Hello. My name is Scott Tousignant, your guest blogger for the week. Up to this point I have been sharing home office fitness tips that will make a positive impact on your performance during the virtual events that you conduct. Today I would like to share some tips to help your virtual event attendees get the absolute most out of your event.

As a reader of Leesa’s blog I’m sure that you are passionate about the content that you deliver during your virtual events. I’m also certain that you would love to see your attendees absorb all the information that you deliver, immediately put it into practice, and experience great success. You sincerely care about your fans, you want the best for them, and you know that your information will greatly benefit them. But they need to take in the info and apply it in order for them to experience these benefits.

One of the best ways to aid your audience in absorbing the information that you share during your virtual events is to recommend that they perform a fast fun home office fitness session prior to the event.

When your attendees exercise prior to your virtual event they will be more attentive and become better equipped to handle any problem solving tasks that may be necessary during your event. The increase in oxygen flow allows their brain to function optimally so they can easily absorb the content that you are teaching. Their spirits and energy will be high, which makes them more likely to apply the information immediately.

Here’s a quickie cardio session that you can recommend to your virtual event attendees prior to your class. They can perform it right in their home office.

Pre Virtual Event Quickie Cardio

You may download the video above by right clicking and save Quickie Cardio

The benefits of performing this quickie cardio session will carry over for several hours, helping your attendees become super-focused and highly productive.

As I mentioned earlier, I understand that you sincerely care about your fans. When you recommend that they perform a 10-minute home office workout prior to your virtual event they will see just how much you care about them and want them to make full use of your teachings so they can experience great success.

I know that you care about more than just seeing your fans earn more money online. You want them to experience a great quality of life. By recommending that your audience incorporate home office fitness into their workday it’s one more way to show them how much you care about them.

You can also recommend that your virtual event attendees listen to the mp3 recording while they go out for a brisk walk. Once again, the increase in oxygen flow to their brain while they are walking will help them absorb your content better. Plus, because your content is so great they’ll want to continue walking until the recording is done. If your recording is 60 minutes long, chances are pretty good that they’ll be walking 30 minutes longer than they typically would.

Listening to your virtual events can provide great motivation in helping your fans live a healthy and active lifestyle.

You ROCK!

Scott Tousignant

Hello again. This is Scott Tousignant back with more home office fitness tips to help make your virtual events even more successful. If you missed yesterday’s post you can catch up here: Part 1

When conducting a virtual event there’s a pretty good chance that you will experience some tension in your neck and shoulders, especially if you aren’t using a headset. Today I would like to share some shoulder and neck exercises that will help you strengthen and loosen up those muscles.

One of the wonderful benefits from performing the following exercises on a regular basis is in the improvement with your posture. When you sit at a desk for the majority of your workday and you continue to sit while conducting or participating in a virtual event it can certainly take it’s toll on your posture. Your shoulders can become rounded forward, you may experience stiffness between your shoulder blades, and your neck can hunch forward a bit too.

The following home office workout will help resolve these issues as well as make your virtual event a more pleasant experience.

Pre Virtual Event Neck and Shoulder Exercises

You may download this video by right clicking and saving Neck and Shoulder Exercises

In this video I used some light dumbbells as well as a stability ball to perform some of the exercises. If you don’t have dumbbells you can substitute them with soup cans for now. I do recommend that you invest in a stability ball for your home office. They are very inexpensive and can really help boost your productivity during your workday, helping you get more done in less time.

How did you feel after performing the above shoulder and neck exercises and stretches? Did they relieve some tension? I’d love to hear from you. Your feedback means the world to me.

You ROCK!

Scott Tousignant

I’m excited to bring you Online Profit Success Live, a free evening event I’m hosting in Toronto on Thursday December 17, 2009.

If you work or live in Toronto, I’m inviting you to join me. I’m going to share some tips I’ve never have before, including how to use your personality online to make money.

Watch the video below to see what else you’ll learn attending this special event…

Want to attend? Click here to grab a spot. First 40 people who register get their seat free.

Hi there. I’m Leesa’s friend Scott Tousignant and I’m super excited to be a guest blogger here this week. I’ll be sharing many tips and tricks to help you make your virtual events even more successful by incorporating fast, fun, home office fitness into your busy workday.

Let’s kick this series off with an overview of the positive impact that home office fitness will have on the success of your virtual events. First let’s take a look at the four key areas that experience the biggest benefit…

1) Increase In Energy: After you perform a quickie home office workout you will experience a boost in energy that will last for hours. Your energy level has a tremendous impact on the success of your virtual event. If your energy levels are low your audience will pick up on it. This may even effect their energy levels, bringing them down too. This obviously is not a good thing when you want them to be excited and enthusiastic about the information that is being shared.

If your energy levels are high your audience will feel it. This creates a much more positive experience for them. They’ll be sitting at the edge of their seat in anticipation for the next golden nugget of information that you will be sharing with them. When your energy levels are high, your audience is more likely to participate and even offer feedback when your virtual event has come to an end.

2) Increase In Focus and Clarity: One of the key factors to a successful virtual event is focus. If you as the host are distracted or your mind is full of clutter and overwhelm from your day, your attendees will certainly sense your clouded attention. If you are unfocused, your audience will be unclear on what you expect them to do next.

Home office fitness is an outstanding strategy to clear your mind and help you focus on the task at hand. If you have had a busy and stressful day, a fast fun home office workout can erase it, providing you with a fresh start. The increase in oxygen flowing to your brain will increase your alertness and cognitive function. With home office fitness you are creating the perfect environment for your mind to flourish.

3) Increase In Confidence: After performing a quickie home office workout you’ll experience a great sense of accomplishment. You’ll feel proud of yourself. You’ll feel great physically and mentally. You’ll be excited to know that you are on the path to creating new healthy habits. And you’ll be certain that you have done something great for yourself.

This boost in confidence will have a tremendous impact on the success of your virtual event. Your audience will recognize it in your commands and in the delivery of your content.

4) Mood Picker-Upper: Getting physically active is one of the easiest and fastest ways to improve your mood and lift your spirits. It releases those feel good endorphins providing you with a natural high. When you feel like you are on top of the world your enthusiasm and excitement will become contagious. Your passion will shine. Your willingness to help others will become obvious.

When your audience feels your energy, receives focused guidance, recognizes your confident authority, and experiences your upbeat mood and personality, they will become incredibly eager to come back for more. You are creating an experience for them with your virtual event, not just sharing information. How you deliver the information may have a bigger impact on your audience than the information itself.

It’s time for you to experience the positive impact that home office fitness will have on your virtual events. Here’s a home office workout that requires very little time, very little space, and no equipment other than your own body weight. Give it a try and make note of the improvements in energy, mood, and focus.

Your Virtual Event Home Office Workout

If you would like to download this video and play it on your computer simply right click and save Home Office Workout

The exercises included in this workout are…

Up and Downs: This is a great exercise to get your blood flowing, working your legs and providing a nice cardiovascular benefit.

Horizontal Horse Stance: This exercise is fantastic for working your ‘core’ and improving your balance. What really makes this exercise wonderful is that it stimulates your nervous system and forces your brain into become ultra alert. This is ideal before your virtual event.

Prisoner Squat: Another great exercise that works your leg muscles and gets your heart pumping.

Heel Slides: This is another great exercise that works your ‘core’. My clients have found this to be one of the best exercises for eliminating their lower back pain. This is ideal for us busy homepreneurs.

Running on the Spot: This exercise will really boost your heart rate making this workout very cardiovascular in nature.

To experience the full impact of this workout simply repeat this cycle two more times for a total of three circuits.

Fitness really can be fast, fun, and convenient when it’s designed to suit your lifestyle. Throughout this blog series I’ll be sharing more workouts and exercises that will make a very positive impact on your online business and quality of life. I take a balanced approach to fitness, business, and life and I hope that it rubs off on you during my visit here at Virtual Event Success.

You ROCK!

Scott Tousignant

I was reading a post by Roger Courville where he encouraged virtual event hosts and presenters to encourage multi-tasking during webinars. In particular, I like this point that Roger made supporting the multi-tasking idea:

“You can keep an eye on it.  If you establish the Twitter hashtag or other locale, it gives you a chance to see an respond.  Arguably this is better than being unaware of the audience whispers.”

This is by far the biggest benefit of encouraging attendees to “pass notes” during your virtual event. Attendees will comment on what’s going well and on what could be improved live.

By far, Twitter is the best platform to use. Create a hashtag, ask attendees to add the hashtag to their tweets, then let them go to town.

Get Pressing Questions

As a host, I’ve used attendees’ tweets to gather questions that I could ask the speaker during the Q&A segment of the session. After hosting a dozen sessions back-to-back, the mind stops working and seeing tweets from attendees with thought provoking questions has really helped to save the day many times.

Create a Sense of Belonging

Reading attendees tweets during the live virtual event also helps to create inclusion. Not only will attendees remember key messages, as Roger write in his blog post, but they’ll feel as if the host really cares about their contribution to the session. Including their thoughts by way of tweets creates a sense of belonging and this feeling can be measured by how eager attendees are to help the host out with various virtual event tasks, such as welcoming new attendees or helping others find downloadable handouts.

Solve Problems Quickly

Lastly, you can spot trouble as it’s happening. During one of the sessions during my 2009 Social Media Telesummit, I became aware that the bridge line service changed the host call-in number (with no warning I might add) due to the tweets from attendees on Twitter. I kept seeing things like:

“I hear someone talking, but it ain’t Leesa.”

Or, “Is the session supposed to be happening now? All I hear is silence.”

Thankfully, the guest expert and I were able to quickly switch over to the new phone line and re-start the session.

My advice to all virtual event hosts and organizers is to encourage attendees to use interactive tools to share ideas about what they’re hearing on the live virtual event. Don’t fear these tools because at the end of the day, the feedback you get can help save your virtual event.

I’m not a huge fan of hosting free virtual events. I actually discourage this because if you put in the energy to market a virtual event, you might as well get paid for your efforts.

However, free virtual events do have their place and I’ve used them to introduce a new product or raise awareness of another virtual event that I’m hosting.

When I first started to host teleclasses, I made the mistake of using them solely to build my list. It wasn’t until a successful businesswoman, who attended one of my teleclasses in 2005, grilled me about why I didn’t do an upsell after the call was over. That’s when the lightbulb went on.

You should always have a specific purpose for monetizing your free virtual events. List building isn’t a monetization strategy. Instead, you can use clever and untapped methods to turn a free virtual event into a financial windfall. Here are some ways to do so:

1. Sell the recording for a fee.

You can offer the live virtual event at no charge, then upsell to the recording after it’s over. I recommend that you do this upsell by email a couple days after the end of your free virtual event. You can even offer 2 packages – a cheaper price for those who want the MP3 recording and a higher price for those who want the recording shipped to them on CD.

2. Add the transcripts and make it even more valuable.

I often bundle the transcripts with the recording for those who are visual learners or whose first language isn’t English. Again, offer this as an option a few days after your virtual event has ended.

3. Bundle the recording with others on a portable media player.

For all my virtual events, I ship the recordings on a portable media player. It cuts down on waste and is cheaper to produce and ship. If I record a one-hour teleclass, I can put that recording on the portable player along with related content eg. an audio course, bundled with an action guide. The one-hour teleclass the person just listened to would be added to the portable media player as a bonus.

4. Upsell to a high ticket program.

This high ticket program can be a telesummit, a group coaching program or some other product/service. You have a higher chance of people buying what you upsell if they spent a few minutes listening to your voice.

List building should not be the single reason why you offer a free virtual event. Instead, look for clever ways to monetize your free virtual event and you’ll reap the financial benefits. As my mentor and friend, Lisa Sasevich says:

“It’s a disservice to your potential clients not to make an offer. Think about it. People have come to hear you speak live or during a teleseminar or one on one, because there is something you’re offering that they know they need. And when you just stand up there and educate them and you don’t make an offer that gives them the opportunity to get more, you’re ripping them off from their transformation.”

What are other ways to monetize a free virtual event? Share your thoughts below.

Denise Wakeman, co-founder of The Blog Squad, sent me a note about her brand spanking new program called Online Visibility Secrets.

Denise and I have joint partnered on a number of projects, most notably, she’s a 2-time faculty member of my Social Media Telesummit, an 8-day virtual event that I host each year. Denise is tenacious about delivering meaty content and her sessions typically get top reviews from attendees due to the generosity of her content.

Denise has just revealed an extremely affordable 26-week virtual coaching program where she’ll guide you step-by-step  on how to create a solid foundation for your business. The program is called Online Visibility Secrets: Insider Secrets to Getting More Traffic, More Leads, More Clients and More Opportunities for Your Business and this program is delivered to you via 26 weekly email lessons that include video, audio and articles. Plus you’ll get resources and most important you’ll get a weekly Action Step to complete before you move on to the next lesson.

Building a highly visible presence on the Web takes consistent, constant action. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, with each action building on the momentum of the previous actions.

You’ll learn about how to create a strategy for boosting your online visibility which includes the finer points of blogging for your business, how to optimally use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and other social networking sites, as well as how to create visibility with articles, teleseminars and much, much more.

I couldn’t believe how much it costs for such a wealth of information. Just $19.97 per month for a total of 6 months. You’d be hard pressed to find a marketing coach for $119.82! And the content in the course is valued at least 20 times more than your investment. Click here to learn more about Online Visibility Secrets.

I attended 3 offline events in 4-weeks and while I was exhausted by all the travel, I was pleased with the networking opportunities and breakthroughs.

With social media, it’s easier more than ever for attendees to post their reaction to your virtual event. Since many virtual event hosts encourage attendees to post their reactions, attendees are happy to tweet, blog or podcast about their experience attending your virtual event whether it’s positive or negative.

But the reaction can be a tough pill to swallow when it contains negative reviews. I should know – this has happened to me a few times after people attended my Social Media Telesummit.

Negative reviews about your virtual event will happen, but there are a few things you can do as the virtual event host to lessen them in the social media space. Here are my tips:

Get feedback quickly

For the 3 offline events I attended, not one sent me a feedback form. In all fairness, I was a speaker at one, a staff member at the 2nd one and an attendee at the 3rd one. So, I should’ve gotten a feedback form for the 3rd one.

Despite my role at these events, not getting feedback via a survey or form is a mistake. With all the tools that I and other attendees have at our finger tips, we’ll voice our disappointments and publish them just so we can get a reaction from someone.

Most with a gripe would prefer to send it privately to the virtual event team rather than air it out for public eyes to see. Not everyone feels comfortable posting their reaction on social media.

That’s why the quicker you can get a feedback form out to attendees after the virtual event is over, the better. Otherwise with time, those too shy about posting their reaction on a blog will become bold as time passes.

Some of you may say:

“Well, Leesa, the virtual event team is so busy wrapping things up after the virtual event is over, you need to give them time to put that survey together.”

To this I say hogwash. In other words, the post-event activities must be planned far in advance so you know how to close out your virtual event. You need to plan right at the beginning who on your team will send out the feedback form and by when.

Respond genuinely

If you do get negative feedback by email or find it on a blog or in a tweet, contact the attendee directly to resolve the issue. If you dig deep enough, you’ll find that their issue is easy to resolve. But what you should not do is go on the attack or read from a script.

When I took a tour of the Zappos.com office, I was impressed that their customer service team didn’t use a script, nor was there a time limit on how long they could help a customer through an issue.

Of course, they had some training on how to respond to an irate customer, however, not having a script gives their customer service reps a chance to be more flexible in how they respond.

That’s where the genuine part comes in. Attendees can tell when your virtual event team has copy and pasted a response from a form letter and when they actually took time to craft a response from scratch. Aim to be genuine and help the attendee resolve their issue.

Have someone on your virtual event team monitor social media diligently

This is a must. Absolute must. You can solve alot of issues quickly and quietly if someone on your virtual event team is monitoring reactions on blogs, Twitter and Facebook during the virtual event.

At one of the offline events I attended, the people sitting in my area during the keynote lunch couldn’t hear what was being said by the presenter. Apparently, the speakers weren’t turned on in our section of the room, so people started tweeting that they couldn’t hear. Then, they started having their own conversations which made it impossible to hear the keynote on stage.

What was the response of the event team? They went from table to table telling us to practically shut up. The keynote speaker, hearing the chatter, told us to keep it down. Then, one of the attendees in my area stood up and shouted, “We can’t hear you over here.” Which prompted a few tables to clear as people walked out. It was getting ugly.

And get this – people were shouting about the problem, but discreetly on Twitter. And had an event staff been monitoring the Twitter feed, he or she would’ve been able to diagnose the problem, get one of the AV guys to turn on the speakers in our area of the room and solve the problem quietly.

It’s difficult for the virtual event host to monitor reactions on social media, plus facilitate the sessions. Instead, assign someone else on your team with that task so your virtual event team can be proactive about solving problems instead of being reactive.

Meet as many of the attendees as possible

Okay, this one is tricky, but very important. If attendees feel that you as the virtual event host made an effort to connect, they tend to write more pleasant reviews than those who don’t interact with attendees at all.

For the 3 offline events I attended, I had direct, personal interactions with the hosts for 2 of the events. For the one I didn’t, I had mixed feelings about that event and posted my thoughts – both positive and negative – to my blog.

I asked myself why I spent so much attention writing my reaction about 1 event compared to the other 2. Then, it hit me. I had no personal interaction with the event host at the one event that I blogged about prolifically. And not being acknowledged by the host in a personal way left me feeling as if the host was out of touch.

At a recent event I attended, I identified connections as being one of my core values. I love connecting with old friends and meeting new ones whenever I’m at an event. I often connect others with each other or find the lonely person in the room and engage them in conversation. I hate seeing people left out.

So, how does my core value of connections fit into virtual events, especially if you can’t touch or see the attendee because your event is virtual?

1. Call attendees randomly after they register for my virtual event. I typically call every 3rd or 4th person who sign up for my virtual events. If I get them live, I commit to spending at least 10-minutes on the phone with that person. My goal is to find out why they signed up and what they hope the virtual event will reveal for them. If I get voicemail, I leave a message congratulating them on their decision and letting them know what 1 action they need to take.
2. During the virtual event, I acknowledge as many attendees as I can by responding to tweets and blog posts. I also make sure that attendees have a chance to interact with each other through an online forums. And I pop in every few hours to contribute my thoughts to the conversations taking place on the forums.

There will always be negative comments about your virtual event. Expect it. Each individual attending your virtual event is unique and what bugs one person won’t bug someone else. Attendees will react positively or negatively based on their learning style, goals and expectations.

However, you can lessen the amount of negative feedback about your virtual event if you focus on providing attendees with interaction, connections and acknowledgement. Implement my suggestions with your next virtual event and let me know how it works out for you.

What other tips can you provide to help lessen the number of negative reviews for your virtual event?

I was poking around and stumbled upon this blog post that included a video on the changing media landscape. I think the video could’ve been shortened a bit, however, the statistics presented were quite fascinating.

Two things stood out for me – the statistics on mobile usages and the very last image in the video. It’s a wonderful strategy to use if you’re trying to fill an offline or virtual event. Take a look at the video below and watch it right until the end.

After posting Part 1 of my evaluation of Ali Brown’s Shine, I decided to take a stroll through the Internet to find out who else blogged about her event.

I found quite a mixed bag of opinions and reviews, so here are a few additional takes on Ali Brown’s Shine event:

• Alexis Martin Neely – Was it Worth It: Ali Brown Shine Debrief Part 2
• Jennifer Bourne – Ali Brown Shine Event: I Didn’t Come for the Woo Woo Junk
• Jennifer Donogh – 7 Takeaways from Shine
• Elizabeth Potts Weinstein – Do It With Your Eyes Open & Speaking, Bullsh*t, and Billionaires: Post-#Shine Wrap Up Pt 2
• Lori Radun – Being a Mom Entrepreneur Brings out the Best and Worst
• Jim McGivern – Ali Brown’s Event: I Attended

If you’re thinking about attending Ali Brown’s Shine event in 2010, I have one piece of advice for you…

Make up your own mind about whether to attend or not. I can’t make that decision for you. As you can see in the blog posts above, the feedback varies. Some liked Shine, some didn’t.

• For those who liked it, they enjoyed Ali’s many changing styles, the quality of attendees to network with and the positive atmosphere.
• For those who didn’t like it, it was the lack of content, lack of food or the messages from some of the keynote speakers that got their ponytails in a bunch.

My Shine Business Plan

As you can see, even those who had opinions about the event can’t even agree on the one thing that made it good or bad. That’s why you’ll have to make your own decision whether to attend based on your budget, learning style, years in business and goals.

What I can say for me, Leesa Barnes, is that I’m glad I went. While there were some things that irked me, I had a MAJOR breakthrough attending Shine and I know that my presence at Ali’s event was Divinely orchestrated. I set the intention back in May 2009 to attend Shine and God aligned everything so I could be there.

Attending Shine helped me to see in a rather bold way what was holding me back. Being in the aura of Ali’s success pushed me into thinking bigger about my business. Looking at her on stage and seeing who was in her circle helped me to eye my business in a critical way for the first time in 3-years.

My Shine Video

And being a scholarship winner means that Ali invested in my success. So, there’s no way I could let her or God down by returning to my mediocre business.

So, will I attend Shine in 2010? Most likely because if one breakthrough from her 2009 event helps move me into high six figures, then I can only imagine what the 2010 event will do for my business.

Exciting times ahead. Will you join me?