There’s no denying it: the metaverse is coming and is on its way to disrupting the business world as we know it.
Powered by the newly renamed Meta (formerly Facebook), the Metaverse will likely be a network of 3D, immersive and interactive 360-degree micro-worlds. In these digital spaces we are going to buy products, eat media, learn recent skills, socialize and play in the type of an avatar.
Naturally, firms want to get ahead of the competition and take their place in an alternative reality; giants akin to Walmart, Sony and Manchester City they are quietly preparing to win over customers and fans with digitally-enabled products and experiences.
As a business owner and/or leader, you could be excited about the wealth of possibilities that the metaworld will bring. But it’s just as likely that you simply’re concerned, unsure, or just completely confused about what this latest era of technological evolution means for you and your business.
My passion is to make the metaworld as inclusive and accessible as possible so that everybody can make the most of the opportunities it has to offer. That’s why I’ve put together this introductory guide for other entrepreneurs. Read on to learn easy ways every company can leverage the power of the metaworld to support employees, connect with customers, and achieve success.
Content Marketing in the Metaverse: Grow your audience with 3D, VR and more
Discover recent opportunities to connect with your customers
You already know that to attract recent customers and retain existing ones, firms must exhibit adaptability, connection and relevance. So when customers get excited about the meta-world and move (some parts of) their lives to virtual spaces, firms need to follow suit.
Excitingly, creating a whole recent world means a whole recent world of selling opportunities. The challenge here is determining exactly the way you will capture the attention of recent potential customers in the meta world. This could appear like sponsoring virtual events that your ideal client plans to attend, branding the spaces they’ll be living in, or creating their very own engaging ads to run on streaming and video-sharing platforms.
Ambitious firms could go a step further by creating their very own virtual experiences, exhibitions or games that recent and existing customers could participate in in a fun and unique way. Bonus points for those that can get users to interact with their product or get excited about the brand’s storytelling in these virtual environments.
Importantly, don’t panic because of your personal lack of skill or understanding when it comes to technology development. You might consider working with a specialist agency, exploring low-code platforms, or even hiring a developer with relevant experience.
Deliver engaging virtual events
For firms looking for a reliable way to engage customers, potential employees and existing staff, hosting a live event has at all times been an option with a lot of experience and success. But now, in the meta world, organizing live events might be much easier, cheaper and more impactful.
From panel discussions and conferences to masterclasses and hackathons, virtual live events are free from the budget, time, space and geographic constraints that their in-person cousins face. Creation recent virtual event platforms mean organizations can create fully branded live broadcasts and webinars with one click. Content can be streamed concurrently across multiple social media channels.
More advanced platforms akin to Cooking Studiothey allow hosts to record and store content, analyze viewer eye tracking, evaluate chat log data, and gather a huge range of insights to measure engagement and impact.
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Improve your worker onboarding and training
We’ve now explored some of the opportunities the meta world offers for engaging external stakeholders, but don’t let this distract you from the advantages that might be realized internally.
To begin with, v recent study87% of executives said they were experiencing workforce skills gaps or expected them to occur inside a few years. However, lower than half of respondents had a clear idea of how to address this issue.
It is clear that the world’s newly distant and hybrid workforce needs a recent, data-driven approach to learning and development. And this is the challenge facing innovators of the metaverse and immersive reality starting to solve.
In the metaworld, engaging training programs might be hosted in virtual environments. Employees can then access the content from anywhere, anytime, and as many times as needed. For example, a middle manager can brush up on communication skills with the help of a virtual human avatar powered by artificial intelligence that may assess and track a whole bunch of performance metrics. Or a sales team member can practice complex product demonstrations in a zero-risk virtual training space.
Metaverse-enabled L&D outcomes will likely outperform traditional classroom training. This is because when students interact with the virtual world, they make decisions just as they’d in the physical world, activating the same neural pathways in the brain. As an added bonus, immersive learning platforms make it easy to track progress using AI data, which helps students and managers understand where areas for improvement lie. This data can, in turn, be used to improve training content for future users.
A growing body of evidence supports the purported effectiveness of immersive training; Studies have shown that when immersive simulations are consistently used to train recent employees, students retain 61% more information in the first 30 days after initial onboarding and achieve 27% faster time to productivity.
Build productive relationships in your team
The final mention in this introductory guide is perhaps the most vital: personal relationships.
The basis of every company are people, and although implementation and training are of great importance, cooperation and communication inside the team are crucial for the smooth running of day by day operations. As organizations increasingly operate fully remotely, we must find recent ways to maintain relationships that previously thrived in face-to-face office environments.
It could appear counterintuitive to suggest that the metaworld, a fully online environment, is a powerful tool for creating social connections. However, I imagine that it has incredible potential as a space that unites people and facilitates cooperation.
That’s why I’m a strong supporter of standard virtual meetings in my team of over 50 people at Virti. We use virtual spaces to discuss our work, ideas and projects synchronously and asynchronously. But we also use them to talk, get to know each other, reflect and rejoice together. Encouraging your entire team to take the leap into the meta world might not be easy, but if you’re employed hard to encourage a gradual transition, you will soon see the rewards.
We make the Metaverse work for you
I hope this guide has made clear that the metaworld does not have to be viewed as a threat or disruption to business processes. Take the first step now by selecting to implement only one of the areas described above. And do not forget that by being proactive and creative, you possibly can make the most of this exciting opportunity to speed up your organization’s growth.