Valentina’s Newbie Guide to Metaverse for Small to Medium-Sized Businesses

I’m going to be very vulnerable right now. This blog post is something that I’m a newbie in: the Metaverse.

I have been educating myself nonstop since April. My inspiration to understand this new technology is my young children and wanting to know more to be helpful for them to make the right choices in this virtual place once the time comes then as a marketer to grow my consulting business.

I was first introduced to metaverse, Web3, NFTs, etc at the Uprising retreat back in April where I attended in-person with the top 30 marketers around the country and internationally.

Since then I’ve been in a supportive online community (server) in Discord where we share articles, feedback, and more.

“Meta is positioned to drastically change the business landscape, making the online presence of individual companies even more essential than ever. The metaverse presents the opportunity to level up customer engagement, experience, and retention. ”

Source: Inc

Below I will be sharing takeaways for my small to medium sized business owners.

But First: being a fly in the wall

I was hearing Mark Schaefer and Mitch Jackson, Esq. talk about the metaverse in a recent Zoom call. I was in the audience with others and I didn’t ask questions just took notes for myself to share with you.

We saw a quick video demo of the metaverse: think the next step after Zoom but kind of fun like Prezi. In the metaverse, you can invite leads/clients into your virtual conference room and you present to them while they sit in this virtual chair, on a virtual desk, in a virtual room you designed. I saw examples of virtual work offices, conference room, waiting rooms, and university classroom.

Action steps for myself: tools

I need to immediately invest/purchase VR Headset called: Quest 2

Places where to create these virtual rooms:

https://www.oculus.com/workrooms/

https://spatial.io

engagevr.io

glue.work

Metaverse Thought Leaders: people who know their stuff

Here is a list of metaverse/Web3 professionals that you should start following whether it is on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Mark Schaefer (He is one of my heroes, author of several best selling Marketing books, he is curious about this topic and educated us with his blog posts, like this one)

Mitch Jackson, esq. (Attorney, expert in the metaverse conference rooms, nice guy!)

Matthew Sweezey (he expanded my mind back in April with this knowledge of Web3, great guy based on our time talking at the Uprising Marketing Retreat, click here for a brief summary of main takeaways)

I’m going to be hearing from Brian Piper in another Zoom call next month but I’ll also include him in this list since he is very active in this topic in our Discord server.

“The metaverse will infiltrate every sector in the coming years, culminating in a market opportunity worth more than $1 trillion in annual revenues, according to JP Morgan.”

Source: WeForum

Parting thoughts: what’s next?

I noticed half of us on the Zoom call don’t own a VR Headset yet, so this information is still very innovative. Not all marketers know about this technology but you can start learning now.

If you reach out to me, I can share more insights and tips that was shared with us. I wanted to keep this blog post brief with quick steps to learn more about this topic.

Follow me in my journey (through my newsletter) as I push myself as a marketer and business owner to be more familiar with the metaverse in my Tri-Cities area which includes Johnson City, Kingsport, Bristol, TN and surrounding areas such as foodie destinations: Knoxville, TN and Asheville, NC.

• How AI has made my life easier – personally and professionally
• Replay: Two Instagram Workshop for Farmers and Food Vendors
• Why I visit customers at their businesses
• Insights from visiting my grandma in Texas
• Social media/Instagram for Local Food vendors

Virtual Collaboration Platform