InXpo Introduces Twitter Integration for Virtual Events

Virtual event provider InXpo has introduced a new series of Twitter services that can be packaged with virtual events.

The services allow attendees to send messages, or “tweets,” from a virtual event to Twitter. Users also can automatically insert the show hash tag with each tweet, which can help drive word-of-mouth about the event and draw in new viewers in real time.

InXpo said it also can provide back-end metrics that enable show hosts to track the number of tweets originating from the virtual event, as well as the number of updates with embedded event URLs and the number of visitors generated from tweets.

“We want to track what people have done from a tweeting standpoint,” InXpo co-founder and executive vice president Rick Hawkinson told FOLIO:. “We want to check the pulse for how well the viral marketing is working within the platform. Just like you have your main bloggers, this lets you know who your main tweeters are.”

Business-to-business publisher Watt Publishing, which specializes in the agri-business market, ran its first virtual event in April, using the InXpo platform and many of the social media options that come with it. According to Jeff Miller, Watt’s director of e-strategy sales and marketing, the publisher focused on learning how to use the metrics InXpo offers.

“They provide a data portal for all sponsors to track in real time the response to their booth,” Miller said. “What we felt was helpful was not only looking at who was visiting the booths but the ability to create profiles based on the visitor’s actions in the environment itself. If someone came into a booth and spoke about the H1N1 virus, we could direct them to additional education materials on the topic and go back to the sponsor and say ‘We know X amount of people looked at this information’ because they not only took time to look at it but downloaded it into their virtual briefcase.”

Miller added: “At its core, this is a lead generation device.”

Ramping Up

InXpo and other virtual event providers have been ramping up the social media components to their virtual events. For instance, InXpo offers profile matching, which recommends sponsors, exhibitors and fellow attendees a viewer may want to connect with based on their profile; text or video one-to-one chat, which offers both text chats and video cam chats for attendees and exhibitors; and connections to outside special networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook.

The Twitter and social media solutions are part of the package price for InXpo’s virtual events, which can range from $20,000 to more than $50,000.

“We haven’t been able to recreate the actual handshake at a live event but offering eye-to-eye contact really helps,” Hawkinson said.

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