The Webinar Blog

Tips For Better Marketing Webinars

2009-12-08T21:21:49-05:00

Hmmm… Two promotional alerts in a row for webinars this week. Sorry about that. I’m working so hard on content, preparation, and practice for my stacked up public seminars that I’m having trouble writing new tips and tricks articles for the blog. But hopefully that is offset by the information and education you can gain by coming to the live sessions.

On Thursday (December 10), I’ll be part of a panel of webinar experts all trying to talk over each other about how to make your marketing webinars more effective. This is being hosted by ReadyTalk (the web conferencing technology provider) and panelists include people from Frost & Sullivan, the American Marketing Association, and Ryma Technologies.

I’ll tell you right now… There’s not going to be a lot of visual content, so set your expectations accordingly. But we’ve been working on the topics and information we’re covering and there’s a wealth of good tips for you. It will be conversational and casual, and should be a nice change of pace from the promotional stuff you get all too often in webinars. None of us has slides promoting our companies or trying to get you to buy our services. It’s pure educational value.

The session is scheduled for one hour, it’s free, and starts at 11:30 US Pacific / 2:30 US Eastern. Click here for other time zones.

You can register by clicking this link, or you can copy and paste the following shortcut into your browser: https://cc.readytalk.com/r/krm1rncat7y8

Hope to see you there!

Technorati Tags: ReadyTalk,webinar,marketing,web seminar,online seminar,webcasting,webcast,web conference,web conferencing

Training Webinars 101 Last Chance To Register!

2009-12-07T11:52:24-05:00

On Tuesday, December 8 I’ll be giving a free public session on considerations for moving your training online. This is a “101-level course”, which means I’ll be talking about basics and introductory concepts rather than in-depth “train the trainer” details. If you have wondered whether webinars are right for your educational sessions, this is a great way to learn about what is involved and how online training differs from in-room training. It is appropriate for both business trainers and academic instructors.

My presentation will last for one hour and starts at 9am US Pacific / 1pm US Eastern. Click here to see conversions to other time zones.

Register by clicking here, or if your feed reader doesn’t support hyperlinks, copy and paste this link into your browser: http://tinyurl.com/yz3eh85

Technorati Tags: webinar,web seminar,web training,online training,online seminar,webcasting,webcast,training

Telephone Conferencing For Webinars

2009-12-04T02:15:12-05:00

This blog post is targeted specifically at “one-to-many” webinars such as marketing presentations or investor relations webcasts. Many of the points I raise will not apply to smaller, more collaborative peer-based web meetings.

In large session webinars, the majority of the information flow is outbound from the presenters to the audience. It’s simply impractical to let the audience members all chime in during the session. So if we accept that there isn’t going to be much two-way voice interaction between the presenters and audience, is phone conferencing still worth talking about?

I maintain that it is.

Whenever possible, I prefer to give my audiences an option on how they can listen to the presenters. They can listen over their computer speakers or dial in on the telephone. People have different personal preferences, equipment, and business considerations. Hopefully the web conferencing or webcasting software you use has a way to integrate telephone and computer streaming audio. This almost always entails having your presentation team call in on a teleconference line and then streaming the telephone audio into the webinar content so it can be distributed as part of the audiovisual information received by all attendees.

Given the ubiquity of teleconferencing in North America and the incredible number of providers you can choose from, is this just a simple commodity where you should go with lowest cost? Or are there actual differences in features and functionality that matter in a webinar? No prizes for guessing my answer… It’s the latter. Let’s take a look at teleconferencing features that can make your life easier when working with a public webinar. (By the way, I acknowledge that audioconferencing may be less common and less feature-rich in other countries. My experience is based on the American market.)

1) Multiple presenters. It is common to have anywhere from two to six people working on the presentation side of your event. These can include multiple subject matter presenters, a moderator, a supervising administrator, and perhaps some technical assistants who work on prioritizing and answering audience questions via chat. Watch out for teleconference systems that only allow a single host for a call. You need to let your entire presentation team join with higher privileges than the webinar attendees have.

2) Call joining. Most teleconference systems provide a single call-in telephone number for the meeting. They then step callers through a series of question/response challenges to identify them as presenters or attendees. A very few teleconference systems provide completely separate numbers for attendees and presenters. It cuts down on the number of steps callers have to go through before they get access to the meeting and I find that this also reduces the odds of presenters calling in and identifying themselves as attendees by mistake (something that happens with ridiculous frequency). The tradeoff is that it is easier to mix up the call-in numbers… You don’t know pain until you find you have sent out the presenter dial-in number to your entire audience!

3) International access. Obviously this only applies if you have international participants! If you do, this becomes a huge differentiator between providers. Check pricing structures from the various countries that may call in. Find out which countries have toll free access numbers and toll (direct dial) numbers. Many countries need both… It is common to find countries that ban toll free access from mobile phones for instance. Does your provider host an online reference page that lets attendees look up the most convenient access number for their location? Or will you have to create the list and host it yourself? Try calling an international access number and listen to the prompts. Are they in the local language or English? Will this matter to you? Watch out for prompts that say “Press the pound key” – Most foreign countries don’t refer to the crosshatch symbol as “pound”.

4) Barge tones and announcements. Make sure you have a way to turn off “barge tones” (beeps indicating when people join and leave the call) and announcements of each caller. These features may be useful for small meetings, but can destroy a large public webinar. The call mechanics should never call attention to themselves. You want no distractions from the information flow.

5) Private presenter subconference. Sometimes called a “green room” (an entertainment industry term), this lets the presentation team talk to each other without the audience hearing them. Absolutely essential for professional public audience events, since you don’t want early joiners hearing the team make final preparations or joking around. The convenience feature to look for is automatic entry into the subconference for all presenters when they dial in at the start of the call. Some providers force the presenters to dial codes to enter the subconference or force the call host to explicitly place them in the private conference. This creates more opportunities for things to go wrong. I like being able to press a single code at the end of the call to take all presenters back into the subconference for a private debriefing and wrap-up discussion.

6) Audience muting. You should be able to configure your call so that audience attendees automatically join the call with their lines muted and are not able to unmute themselves.

7) Call recording. Even though I record my full webinar presentation using the web conferencing technology, I like to record the audio call as a backup. This gives me the ability to digitally edit the audio file and to re-create the presentation if the webinar recording fails for some reason. The teleconference recording should have higher audio quality than the webinar recording (most webinar technologies heavily compress their recordings to reduce processing and file size). Look for the ability to get a lossless format digital file of the call – or at least an extremely high bitrate MP3 (192K or higher). If you use the green room subconference idea mentioned in item 5, you should be able to make your recording start and end automatically in conjunction with joining the presenters into the main conference and pulling them out at the end. The fewer commands you have to issue, the better.

8) Question management. This gets tricky on big events. If you want to let audience members ask questions over the telephone, it’s usually best to use your teleconference provider’s operator services to help you. You may be able to save money by running things yourself, but this needs practice and expertise as well as higher level capabilities in the teleconference software. You want attendees to be able to queue themselves to ask a question (the digital equivalent of raising your hand in an auditorium and waiting to be called on). Then a host needs to be able to open a specific queued line and indicate to the caller that they are live and on the air. Then the host needs to be able to mute their line again and open the next one in queue.

9) Call ending. Especially if you use a private subconference after your presentation, make sure you can force a disconnect on all attendee lines. As strange as it sounds, some attendees will stay connected, running up your costs, even though they can’t hear anything. Maybe they wander away and leave the line open. I’ve never understood it.

Use these guidelines to help you in your selection process along with close looks at audio line quality, pricing, billing/reporting details, and customer complaints found through Google searches on the company name. Finding the right audio conference provider can simplify life for the host, presenters, and audience members in your webinars.

Technorati Tags: audio conferencing,audioconferencing,teleconferencing,telephone conferencing,webinar,web seminar,webcasting,webcast,web conference,web conferencing,conference call

Maybe Presenters Arent The Problem

2009-11-23T03:43:10-05:00

I was looking at a recent post on the Presentation Advisors blog that set up the hypothesis that audience members tend to agree on how bad the majority of presentations are. They even agree on the most common bad habits and presentation mistakes. So how is it possible that when you take these same people with their audience frustrations and insights and you turn them into presenters, they make the same mistakes and create the same lousy presentations they were just complaining about!?! Is it because “Audience Members are from Venus, Presenters are from Mars?”

The blog post generated a few comments from readers, but they tended to concentrate on the usual tactical suggestions for presenters… “Think like your audience” or “Don’t rely on your slides as a teleprompter script.”

I have concentrated on many of those same practical suggestions in my training for webinar presenters. How many times can we in the presentation consulting/training community repeat the tired old chestnuts about larger fonts, less text, more graphics, greater contrast, etc, etc, etc? There are studies and books and blogs and before/after presentations all over the web from professionals in presentation design and delivery. They are all remarkably consistent and mutually supportive in their messages. And it doesn’t seem to be having any significant effect on the average quality of presentation design and preparation.

So I started thinking about it from a different angle. How are we not “thinking like our audience” when presenting these tips? And I realized that perhaps we are addressing the wrong audience entirely!

Think about it… Aside from a vanishingly few professional presenters, the people making business presentations have jobs defined by other measures of success and productivity. Who gets asked (directed) to make presentations? Engineers, consultants, managers, lawyers, doctors, and so on. For every one of those people, the presentation is psychologically and pragmatically a distraction and time sink from their “real” work. No matter how much they would like to create a fancy presentation with tons of graphics and iterative rounds of practice/refinement, they can’t afford to do so. Because they are never going to be evaluated and rewarded/punished based on the quality of their presentation.

When was the last time you heard of a product manager or sales engineer getting a poor annual review because he made a boring presentation with lots of dense text and bullet points? Never. But he sure gets marked down for not completing his “real” assignments on time or devoting enough attention to his other duties. What is the incentive to spend the extra time and effort on a strong, engaging presentation? If he’s really lucky, he’ll be seen as such a bad speaker that he’ll never be asked to “waste time” on a presentation again!

Maybe it’s time for those of us in the business of giving presentation design tips to step back from the tactical best practices for a bit and collectively do some evangelizing up the chain of command. We need to get explicit and remind management why good, strong, engaging presentations matter enough to the company to deserve time and attention when they are needed.

Whoever gives that presentation represents the company, the department, and the products/services/information available for use. External presentations might very well be your one and only chance to gain or lose important stakeholders. Internal presentations determine whether you are contributing to the overall growth and business acumen of other employees who can make or break your company’s success.

That’s important enough to warrant a statement from management when someone gets a presentation assignment. “I expect you to take the time necessary to do this right. I’ll be paying attention to the result, and I’ll provide both critique and the support you need to make sure you are able to develop this important business capability along with your other skills.”

Until that happens, presentations will remain boring and poorly constructed. Because those are the ones that are faster and easier for the presenter to get out of the way as a distraction from his “real” job.

Technorati Tags: Presentation Advisors,presentations,PowerPoint,webinar,web seminar,webcasting,webcast,web conference,web conferencing

South Pacific Webinar QA Part Three

2009-11-19T19:42:39-05:00

This finishes my series of answers from the Citrix webinar for first timers. You can read Part One and Part Two in their own posts.

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Janelle: Have you used webinars to conduct training sessions in-house?

Answer: Absolutely! I used to work at a software company and we used webinars to train employees on our latest software releases or to involve them in meetings when they were at remote locations. Many companies now use webinars for “all hands meetings” to communicate information from top executives. Companies are also offering new employee orientation for satellite offices from their central HR department. The possibilities are endless.

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Denis: What are advantages/disadvantages/effectiveness of conducting webinars in virtual environments such as Second Life?

Answer: In addition to Second Life, you will find companies such as InXpo, ON24, and Unisfair offering virtual environments that turn the computer into a mock exhibition hall, auditorium, or conference center. Attendees see iconic images of other people, move between rooms to interact with various aspects of the event, and can visit and communicate with representatives of the companies involved. These can be very immersive experiences, and offer a different type of interaction than the classic webinar or webcast. But the setup and preparation for an effective virtual event should not be trivialized. In many respects, it is like setting up a large physical show. And although the costs are lower than booking physical buildings, they are still higher than the average webinar or webcasting technology. They start to pay off when companies have very large audiences they want to interact with and several groups who want to present themselves to the audiences. I haven’t seen studies on effectiveness, but anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that they can be quite cost effective compared to flying in target audiences from large geographies.

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Jerry Lee: What was the name of the payment gateway you mentioned for charging for a webinar?

Answer: I mentioned www.EventBrite.com as an example of a registration management system that can be used with webinar connection links. It is quite intuitive to work with and has the advantage of no up-front costs. They skim a little off each payment from a registrant. Other third-party systems are also available, including www.cvent.com, www.actonsoftware.com, and AMP from Corvent.

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Cristina: Can webinars be used as part of the eLearning program of an organization?

Answer: Definitely. You might schedule a webinar to offer the basic training, you might offer a collaborative session to allow interaction with the instructor for remote students. There are also specialized versions of web conferencing software that have features designed to offer extra eLearning support. These can include the ability to run scored tests, integrate with external Learning Management Systems, separate students into breakout groups, or manage a series of courses in a program.

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Norm: Can we pre-record a webinar and just “run” it at another time, or does it have to be live?

Answer: It is usually not a good idea (or in most cases possible) to try to fool an audience into thinking that an event is live when they are actually watching a recording. But I have seen webinars where a host introduces the topic, announces that we will now watch a recorded presentation (for instance a guest speaker subject expert), and then take live questions afterwards. The only technology I know of off-hand for really faking a live webinar using recorded content is from a company called omNovia.

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Kim: Do you have tips for handling people who become frustrated or unhappy if a webinar stops working or if something goes wrong during the presentation?

Answer: Take ownership and responsibility – don’t start pointing fingers and playing the blame game. If it’s your webinar, you get to accept the responsibility for everything that happened. Express empathy with your frustrated audience member. See it from their perspective. If you can offer a way to make it right, do so (offer a refund, re-record the content and offer it for viewing at their convenience, or offer a new session). If you can’t recover from what happened, explain that you understand the inconvenience and frustration they are experiencing and let them know that you are treating this as a painful learning experience so you can take steps to make sure it never happens again.

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David: Is there a typical registration curve for webinars? Is it different for free vs. charged events? Is there a minimum time to let webinar promotions run?

Answer: This varies by subject and audience. But in general, you get the majority of registrations for a free event immediately after you send out announcements and invitations (if you have designed them correctly to provoke an action response!). This drops off to a low constant rate for the remainder of the time you have registration open. Many people will register quickly, then decide at the last minute whether it is convenient to attend. So attendance rates can easily be in the 30-45% range. For fee-based events, it is now common for people to register anywhere from 1-48 hours before the scheduled time. They want to make sure they are free before committing their money. For this reason, I like sending a reminder invitation push a day or two before a paid event. If you can leave your promotional materials up for several weeks (3-4 typically), you can benefit from having them spread through search engines, social networks, and registrant word of mouth. But this depends on proper design and execution of your promotion strategy.

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David: Are lunchtime webinars the best time to get high conversion rates on registration?

Answer: Even though Citrix advertised my webinar as part of their “Lunch and Learn” series, it was only lunchtime for a portion of our audience. We had attendees from a wide range of time zones, which is usually the case. Your best bet for attracting a business audience is to span the active workday across as many regions as possible. This typically means that the time zone in the middle of your geographic reach will be there at lunchtime.

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Whew! Thus endeth the webinar responses. Thanks for all the great questions!

Technorati Tags: webinar,web seminar,web meeting,online seminar,online meeting,webcasting,webcast,web conference,web conferencing

A Personal Note On A Personal Anniversary

2009-11-19T02:13:53-05:00

This is one of my rare personal introspective blog posts – a bit of a change from the strict business perspective I try to adhere to on The Webinar Blog. Feel free to skip over this post secure in the knowledge that you are not missing any important web conferencing news, tips, or best practices. I’ll be back to the business posts forthwith.

Since you are still reading, I hope you’ll indulge my public soliloquy. I have been basking in the warmth of good wishes from friends and business colleagues on my Facebook account on the occasion of my birthday. Thank you for thinking of me! But looking at that anniversary reminded me that it has also been five years since I moved from using webinars as part of my corporate marketing duties in Silicon Valley to a new home in North Carolina and a new business offering web seminar services and consulting.

It has been gratifying to see the industry of web conferencing take off and gain public acceptance as I guessed it would. When I started Webinar Success five years ago, I spent a lot of time explaining what a webinar was and why it offered business advantages. Now those questions seem quaint. Instead, people ask which web conferencing technology offers the best features and how can they make their presentations more compelling and effective.

I have had the fun and privilege of working with private individuals, small businesses, and the largest international corporations as they strive to improve their public presentations. I get to work on content creation and review, event production and support, live on-air moderating, and (perhaps my favorite activity) presentation skills training. I have collaborated with audiences and clients across North America, the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific. All without leaving my office.

When I started promoting my exclusive concentration on support services and training for web events, it was an unconventional – almost nonexistent – professional niche. Now I see more and more entrants coming into this space with similar offerings. It’s nice to see the validation of the value of this work and the benefits it brings to businesses.

In reviewing my blog statistics, I note that I have written almost 550 posts, and this post notwithstanding, I have tried to pack them with hardcore business value. If you haven’t tried it already, just click on “Tips” in the right-hand column and you can browse through hundreds of entries with advice and best practices that you can apply in your presentations. Is it vain to admit that I am proud of the visibility and growth of this blog as a trusted source of information for the web conferencing community? I now have about 900 feed subscribers and a few hundred additional page hits each day. And I still don’t take advertising or sponsorships from vendors that could influence my content.

I’ve been fortunate enough to gain trust and recognition as a public speaker and industry resource as well. I’ve made appearances in print, in webcasts, and (gasp) in person to help spread the word about web seminars as a business tool and to offer my professional insights and experience.

Many times in my professional past, by the time I had spent five years working in one job I started to feel burned out and yearning for a change of direction. But here it is five years on, and I feel as energized and enthusiastic as the day I started. I love doing this work!

Here in America, the Thanksgiving holiday is just around the corner. I suppose I’m a bit early with my thanks, but my combined personal and professional milestones made me realize how lucky I am, and I just wanted to share my good feelings with you. I give you my thanks for being a part of this great industry – whether you are a client, a business partner, a blog subscriber, or a newcomer to the field. I appreciate you letting me be a part of it all.

With best wishes,
Ken Molay
President, Webinar Success

Technorati Tags: Ken Molay,Webinar Success,webinar,web seminar,webcasting,web conferencing

More QA From The South Pacific

2009-11-18T20:50:40-05:00

This is part two of my responses to unanswered questions for webinar beginners. See part one for a little more background.

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Pauline: Should presentations be sent before or after the session?

Answer: In most presentations designed to inform, entertain, and persuade audiences (such as marketing or thought leadership), I don’t like sending out slides ahead of time. Your audience starts reading forward and gets much more impatient for you to get to something they think will be of interest. Any time your audience is not moving at the same speed you are, you lose effectiveness. In technical presentations or training classes, it can be a great idea to distribute reference information, data, or workbooks that your audience can look at in conjunction with your formal presentation slides. But even then I would hesitate to send out the full presentation itself until after you have presented it.

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Pauline: How do you prevent unauthorized circulation of material to folks who are not registered on the webinar?

Answer: The technical answer is – you can’t. Even a password-protected site is vulnerable to evildoers sending their access information to a colleague. And once they have downloaded a document, you really lose control of it. All you can do is indicate that the information is confidential for the recipient only, and should not be shared. And then be prepared to prosecute if it really matters to you. There are third-party solutions that can let you add security and tracking information directly into a document so you are notified every time the document is opened. But you pay for the utility.

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Pauline: Can you mix voice and chat as conduits for taking audience questions? If you allow voice, do you recommend that we have specific Q&A segments where we wait for them to ask questions?

Answer: Yes. And yes. Keeping open phone lines for ad hoc questions throughout your presentation only works for private, small meetings. Otherwise it is the same as standing on a stage and inviting your audience to shout out anything they think of as you are speaking. Anarchy!

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Natalie: Since it’s easier to decide not to attend a webinar than a physical event where you have made travel commitments, do you have to do something different than you would for a physical event to ensure attendance from your audience?

Answer: I prefer to send three communications to my audience. The first is a confirmation message with login instructions when they register or accept my invitation. The second is a reminder 24 hours before the event. It repeats the access instructions as well as reminding them why they signed up (reiterate the key value proposition). The third is a final reminder three hours before the event, once again hitting a key benefit of attending. You have to remind people how it benefits them… Don’t just tell them “Reminder – You are registered.”

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Ellen: Can you give us some online resources for PowerPoint design tips?

Answer: Some of my favorites include:
Dave Paradi’s PowerPoint Blog - http://pptideas.blogspot.com/ (Book is The Visual Slide Revolution)

Cliff Atkinson’s Beyond Bullet Points - http://www.beyondbulletpoints.com/blog/ (Book of same name)

Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen - http://www.presentationzen.com/ (Book of same name)

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Derek: Is there a need to purchase specific software and equipment to develop good quality webinars?

Answer: You can deliver a webinar using PowerPoint, a computer with a high-speed internet connection, and an audio input device (telephone or computer mike, depending on your software and preferences). But some things can definitely help add to the experience. A high quality headset (whether for telephone or computer) is the most beneficial. I use a Plantronics headset for my telephone and a Logitech headset for my computer and I’m satisfied with both. This doesn’t mean others may not be just as good however! Stay away from wireless headsets and wireless internet… Too many chances for loss of connection or interference. A good photo editing tool can help you clean up images for your slides. I use GIMP, which is a free download, but remarkably non-intuitive and complex. Commercial software like Photoshop usually has a shorter learning curve. If you are going to show live video of the presenter, a high quality camera is imperative, along with good diffuse lighting. When I use a webcam (infrequently!), I use the Logitech Pro 9000, which seems to have a good image and a good “shotgun microphone.” Finally, you should have a way to take snapshots of items on your computer screen. I use Hypersnap-DX, which is relatively cheap and has all the power you could want.

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Arpana: How often is not too often to hold a webinar? Let’s say we’re talking about marketing.

Answer: You can easily exhaust your prospective audience by bombarding them with constant invitations to webinars. Don’t keep sending one-by-one invitations to the same list over and over. But some companies elect to have a regular schedule for webinars and keep announcements on their website that there is always another session coming up soon. You might do one every Thursday at 3pm. Or the second Tuesday of each month. In these cases, frequency is not a problem since you are merely keeping an open invitation to new visitors. If you are offering a series of webinars to the same audience, I advise no more than one a month so they are viewed as something to look forward to rather than something to wearily delete out of the inbox!

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We’re going long again, so I’ll have to spill over to part three. Keep reading!

Technorati Tags: webinar,web seminar,web meeting,online seminar,online meeting,webcasting,webcast,web conference,web conferencing

Webinar Questions From The South Pacific

2009-11-18T01:09:11-05:00

I gave a webinar yesterday with attendees from Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore. We were covering the basics of webinars for first-timers, sponsored by Citrix GoToWebinar. I didn’t have a chance to answer all the questions submitted by the audience, so here are some of the ones I missed. I have taken the easy way out and given links to answers in previous columns in a few cases. I hope you’ll forgive me for not copying and pasting into this post!

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Lisette: What are your thoughts about holding a live physical presentation and adding a webinar element for those in remote areas?

Answer: This can work very well, but it involves some extra planning and technical considerations. You need a human camera operator who can follow the presenter as she moves in front of the room. You need a lavaliere microphone or other high quality sound source to feed the presenter’s voice to the webcast. You need to synchronize the slides shown on the screen in the room with slides shown in the webinar. And the presenter needs to remain conscious of both audiences, as it is easy to ignore the remote attendees in favor of the local attendees. Doing this kind of setup well usually involves a services provider with expertise in setting up the technology to make everything work together.

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Imogen: Can you comment on the effectiveness of the web medium to engender relationships with prospective clients, compared to face to face, or real seminars where sales reps can network with the audience?

Answer: A webinar is never going to be as effective as a personal meeting for creating a complete personal relationship with a new contact. But I have seen numerous examples of companies that do business exclusively by webinar and conference call. They are able to demonstrate their solutions, answer questions, provide support and responsiveness, and generally do everything for their contact other than shake hands. You have to make the commitment to spending the same time and effort on personal interaction via the remote technology as you would in a local setting. It’s much harder for large audience events to have this personal touch. While companies are willing to bring their sales reps in to mingle and network with an in-room crowd, they seem less willing to have them on hand during a large webinar to chat with attendees, answer questions, and have private chats about attendee interests. This is a pity, because in many ways, they could be even more effective, at less cost.

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Fiona: What if attendees want to see the speaker during the webinar?

Answer: Your web conferencing technology needs to support a live video feed – either from a webcam or higher quality digital camera. But do you want to do this? It is easy to look unprofessional on live camera. We have become used to business and professional video being of high quality, which means good focus, keeping the presenter in frame, good lighting, a professional background, and a presenter who knows how to appear on camera (blink rates, not shifting eyes, maintaining appropriate posture and facial expressions, etc.). Video also carries a higher data bandwidth burden, so your presenter and audience need fast internet connections. I usually recommend webcam video only in small interpersonal meetings where you already know the participants. Public web events should only use video in a highly controlled setup run by video professionals.

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Murray: What happens if you don’t get to answer all of the questions?

Answer: Hello! This is one option. Or you could send a document to attendees or post it in a public location. Or you can simply acknowledge the great response and ask people to contact you with questions after the event. It’s a question of how much extra work you are willing to put in.

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Rachel: How do you engage technophobes or people who are resistant to using online media?

Answer: Start by concentrating on their interests and the content, not the technology. Make sure you have a webinar technology that is easy for them to access and use. Communicate in clear, unambiguous instructions exactly how they access your event and have a support person on call to answer questions and provide assistance. Then make sure you give them value that takes precedence over the novelty of the communications medium. It can work… I help clients all the time with webinars targeted at audiences who have never seen a webinar.

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Graeme: Can webinars work for people in remote areas connecting via satellite?

Answer: Yes they can, but you need to be conscious of their experience and adjust your presentation style to match. Assume that your next slide may take a few seconds before they see it, so start talking about the concept of the slide before referring to specific items on it. Slow down requests for interaction such as typed in responses or polling. Your goal is to sound natural and engaging, while constantly giving the slower connections time to “catch up.”

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Robyn: What would you consider an average price for customers to attend webinars?

Answer: In the USA, web events commonly range from $50 USD up to $400. Your choice of what to charge is based upon the value you deliver and what that is worth to your customers.

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I’m going to close off this post and continue in another. We’re going a bit long for convenient reading!

Technorati Tags: Citrix,GoToWebinar,web conference,web conferencing,webinar,web seminar,web meeting,web event,online meeting,online event,webcasting,webcast

Web Conferencing News Roundup November 17

2009-11-17T01:36:26-05:00

It’s another busy week in the web conferencing world, with significant developments reported by multiple vendors. That means it’s time for one of my exclusive web conferencing news roundups!

We’ll start with news from Germany. The Online Meeting Tools Review site www.webconferencing-test.com has received a major update with both cosmetic and content enhancements. It is now easier to see comparative test results from the main page. The layout seems much more clear and accessible to me. They have added more web conferencing solutions and made some changes to the tools tested from certain vendors to make things more equivalent in the functionality and purpose of the software. There is more licensing information available when looking at pricing comparisons, and they have made a major commitment to keeping their blog updated with new content. As I have mentioned in the past, I initially viewed this site with great skepticism, but now view it as a tremendously helpful resource for comparing web conferencing solutions geared towards participatory online collaboration meetings (as opposed to large enterprise-oriented one-to-many webinars and webcasts).

Turning to California, we have another site update to report at WebinarHero. You can now edit an existing web event listed in their database. Previously you had to duplicate it and create a new version of the listing to make your changes. They have also made easier access to their event promotion services, with a convenient clickthrough to take advantage of their social media and search engine marketing packages.

ReadyTalk just announced availability of “Platinum Web Event,” which is designed as a bundled package, offering companies all the technology and services necessary to run a large scale webinar or webcast. It merges web conferencing and audio conferencing software, a bridge to deliver streaming audio over the computer, pre- and post-event services, and live event support during the session. The package is offered at a fixed price rather than as an incremental “time and services” model.

InXpo has also made a new release announcement. XpoCast Plus is a technology platform for delivering interactive webcasts to hundreds of viewers. It can run inside InXpo’s virtual event environment or as a standalone webcasting tool. I had a rather lengthy demo session using the new tool and I was extremely impressed with its screen sharing performance. It also handled live video of presenters and participants, playback of recorded video clips, co-browsing to live web sites, and sortable question management to better handle Q&A sessions with the audience.

Stream57 seems to be pursuing a similar path to InXpo by partnering with a virtual events company to deliver live video webcasting as part of a virtual event environment. They announced a partnership with Computer Generated Solutions to merge capabilities.

Citrix GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar got updates as well. Users can now take advantage of integrated toll-free audio conferencing offered from Citrix to keep all conferencing costs associated with a single vendor and to better manage audio options in an event.

Even though the news is not fresh this week, I should also mention that iLinc launched a new release of their software right around Halloween. Referred to as “the iLinc 10 Fall Release,” it includes the ability to set up automatic recordings of sessions, new online editing and distribution of recording archives, recorded video playback in session for all attendees (controlled by the host), and integrations with external systems such as Twitter, Facebook, and Salesforce.

And finally, I just have to call attention to the announcement by Nose Knows Consulting of the world’s first scented webinar. No, you don’t get a scratch ‘n sniff card… Paid registrants get a special USB device that apparently demonstrates odors on command. The webinar is geared towards introducing the concept of scent marketing and costs around $50 Canadian to attend. It will be held in January, and the sheer novelty factor alone may make it worth the cost!

As always, you can find current press releases and articles about these stories and other web conferencing announcements on the Webinar Success Industry News page.

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Webinar Fundamentals For Asia/Pacific

2009-11-15T22:59:24-05:00

Citrix Online is sponsoring me as a guest speaker for an educational session this week targeted at the Asia/Pacific geography. I’ll be appearing at 9am Singapore / noon Sydney / 2pm New Zealand on Wednesday, November 18.

You can find out all the details (as well as checking other time zone conversions) by visiting my upcoming events page (www.effectivewebinars.com). I’ll be addressing basic concepts for people who have not yet delivered a web seminar. This is your chance to learn what questions you should be asking and to find out what a webinar involves in terms of time, effort, and money.

My North and South American readers may want to check out upcoming events in December, which are also listed on that page. You can learn about the use of webinars for training purposes or listen in as a panel of industry experts talks about tips and tricks for successful web events.

I hope you take advantage of all the free information on offer as we move into the holiday season!

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