All the presentations from the Social Tools for Business Use seminar from last week are now online at Focus Business Communications apart from one presenter who is seeking clearance from their legal department.

We actually were uploading the audio files immediately after the presentations finished. So in effect it was a virtual 'webcast' of the event. Within 15 minutes prresentations were online.

There were about 40 delegates present at the conference over the the 2 days. As at 5pm Tuesday 17th - 5 days after it finished - the audio files had been accessed 268 times.

What does this show?

• Majority of the visitors will have been sent to listen by delegates and presenters telling their networks about them either through 'word of mouth'  or blogs. We did not do a press release or other marketing to drive traffic to the recordings so far.
• The attendee to listener ration is just over 1:6 (40 attendees to 268 listeners)

For companies this is a perfect way to add value to any event they organise especially when getting people to attend is hard because of their workload and time constraints. In additiona many employees would often benefit by being able to 'virtually attend'.

One final consideration. The podcast will still be accessible in a years time. Our experience is that such events have at least a 2 year 'shelf-life'. People are interested in 'what was said last year' even when the new one is available. For some clients we are finding their podcasts are being accessed by 20 - 30 people per month 18 months after the event happened.