agreement prevents us from telling the story.

Similarly, when we do virtual job fairs, our proudest moments are when we see job candidates from far and wide - many from the U.S. Military signed in from places such as Bahrain, Germany, Guam, Japan, Korea, from the Pacific Ocean on-board USS Bonhomme Richard, Quebec, Seoul and even Siberia, logging in to meet with recruiters before their return to civilian life. We can't tell these stories because we have to protect the privacy of the client and the users.

However, here are some things that a virtual exhibitor can do:

• Staff their booth-chats as well as the networking lounges with people from their technical teams - individuals who actually designed, manufactured or programmed a product. Their stories will be more interesting to visitors than prepared sales pitches and PR-speak. It helps keep your company genuine.
• If possible, staff booth-chats with some of their best customers who can evagelize their product for them
• If customers will oblige, obtain videos of testimonials, and make them available at the virtual booth.
• Request customers to spare 30 minutes online using powerful yet simple tools like Proclaim.
• Request customers to post their testimonials on the bulletin board at the virtual booth.

Without good stories to tell, virtual events will not realize their immense potential. Without good stories to share there will be no rapport already established amongst the online exhibitors and attendees when they eventually meet in person. A virtual event when conducted without a story-telling element, is a big opportunity lost.