Econsultancy has a very good article about how marketers can make it easier for consumers to make purchasing decision. You can see the parallel with your webinar invitations. After all, they are a mini-purchasing decision in themselves – your attendees are paying with their time. So if you keep these points in mind when crafting your invitation you will be headed in the right direction.

• Reduce options; The more choices available, the less likely any choice is made. If the purpose is to get viewers to your webinar, don’t muddy the water with other promotions or product information.
• Create urgency; Live webinars are a natural vehicle for building that sense of urgency – make sure to do so in your copy.
• Reduce risk; If your charging for your webinar, provide a money-back guarantee. If it’s free, address the risk that the content will not be worth the potential abuse of contact information – this is a bigger issue for smaller companies that may not have a reputable brand or market presence. They need to engender trust with their copy and remind people that you are not going to abuse the relationship. Remind your reader’s in plain language that you are trustworthy (and make sure you keep your promise):

We do not sell your personal information. We do not spam. We will not call you at dinner time. Privacy Policy

• Focus your message; Simplify your message and stay focused on one or two key points or audience takeaways. Write your copy from the reader’s perspective; ‘What’s In It For Me?’.
• Know your customer;  You cannot convert every site visitor and webinar attendee to a customer, so don’t try. Determine what your key strengths are and go after the best prospects for your product or service. This becomes even more important as social media channels drive greater webinar attendance. Your copy and promotion should actually self-qualify prospects so that you stay focused on the best prospects.

Read the original article at ‘How to turn consumer inaction into action: five tips‘.

Tags: event management, Marketing, Social Media, Web Seminars.

When planning and delivering your webcast its critical to know how much Internet access bandwidth is available. When in the planning stage, we use this information to recommend the right solution for your event. We will test this before your event as well, and use that information to make sure we have set-up our streaming encoders optimally.

So how do you know how much bandwidth is available? Listen to this screencast to learn about the free tool Speedtest.net:





View the Speedtest.net screencast in its own window here.

Tags: bandwidth, event management, LinkedIn, Streaming, video quality, video webcasts, webcasting.

Ever look for that bee buzzing near your telephone?  Sometimes its just a click or pop.  So just what is it?

Annoying you say.

Agreed, but its just radio interference from a wireless phone, iPhone, or Blackberry.

Happily, its easy to fix. Simply turn off those phones before the event starts.

Ahh, and for those doctors that must keep the electronic leash alive, move that phone as far away from your telephone and telephone line as possible. This will minimize telephone equipment interference.

Bill

Tags: Audio, event management, webcast tips, webinar tips.

This post is in response to a few questions that came up offline related to GTD and how we implemented this approach.

For the past decade I have primarily used Outlook to manage my activities. However, when I reached 1000 emails in my inbox, some of which were 12 months old, I knew I had to change. My organization system was failing me.

There are a wealth of resources and fans of the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology online. (For the uninitiated, visit Wikipedia for a good overview.)

I’m convinced that the developers at Google had GTD in mind when they designed Gmail.  We use Google Apps for email and I don’t miss Outlook at all. We also selected a web-based tool, Nozbe, that implements this methodology and gives us access to tasks and projects from any computer, anytime. It works on our iPhones too. I highly recommend it.

GTD and these tools make us better event managers and presenters.

Here are some good resources and blogs that go further on this topic:

David Allen’s Official GTD Blog

Merlin Mann’s 43Folders

Zen Habits GTD Resource List

Nozbe

Happy browsing!

Bill

Tags: business practice, event management, GTD.

David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) is a must-read for anyone who has that nagging feeling at the end of the workday that they forgot something.  GTD is an organization system that helps you better manage your time and increase your productivity.

Are you wondering just how this is going to improve your webinars and presentations?

One of the services we offer is professional management of web seminars. As part of our service, we provide a practice session and make time for the event coordinators and panelists to rehearse.

We see two things happen -

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Business, event management, GTD, practice, Web Seminars.