• Only one half of paper product get recycled, and plastic waste (which would include video tapes) takes doesn’t break down for hundreds of years in landfills. (source: http://www.nabshow.com/2009/eventInfo/pdfs/Going%20Green_Guidebook_lores.pdf)
• Cars and motor vehicles are the leading cause in ozone pollution. They account for 72% of nitrogen oxides and 52% of reactive hydrocarbons (principal components of smog). (Source: http://bicycleuniverse.info/cars/pollutionpaper.html)
• When you drive an average of 1,000 miles a month, you produce around 120 tons of carbon dioxide a year: each gallon of gas used by a car contributes about 19 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere. (Source: http://www.green.sc/content,stats/)
• A New York Times article was released discussing the benefits of conferencing and the environment.
  o Last year, Building firm Carillion staff spent 34,144 hours talking to people through video, web and teleconferencing, avoiding the costs, time and stress of traveling.
  o Skanska UK, another construction firm, also recently trialed a video conferencing unit at a remote site in Cumbria and found that the money saved on traveling covered the £10,000 ($16388.0695) cost within six months. (Source: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/related_reports/best_green_companies/article3945570.ece)

Audio and Web Conferencing has made going green an easier process then actually staying in the red zone and continuing to pollute the environment. Now that this sort of technology is available we can reflect on how much time and money we were actually spending to fly a sales representative across the country. In my next blog, I will talk about how ReadyTalk provides the ability to become the oxymoron we never thought possible: green and satisfied.

All of these things do, in fact, contribute to conservation, but most of us tend to outweigh the environmental benefits with the personal sacrifice—I mean, it is understandable! When faced with the decision of: “hmmm should I eat the measly lettuce salad that came from the 2 foot by 2 foot garden in my back yard, or should I drive to a restaurant and eat their delicious steak imported from across the country?” Most of us know what the answer would be to that question; and the tree growing in our backyard would cringe at the answer. This is the problem with “going green” today and it applies to many businesses too. Saving our planet and boosting our environmentally friendly morals should not be looked on as a huge sacrifice that will devour our paychecks and inconveniences, but rather a process that will actually benefit us financially as well as saving time and effort. In my next blog, I will uncover how going green doesn’t have to be giving up an arm and a leg, but rather saving time, money and energy.

Webinars are web conferences that usually have a large number of participants and are used mainly for education or lead generation. For instance, we have one client in the medical industry that uses their webinars to educate medical staff on new drugs and techniques that may help them in their jobs. On the other hand, we have a technology client that conducts monthly webinars that are basically demonstrations of their service. For them, webinars are a demand generation vehicle. We also have several large nonprofits that use webinars as way to efficiently and inexpensively train new advocates and volunteers.

While it is an accepted fact, that web conferencing usage is skyrocketing (thanks in part to the economy), it is lesser known that webinars are also becoming a viable means for disseminating information to a large audience.

One of the reasons, we are seeing a huge spike in our event traffic is because of the way we have developed our product and service commitment. Unlike other large vendors, who have different products for on-demand web conferencing and webinars (meaning the user has to straddle two different products with different features to do their job), we offer one core product that allows you to select the features you need for either your on-demand conferences or your webinars. Our users certainly appreciate this consistency across use case scenarios. Further, our event staff is their to use free of charge unlike other vendors who charge by the hour for operator assistance, coaching and consulting, dry runs and practice sessions.

If you are currently doing webinars and have not experienced the ReadyTalk event staff, give us a shot and you will be happy to see we are committed to your success.

Most of the literature I read about lead scoring has you assume that at a certain lead score, a potential buyer is ready to be called upon. On the surface, this seemed relatively simple to me. Add up the behavior score and add it to the demographic score and voila you have a magical number that decides whether a customer gets a call from your salesperson.

Is this necessarily true? If a prospect never truly raises their hand should they be called? For example, if I attribute 1 point for every web page visited and 5 points for every white paper downloaded, should I be wasting time on the person who likes to browse our community section and read our content but has no interest in purchasing our service. My point is while these behavioral actions are good indicators they are not the best. A stronger indicator would be a raised hand in the form of a info request or demo request.

What I am struggling with is are there any actions besides “hand raising” that should trigger a phone call. If so, what are those actions? This is where an open conversation with the sales team can be immensely helpful. Also, knowing that lead scoring is an on-going project that is constantly adjusted with feedback from the sales team.

Once you’ve started producing your podcasts, you’ll need to “Publish” them so they’re available for listening. Publishing consists of three main steps:

1. Host: Your podcasts need to be available for downloading via the Internet. You can either host them on your own website or use a podcast hosting service.
2. Feed: Set up an RSS feed so that everyone who subscribes to your feed will automatically receive new podcasts as you make them available. The easiest way to set up a feed is through a service provider.
3. Read: Your listeners will need a podcast reader (iTunes, for example) to subscribe to your feed and download the podcasts. They’ll also need a media player (RealPlayer or an iPod, for example) to listen to the podcasts.

Of course, publishing your podcasts doesn’t do any good unless your audience knows about them. “Promote” your podcasts by advertising them through your company’s website, blog, emails, department meetings, client meetings, direct mailers, etc. Explain what the podcasts are about and how your audience will benefit from them. Many potential listeners may be new to podcasting, so give them instructions for subscribing and listening to your podcasts.

To keep your audience listening, you need to continually “Perfect” your podcasts. The best way is to talk to your audience and get their feedback. First, you’ll need to find out who’s listening. Track downloads of your podcasts for statistics on traffic and subscriptions. Use the same communication channels for promoting your podcasts to solicit feedback on who’s listening. Once you know who’s listening, ask them what they like and don’t like about your podcasts and get their ideas for making them better. Encourage a conversation among your audience by setting up a blog or online forum to facilitate a dialog around your podcasts. You may get more out of it than just ideas for making your podcasts better.

In this series of blogs, I’ve covered 8 “Ps” in podcasting: the Popularity, Pros, and Possibilities of podcasting and ideas for Planning, Producing, Publishing, Promoting, and Perfecting your podcasts. The final “Point” (sorry, I couldn’t resist one last “P”) is that ReadyTalk provides a turnkey podcasting solution with everything you need to create and publish your podcasts. It’s easy to use and comes standard with every ReadyTalk account - the perfect solution for beginners.

So give podcasting a try. It’ll be good for you.

Technorati Tags: B2B, Customer Service, Human Resource, Marketing, Podcasting, Public Relations, Sales, Social Media

The last “P” I talked about was “Planning.” Once you’ve done that, you’re ready for the next “P”: “Producing.” This is where the “Ps” really start to get good.

Producing podcasts consists of creating the content and recording it. Here are some best practices to keep in mind as you produce your podcasts:

• Content is king. Make sure the content is something your listeners will value. Also, get to the point and be succinct. The worst thing you can do is waste your audience’s time.
• Stick to the basics. The structure of your podcast should be the same as any other presentation, whitepaper, or effective communication: introduction, body, and a reinforcing conclusion.
• Don’t advertise or sell. Your audience can smell a sales pitch a mile away. What they want is information that enlightens or entertains them. Otherwise, they won’t listen.
• Be authentic. Polished, professional-sounding podcasts are difficult and expensive to produce. Luckily, it’s not necessary, if you’re producing something useful. It’s more important to be authentic.
• Have a clean delivery. Although you don’t have to sound like a professional, the quality of the performance is still important. Use performers with clear, articulate voices. Follow a script to keep the performance focused. Practice before recording, at least while you’re getting started.
• Make it easy to edit. You will make mistakes, probably a lot of them at first. So record your podcasts with editing in mind. Slow down and pause frequently as you record to create adequate cut points if you need them. Don’t try to edit individual words. If you make a mistake, re-record the entire sentence or more.
• Build a backlog. Try to produce several podcasts in your series before publishing your first one, and always have more than one ready to go. This will ensure regular releases, which helps build and retain your audience.

Producing your first podcasts may be a bit intimidating and take some time. But don’t worry, you’ll get good at it. And before long you’ll probably really like doing them. Just like you learned to like peas. Okay, well…better than that.

Technorati Tags: B2B, Customer Service, Human Resource, Marketing, Podcasting, Public Relations, Sales, Social Media

One of the most common problems that plagues podcasting is “podfading,” which occurs when the podcasts become less and less frequent or stop altogether. It’s estimated that a fifth of all podcasts end before the tenth episode. This may often be the result of poor planning. Upfront planning can save you lots of time, aggravation, and disappointment with your podcasts.

Here are some things to think about as you plan your podcasts:

• Don’t podcast just to podcast. Make sure that podcasting is the most appropriate communications medium for the information you’re trying to deliver.

• Know your audience. Know who you expect to listen to your podcasts and make sure you are providing them with content that is valuable and relevant to them.

• Pick the right length and frequency for your podcasts. This mostly depends on the content and audience. In general, shorter is better because people always have more important things to do. The priority of those other tasks goes up the longer your podcast.

• Be consistent. Developing a consistent theme, tone, format, length and frequency lets your listeners know what to expect from one podcast to the next. It also establishes a framework that makes it easier for you to create the podcasts.

Planning itself won’t necessarily make your podcasts perfect, but it may keep you from biting off more than you can chew, or creating podcasts that your audience will find unpalatable.

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However,businesses still need to maintain relationships with their customers, suppliers and remote employees and audio and web conferencing services are filling this gap. Compare the average cost of a domestic business trip (as stated above)with a web conference.

10 Person 60 Minute Web & Audio Conference

Quite the difference. The technology for web and audio conferencing has matured to such a point now that if your company is not using some combination of conferencing and travel, they are missing out on significant cost savings. Granted, there are some times when nothing beats a face to face meeting, but you should certainly be using web and audio conferencing for everything else.

So, what is Unified Communications? According to the International Engineering Consortium, unified communications is an industry term used to describe all forms of call and multimedia/cross-media message-management functions controlled by an individual user for both business and social purposes.

Great so what does that mean? To put it simply, unified communications integrates all the systems that a user might already be using and helps those systems work together in real time. For example, unified communications technology could allow a user to seamlessly collaborate with another person on a project, even if the two users are in separate locations. The user could quickly locate the necessary person by accessing an interactive directory, engage in a text messaging session, and then escalate the session to a voice call, or even a video call – all within minutes.

Another important part of UC is its ability to eliminate device and media dependencies as well as reduce latency. Latency is the delay between receiving information and acting upon that information. The idea is that by having a unified communications infrastructure linked (typically using web services) you can automate the process of setting up conference calls, web conferences or any other method of communication so that you can get hold of the necessary people more easily and quickly, and thereby make decisions faster.

What does this mean to a web conferencing company like ReadyTalk or to your company? In the next blog, I am going to talk about how at ReadyTalk we are doing our best to reduce latency and device and media dependency.

You can blog about anything or nothing, and many people do. The same is true for podcasting. But if you want people to actually listen to your podcasts, you need to make sure they provide useful information or are entertaining to your audience - preferably both. That’s not always possible, of course. Podcasting your earnings reports isn’t going get too many yuks from the financial community (at least we hope not), but they’ll find them useful.

One way to come up with podcasting ideas is to analyze all the types of communications you use inside your company and with your customers. Some of these may be suitable for podcasting, or even be more effectively delivered as podcasts. This exercise may also generate some completely new ideas for communication that are uniquely suited for podcasting. Here are some possibilities to get you thinking:

Corporate:

• Financial updates such as quarterly earnings reports
• Business news such as company announcements, industry news and trends
• Internal company announcements, newsletters
• Management fireside chats

Sales and Marketing:

• Product news, such as new features and release schedules
• Product promotions and discounts
• Account management status and updates for customers and clients
• Interviews with industry experts
• Whitepapers
• Research paper summaries

Human Resoures:

• HR training courses
• HR initiative announcements
• Policies and procedures
• Management tips and best practices
• Employee commentaries

Customer Support:

• Product usage tips and best practices
• Problem reports, status and workarounds
• Product training

Another way to come up with business podcasting ideas is to go to iTunes and listen to some business podcasts. And talk to other companies to find out what they’re podcasting. You’ll have a bowlful of possibilities before you know it.

Are you doing business podcasting? I’d love to hear what you’re podcasting and how it’s going.

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