Webinar Wire

Charging For Value Add In Webinars

Posted by Ken Molay September 4 2009 12:41 AM EDT

Cecilia in Argentina sent me an interesting link to a webinar invitation set up on EventBrite. You can see the details of the webinar at this link: http://tinyurl.com/m6qt35

Pay attention to the fee structure. It is free to attend the live online web meeting. If you want a copy of the presentation slides, that costs you extra. If you want access to the slides and the archive recording for later reference and review, that costs a little more.

I don't recall seeing anyone try this model before. It's an interesting approach. First you hook your audience on a no-lose proposition. "You get the information for free." Then once they have seen the value and know how it benefits them, you are poised to profit on the two most commonly asked questions in any webinar: "Will you be making slides available?" and "Will there be a recording of this?"

I wonder how it will sell?

(By the way, I'm a big fan of EventBrite.

Continued »

Designing Email Invitations For Webinars

Posted by Ken Molay August 24 2009 9:43 PM EDT

Connect Direct, Inc. (CDI) has published a great free resource for all of us who promote webinars using email invitations. You can download a white paper entitled "Top 10 Tips For Webinar Invitation Success" from their website.

The 8-page PDF is succinct, easy to read, and delivers on its promise of guidelines directed specifically at email invitations for webinars.

This is simply a no-brainer. Go download it. Read it. Follow it.

By the way, the CDI white paper meshes rather nicely with the "Chart Of The Week" from MarketingSherpa. You'll have to check this out quickly... MarketingSherpa has a history of offering these things to the public for short periods and then putting them in archives for paid members only.

The thrust of the chart is that from 2001 to 2004, it didn't matter a great deal how your email message was constructed. On average, all emails tended to perform at about the same level (that performance factor declining steadily after 2002).

But over the last five years, things have changed in an important way. The performance decline has continued for emails that don't follow best practices. But emails following best practices for relevance, value, and construction guidelines are now trending upwards in performance.

Continued »

Who Do You Trust For Your Webinar Information?

Posted by Ken Molay August 20 2009 8:36 PM EDT

I just got notification that BlogRank from Invesp Consulting came out with a new ranked list of blogs in the category of Event Planning. Webinar Wire is number 2 and The Webinar Blog is number 3!

That's a very nice compliment, especially since I didn't even know the ranking system existed, and there was no lobbying or vote-stuffing involved. Invesp says on their site that they use more than 20 statistical factors in their ranking, including RSS membership, incoming links, Compete Alexa, and Technorati ranking.

You will also find both of these blogs prominently featured on Guy Kawasaki's Alltop page for Web Conferencing information.

I hope you are a regular reader of both blogs, as they don't duplicate information. I contribute lots of tips and juicy information to Webinar Wire, but it's our guest authors that make the extra difference and provide a wide-ranging world of experiences and viewpoints.

Would you like to see your own web conferencing guidelines and opinions featured on a widely read and trusted site with expanded reach through portals like Alltop? Log in and submit an article. I review each and every submission personally to make sure it is relevant to our subject area and to keep the spammers at bay.

Continued »

Web Conferencing in an Economic Crunch Time

Posted by Matt Bovell August 18 2009 11:42 AM EDT

1 comment

A few weeks ago, I had the great privilege to be invited to speak on a panel discussion of web conferencing's emergence as a solution for economically strapped companies. My co-panelist, Lauri Elliott, is an expert in organizational behavior and dynamics. She proved to be the perfect yin to my yang as I focused on implementation issues and she articulated the business issues that arise with web conferencing.

Another important aspect of the discussion was a differentiation between web conferencing and webinars. I was given an excellent chance to provide some best practices for both venues.

Our moderator, Josh Gingold, was the perfect foil to get the best information out of us. If you weren't able to attend the live webinar, here is a link to the replay. I guarantee you'll get a lot out of it!

Comment »

Taking Your Event Virtual

Posted by Ken Molay August 4 2009 11:24 PM EDT

1 comment

Stream57 is hosting a webcast this Thursday that should be of interest to our web event community. They are bringing together a panel of experts and video contributions from a variety of companies, industries, and areas of experience. It is probably worth a look if you are involved in meeting planning or strategizing your company's event calendar and tactics for reaching wider audiences.

To get more information and register, you can go to www.stream57.com/webcasts

Comment »

Evidence-Based Presentation Design

Posted by Ken Molay July 20 2009 5:12 PM EDT

1 comment

Nothing ever dies on the web. My friend James just sent me a link to an article posted last year, but every bit as timely today as it was then. As one of the television networks used to say about their reruns (rather condescendingly, I thought) "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!"

Dr. Andrew Abela, Ph.D. wrote up some guidelines for presentation slide design based on true empirical research rather than generally accepted rules of thumb and personal recommendations. I am pleased that these match my recommendations to clients in 9 out of 10 cases. The one surprise I had was his findings that complex information should remain grouped rather than being split into simpler component pieces.

Give it a read, and feel free to comment if you disagree with any of the tips.

Comment »

Webinar Consulting For Individuals

Posted by Ken Molay July 16 2009 5:57 PM EDT

Business Expert Webinars has introduced an interesting new service offering. You can book focused one-hour consulting sessions on a variety of topics related to planning, production, and delivery of web seminars. This is an attractive proposition for small business owners, consultants, or sole proprietors who want a bit of help to improve one aspect of their offerings but don't want an aggressive services company pursuing them for a big end-to-end production services contract. You get one hour of help at a flat rate and that's it.

Each consultancy topic is booked independently and offered by an expert in that area. Full disclosure dictates I tell you that I am one of the consultants, offering sessions on speaking techniques and vocal delivery.

You can see a list of topics and consultants by going to www.businessexpertwebinars.com/consulting

I haven't seen this model offered in our industry. It should be interesting to see whether it gains traction and is attractive to the business market.

Comment »

Webinar Lessons From Criminals

Posted by Ken Molay July 15 2009 12:07 AM EDT

The news part of this news story from Virginia is nasty stuff and I will not make light of it in any way. A 60-year-old guy was sentenced to prison for having child pornography on his computer. That's not the kind of news we follow on this site. What makes it interesting for our readers is how he got caught. To quote the article:

"Guilbeault hosted a live meeting over the Internet in the course of his employment with a software company. At the conclusion of this Web meeting, he neglected to disconnect his computer from the host network, enabling attendees to the meeting to continue to view from their own computer desktops information orginating from Guilbeault’s computer.

A meeting participant observed several images of young girls in lewd poses as well as a list of file names suggestive of pornography along with the words “Walter Guilbeault’s Desktop,” all displayed in the browser window where the Web meeting had been conducted."

We'll assume you don't have legally incriminating material plastered clearly on your work computer (sheesh!), but there can easily be things you would prefer your audience not see.

If you are going to run a screen share in a web conference, make sure to clean up your computer desktop first. Get rid of the personal photo you have as your background. Create a folder and move all your desktop icons into it. After the conference you can select all the files in the folder and drag them back onto your desktop. Easy.

Continued »

Webinar Results for Survey from The Goodman Center

Posted by Maryann Kearns July 13 2009 11:00 AM EDT

1 comment

Back in March I posted a link to Andy Goodman / The Goodman Center’s survey on teleconferences, videoconferences & webinars.  The results are in their new report:  Dialing In, Logging On, Nodding Off: The True Costs of Teleconferences, Videoconferences and Webinars.

Over the course of about 22 days last spring, 1218 people took the survey (representing Non-profit 58%; Government 14%; Foundations 13%; Education 7%; Other 9%)  The top 5 issues the respondents represented were:  Education, Health, Children/Youth, Environment.  Click here for a full report. 

There are lots of ways to slice and dice the data.  I’ll focus on the items that jumped out at me the most.  Below is the gist of the webinar section, with a few comments. 

First, usage rates: 

·         25% (about 300) of respondents participate frequently or very frequently in Webinars

·         56% (about 700) believe usage will increase

·         72% (about 800-900) have no training in how to use (when conducting) a webinar effectively. 

The next issue noted was a report card.  It’s worth looking at the results from all of the types of meetings because it shows that even with 72% of respondents having no training in how to conduct an effective webinar, it’s clearly a better medium for communicating a meeting or training.  I found these results very encouraging for webinar usage.  Imagine what could be accomplished with a little (or a lot) of webinar guidance!

Accomplished objective of meeting/training

• Teleconference   B-
• Videoconference  B-
• Webinar  B

 Involve all the participants

 The survey listed common webinar problems ranked by FREQUENCY of occurrence:

1.       Boring visuals

2.       Lack of participant participation

3.       Poor leadership/facilitation

Common webinar problems ranked by SIGNIFICANCE of negative impact:

1.       Poor leadership/facilitation

2.       Lack of agenda or clear objective

3.       Boring visuals

So, boring visuals happen more often but are not as big of a problem as poor leadership/facilitation.  I found some of the comments about this interesting because they blurred the lines between issues a little bit, specifically one respondent noted that ”a webinar is a waste of time when ‘…it’s all lecture and the facilitator has not thought of creative ways to make it interactive, giving participants a way to engage/apply the material.’”  That statement really links the leadership/facilitation issue to the participant interaction component. 

Overall, when asked to respond in an open-ended format, the respondents listed the issues of poor leadership/facilitation (24%); technical problems/background noise (20%); Misleading description of topic (18%); Too much information for allotted time (16%) and Boring/uninteresting/irrelevant topic (14%) This just echoes previous sentiment.

The webinar section closed with the following ‘Meetings are meetings no matter what kind’ and that “If you don’t know how to run a good meeting in person, adding the prefix tele-isn’t going to help you and, in fact, will probably make life even more difficult.”  --'nuf said!

I was encouraged for the webinar consulting prospects of Potomac Webinars as I'm sure all of you webinar consultants are.  As you can tell from the title of his report, there is definitely a need for webinar training and help in developing effective webinars.  With growth expected in this medium (56% of respondents expected slight to significant increases that they would be logging on for more webinars in the future) the future looks bright.  I'm sure this site will continue to be a valuable resource for helping make the "B" grades become "A's" with suggestions on how to combat the issues listed.  The Goodman Center will be will be offering a free webinar based on this study on July 17^th. 

Andy, thanks for the shout out in the acknowledgements section.  I was (and am) grateful for the opportunity to speak with you regarding my experience with webinars and hope that I was able to help you spread the word. 

Comment »

Webinar Pros - Do As We Say, Not As We Do?

Posted by Ken Molay July 10 2009 2:03 AM EDT

3 comments

I recently have had a chance to watch a few educational webinars on the art of online presenting, given by experts who offer services and training in this area. And I have given plenty myself. In each case (including my own), I have spotted areas where we have tripped up or demonstrated examples of what NOT to do! It just goes to show how perfection remains an elusive goal. Let's see if we can use these case studies as reminders for ourselves.

This is not a hit piece or an attack on any of the parties, so I won't mention names other than my own. And for the sake of focus and brevity, I'm not going to mention all the things they did right! The specific negative points I mention were more than offset by all the good energy, enthusiasm, demonstrated knowledge, and valuable content in their webinars. Audiences in each case went away satisfied and informed.

Error #1 - One of the presenters used a friendly conversational style in his speaking voice. But he constantly ended sentences with the word: "Right?" By implicitly asking a question at the end of each sentence, he frustrated me as an audience member. First, a question implies that it is my turn to respond. Except of course I couldn't. And he didn't really want a response. So I felt "dissed." It also makes him seem a little less confident and sure of his material. I want someone to tell me information declaratively without constantly seeking my agreement or approval.

Continued »