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Engage and Educate Customers – How Brand24 Bonds with Clients Using Webinars

Since you are a serious marketer, you are fully aware that today’s digital marketing focuses on precise targeting and customer engagement. Did you also know that education is on the very top of internet users’ needs? The desire to gain knowledge is huge! (SPOILER ALERT – you will learn how to put this trend to action with a Product Demo.)

    Yes, people search for specific keywords and phrases to LEARN, and that is one of our most important motivations. We also tend to dig into information when we decide to buy an account on a software platform.

Why?

Because we want to know:

If we need it in the first place

How we can use it to make our plans come true

Brand24 is a Polish SaaS company delivering a web monitoring and social listening platform, and they make the most of educating and engaging their prospects and customers. In this case study, we will show you how Brand24 uses webinars in their marketing activity.

How? Let’s dive in.

  At a glance:

The Client:

Brand24

Their reasons for using the ClickMeeting platform:

Product demo webinars – a series of educational video meetings for prospects who are testing the Brand24 platform

Certificate webinars – online training sessions dedicated to a select group of Brand24 clients

  The benefits:

Direct contact with clients who are testing their platform and an opportunity to answer questions live

Extends their offering with certificate training sessions via webinars

Adds a new and efficient form of premium content to the company’s marketing strategy

Saves time and money on traditional product demonstration

Let’s break it down:

  Brand24 – on their way to conquering the world

They appeared on the market seven years ago, and since then they have become one of the most popular marketing brands in Poland. Their platform is a solution designed for brands to monitor their web presence on the go.

With features like mention feed, discussion volume chart, influence score, or alerts, Brand24 helps their B2B clients manage their brand awareness like never before. The company has become a success story in itself, and many businesses have gravitated to them.

However, the digital landscape is changing fast. To foster their customer loyalty, and to convert their qualified leads into clients, Brand24 needed a new tool.

Their decision was simple – webinars.

  Webinars – answer the questions before clients ask

The company was proactive about producing content that explains the product to their clients. Mikołaj Winkiel, the Chief Evangelist from Brand24, explains:

We have invested in written content, like valuable and educational blog posts, as well as in video content. Mostly, we focused on short video tutorials posted on YouTube.

  They are still happy with the quality of that content, and that’s why they continue providing it. However, their desire to provide the highest quality of customer support was mounting. They wanted to anticipate questions about their product and provide answers BEFORE their leads and clients could even think of what to ask.

Webinars weren’t a way to avoid questions; webinars gave us a chance to answer them before our clients asked – admits Mikołaj Winkiel.

  How do they use webinars?

  Product Demo – educating clients is a must

Although the company understands the value of podcasts, eBooks, white papers, and other forms of premium content, they find webinars to be the perfect way to achieve their primary goal: to educate the client.

That’s why they decided to give the green light to product demo webinars – a proven method for showcasing products online, especially when it comes to software platforms.

And it makes sense:

We want to engage people who are testing our tools by showing them every corner of the account panel. Why? Because a well-educated client is the more solid client and is much more likely to stay with us for the long term. The more a client knows about our product’s ecosystem inside out, the better their business results will be – says Mikołaj.

  However, the biggest advantage Brand24 finds in product demo webinars is the direct contact with the user:

A person who is testing our tool can ask questions as we go along showcasing the platform. While we show step-by-step what we are doing in the account panel, anyone can chime in if something needs to be explained a bit more. That’s a huge advantage of webinars!

  Certificate webinars for hundreds of attendees

How does it feel to gather 500 people in one webinar? Brand24 knows, and they admit that it feels incredible!

Certificate webinars are another way Brand24 has taken advantage of the webinar solution. What are they? In a word, they are training sessions organized for a preselected group of clients.

We run a short, dedicated course for them, at the end of which there is a test. After passing the exam, they receive our certificate – explains Mikołaj.

The biggest deal?

These webinars are huge – they can gather from 200 to 500 attendees!

Honestly, if we wanted to reach that number of people without webinars, it would take months, multiplying costs and our staffing needs exponentially.

  ClickMeeting – a mature and wise decision

As a SaaS company, Brand24 uses other software platforms on a regular basis. They know which to choose and how to use them. After testing a dozen webinar solutions, they decided to bring ClickMeeting onboard.

The ClickMeeting platform is so intuitive that each of us learned how to use it in no time. After a few minutes, we were all set to start creating events and send e-mail invitations – Mikołaj recalls.

  Favorite features?

Are there any top features that Brand24 marketers value the most while using the ClickMeeting webinar software?

I think the Screen Sharing is our number one, because the goal of our webinars is to show our platform live, and screen sharing is ideal for that, says Mikołaj.

  He adds:

The chat feature. Maybe it’s obvious, but this feature enables us to have a live interaction with our audience. We can address any questions our clients raise during a product demo.

  Would Brand24 recommend ClickMeeting?

Would this successful and fast-growing MarTech company recommend ClickMeeting for other B2B players?

It happens all the time that our clients ask us for tips and tricks and other software tools. It doesn’t come as a surprise, because we often share these insights on our social media channels. ClickMeeting is a fine choice when it comes to webinars organized globally – states Brand24’s Chief Evangelist, Mikołaj Winkiel.

Haven’t tried webinars yet?

Try ClickMeeting on a free trial!

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Watch Out For Strategy-Free Webinar Tactics

Does anybody still use the old aphorism about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions? That’s how I feel about many tips and best practices that are shared in the web conferencing industry.

I constantly hear people making blanket recommendations for things that webinar admins and presenters should do to improve their webinars or webcasts. The problem is that our 280-character, sound-bite society has lost interest in attaching context to these recommendations. TL;DR has become the catchphrase and guiding principle of an impatient society.

Let’s make a resolution for the new year to stop placing so much emphasis on HOW to implement best practices and start thinking more about WHY we want to incorporate them.

For instance… My last post suggested ways to make your post-webinar surveys more effective and useful. I gave examples of specific question types you might want to include. But such questions are only worth including if they will provide data useful to achieving a webinar improvement strategy that you have made a commitment to pursue. Otherwise you are wasting your attendees’ time. That’s a surefire strategy for reducing goodwill and the desire to interact with your company.

Webinar polls are another area where strategy is often discarded in favor of generic best practice recommendations. I constantly get asked “How many polls should I include in my webinar?” Do you really think there is a single magic number that applies to every audience, every topic, and every webinar length? I’m sorry to disappoint, but there isn’t. Are you asking about how many polls when you should really be asking about the purpose of polls? Why are you asking your attendees to do extra work for you? Will they get anything out of the exercise? Saying “polls build engagement and a sense of participation” is only true if you actually have a reason to use them and if you can clearly communicate a benefit for attendees who take part.

One of the classic old tips that still comes up every now and again is Guy Kawasaki’s famous “10-20-30 Rule.” There are people who will tell you that you should create 10 slides to be delivered in 20 minutes using a 30-point font. They have completely lost the original context of placing this recommendation in the service of delivering a business pitch to a busy venture capitalist firm! Stop worrying so much about the specific numbers and think more about the underlying strategy of how and what you want to communicate.

Appearing on camera is another area where you need to carefully consider the WHY rather than the HOW. “Audiences like seeing the presenter.” That’s often true in a general sense. But they don’t particularly enjoy seeing a motionless, uncomfortable presenter trapped in a webcam closeup for 60 minutes – undermined by poor lighting, a bad camera angle, and a distracting background. What are you trying to ACHIEVE by using live video? Presenting a more engaging, positive image of your speaker and your company? Are your tactics supporting or frustrating that goal?

Using good tactics and learning from discussions of best practices are laudable. Don’t ignore the advice of experts. Just make sure to step back and ask yourself how to best apply (or alter) those recommendations to match your unique goals, strategies, and business context.

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

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Woolmark’s Way to Create a Unique Learning Experience for Students with ClickMeeting

The Client:

The Woolmark Company

Their reason for using the ClickMeeting webinar platform:

Providing the participants of the Woolmark Performance Challenge with background knowledge to allow innovative thinking and design.

  The benefits:

Building a hub of educational resources for participants to access and reference

Enabling international interaction as well as feedback exchange among students from different countries and universities

Internal briefings and internal judging panel discussions

  The background

The Woolmark Company is the global authority on wool. The Woolmark logo is one of the world’s most recognized and respected brands, assuring the highest quality and pioneering excellence from farm to finished product. In early 2018, together with top sports brand adidas, they launched a design competition focusing on the development of innovative products for the sports and performance industry.

The Woolmark Performance Challenge (WPC) is an annual competition, which opened for students in Europe and North America in January 2018. Now in its second iteration, the competition has expanded globally. It provides an opportunity to develop innovative new product applications within the sports and performance market, by applying the science and performance benefits of Australian Merino wool.

More than 500 students from 58 universities across Europe and North America registered to take part in the 2018 challenge. As of January 2019, 84 universities are on board for the second edition, with student submissions closing on 24th May 2019.

Are you ready for their story?

Let’s dive into the Woolmark’s case study.

  Why They Decided to Use Webinars

To support students in developing their WPC submission, The Woolmark Company decided to provide educational resources for knowledge and inspiration. However, as the WPC is a global challenge, it would be incredibly difficult to visit all universities to provide similar seminars in person. In order to reach the participants scattered across the globe, the team decided to make use of webinars.

I had attended some webinars using ClickMeeting myself and was inspired by the platform and how it could help us reach our international audiences – says  Salina Janzan, the project’s Global Project Manager. – Running webinars allows us to host many regions at once and offer the same educational resources to all participants.

The WPC team ran six webinars last year, presented by industry experts, on topics such as “Blue Sky Thinking in Textiles and Apparel”, “Sustainability in the Supply Chain,” and “The Performance Consumer.”

It’s great to see the conversations that develop and we welcome the international perspectives – adds Salina Janzan. – The participants don’t often get to interact with students from other universities, so it’s great that we can offer a platform for this.

Similarly, in the case of an international team and the judging panel, it would be rather costly to bring everyone together whenever collaborative discussions were needed. Using ClickMeeting’s platform as a virtual meeting room proved to be an excellent solution.

Salina Janzan says:

The ability to see everyone, to be able to pull up presentations, share screens and so forth has met all of our requirements. It’s far superior to a conference call or sending emails back and forth.

    The advantages

According to the WPC team, what makes webinars stand out among other communication channels, is their potential for engagement. They have used the webinars as the main avenue for students to ask questions and get information about the submission. In this way, the whole process was more manageable for the company, and at the same time more personal for the students.

ClickMeeting boasts one of the strongest portfolios of features among similar webinar solutions on the market. Apart from branded webinar rooms and customized invitations, it also supports webinar recording and storage.

Salina Janzan says:

The recording function has been excellent for us, both for the long-life content generation and accommodating all times zones and schedules. Students who were not able to participate in our webinar sessions could just as well catch up later.

The ability to prepare the webinar in advance was very helpful as well. The WPC team could make sure all the speakers were ready and felt comfortable that all of their content was uploaded.

  The future

The Woolmark Company and adidas are planning to run at least five new webinar sessions this year.

Salina Janzan says:

It’s beneficial to have this long-life content created year-to-year, so it’s not just a one-off event. The new sessions will build on already existing topics and introduce some new discussions.

In addition to the WPC, The Woolmark Company is now also using ClickMeeting to enhance the education program of another of their global campaigns: International Woolmark Prize. This will involve running webinars for the finalists of this prestigious fashion prize, too.

  Conclusion

Based on their experience and the Woolmark Performance Challenge success, The Woolmark Company would not only incorporate ClickMeeting in their further activities but also recommend it to other companies.

As Salina Janzan sums up:

ClickMeeting Platform is extremely intuitive and straight-forward to use which is ideal when you’re working with international speakers and attendees. It works perfectly for our needs.

  Feeling inspired by this case study? Start your own, using our webinar platform. Create a free account or ask us for a customized enterprise solution!

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Designing And Using Webinar Surveys

Webinar administrators sometimes get far too “creative” when it comes to post-webinar surveys. In all honesty, you don’t need much:

This is a perfectly serviceable webinar survey (as long as you actually read the submitted comments).

It’s important to remember that ANYTHING you add beyond this will reduce your completion percentage. So only add questions if you plan to actively use the responses to help you improve future webinars.

If you do plan to get serious about finding ways to improve your webinars, make sure your questions give you tactical data to act upon. For instance, I often see questions such as “Presenter(s): Good – Neutral – Bad.”

I don’t like this question for several reasons. First, it subconciously implies a generic approach to your “interview” with the attendee… It signals that you aren’t really asking about THIS webinar… It’s just an all-purpose question pulled from a question bank. You couldn’t even be bothered to configure your survey to match the actual number of speakers you organized?

If someone indicates that a presenter was bad, you still don’t know enough to make the response useful. I would prefer to ask a series of questions along the lines of:

Now you can provide Adam and Betty with specific, directed feedback on how they were perceived by their listeners and you can optionally develop a training and skills improvement plan if you want them to return as future speakers.

A similar strategy can be applied to other areas you intend to pursue. Maybe you want to consider how your administration and organization of your webinars are working for attendees. You could ask specific questions about Ease of registration; Clarity of communications; How well the topic and intended audience were explained.

Maybe you want to know whether it’s time to consider switching webinar platforms (or what you need to complain to your vendor about). You could ask questions about Ease of entry into the webinar; Clarity of visuals; Computer/telephone audio quality; Ease of interaction with presenters.

Whatever questions you ask, remember that results tend to have a positive self-selection bias. The people who were least satisfied will have left the webinar early and probably will not have seen any post-webinar survey. This is particularly true for products that run in a web browser (most commonly using Flash or HTML5). The majority of attendees leave the session by closing the browser or the active tab for the conference. This bypasses any automatic ability to show a survey upon exit (for security reasons, browser-based applications can’t take an action upon shutting down the browser window).

Products such as Webex or GoToMeeting that use a downloaded and installed program on attendee computers have an advantage here, in that they can recognize when the program gets closed and can pop up a survey at that time. But even in these cases, I prefer to use a third-party independent online survey application such as SurveyMonkey, SurveyGizmo, or Formstack. Setting up my survey outside the webinar application lets me include a link to the survey in follow up emails or other attendee communications. It opens up the option to ask questions such as this:

Well-designed webinar surveys can provide great information to organizers, marketers, and presenters. They can also make attendees feel that you actually care about their specific experiences and plan to use the information to make future interactions with your company more valuable and convenient for them. People are much more likely to provide feedback if they can see that your questions are well planned, specific, and actionable.

Think about what you want to achieve with your webinars and then carefully develop survey questions that will give you the information you need to take direct, positive actions. Make sure your webinar plan includes responsibility for collecting, reviewing, and summarizing the responses you receive, with someone accountable for making improvement suggestions based on the data.

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How to Build Your Personal Brand

Webinars are one of the tools most used by people and brands in the personal marketing niche. Webinar platforms have video and audio tools, analytics dashboards, and advanced presentation features. Entrepreneurs use webinars in many ways to strengthen their following. Here’s why you might see webinars trending in 2019 and how you can start using them today to skyrocket your professional and personal online presence.

  How to Use Webinars for Your Personal Brand

Video marketing and virtual lectures are both popular tools for businesses. Especially ones looking to make a name for themselves on social media. If you decide to use webinars, you’ll have to be strategic in your approach. Here is how to be purposeful when creating a personal brand through webinars:

Self-promotion. First, use webinars to promote your digital products by building great content. Send invitations to key followers and influences who align with your brand values. And don’t forget to promote your webinars in channels where your audience can find them.

Personal branding. Create webinar topics and themes around the most popular questions within your niche. You can even use tools like live polling during the stream to gather opinions. Find out what your audience likes and get suggestions for future content.

Build audience interest. The more content you have the more likely people will find and subscribe to your channels. Diversifying your lessons to include webinars extends your reach and visibility.

Once you’ve covered these basics, you’ll be ready to tackle these next suggestions and tactics.

Ready?

  3 Ways to Get the Most Out of Personal Brand Webinars

When it comes to webinars, knowing your audience is key. Most personal brands should include lessons on topics like life-hacking, motivation, and lifestyle. But, depending on the demands and interests of your viewers, you should also branch out. Add niche interest topics to your offerings.

Promote training topics.

A lot of personal brands will tell their fan base what they should do but not how they should do it. That’s where you come in. Webinars provide tools like whiteboards, screen sharing, and document storage. So your webinar content will teach your audience the skills they need to emulate your vision.

Solidify expert status.

Almost anyone can say they’re an expert but very few personal brands actually have the content to back it up. Webinars offer proof that you know what you’re talking about and that it actually works. When choosing topics, note what questions pop up in the Q&A or chat sessions. Use those to create future webinars.

Measure and track your success.

Once you get in the habit of doing webinars, you’ll want to set and achieve some clear goals. A quality webinar platform will offer automatic data tracking. This will help you grow and strengthen your lesson plan based on real feedback, not guesswork.

The best recipe for a successful webinar strategy includes knowing some best practices. You should also create content based on niche specific tips. And, most importantly, you have to choose a platform that best serves your needs.

So, don’t skip this part.

  How to Choose a Webinar Platform for Your Personal Brand

Not all personal brands are created equally. Neither are webinar platforms. They tend to vary in strengths, features, and price points. No matter what your niche is, you’ll need to choose a webinar platform with certain key features. Choose one that has a mobile app component. It’s great for hosting flexible broadcasting options. For example, you may need to go outside to show the vehicle you bought from using your strategies.

Here’s a real deal:

You’ll also need to look for a webinar platform with a paid room feature. First, provide some general knowledge webinars to attract followers. Then, loyal fans can pay for your higher value, more in-depth tutorials. Third party payment apps are messy and difficult to keep track of. But a webinar tool that includes this feature can streamline the process. All you have to do is focus on your viewers.

Then, make an impact on your target audience with emotions:

The feature to look for is appearance settings. Appearance settings let you control what your webinars look like. You can add your logo, change the your background image, and more. Leading webinar solutions include free Unsplash photos you can use for your profile page and webinar room.

And finally, you should explore webinar options with time-saving extras like meeting organization. Clients can book a private sessions during your webinar without missing a beat. You can also use this branded tool for other important meeting-related tasks. Review sponsorships and organize mastermind sessions with the right webinar platform.

Build your strong personal brand through webinars (and the many tools they have to offer). It only requires a little creativity, some audience research, and your unique flavor. Learning how to master this up-and-coming channel for personal brand marketing now will continue to pay off well into the future.

Hungry for more? We have a real treat for you! What you see below is the recording of our webinar with Jamie Turner, CEO at 60secondmarketer.com. It’s a must see for everyone who wants to start developing a personal brand!

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How to Teach Developing Software Applications

Programming has become one of the most desired professional skills. It’s evident that software engineers specializing in the most popular technologies and knowing the most popular programming languages can be sure they will find a job — a well-paid one.

This means programming teachers don’t have to fear they will be jobless, either. With plenty of software development courses and coding schools emerging, you can share your skills with all those geeks, hungry for knowledge, eager to become developers.

Bartłomiej Bałdyga, ClickMeeting’s IT Director, confirms that companies are still expanding their dev teams to be able to raise their project management processes to the highest level:

  As an IT director, I am fully aware that the dev job market is on fire. This leads to highest efforts from the companies aiming to score the most promising programming upcoming talents to build their development teams. The demand is so strong, that more and more companies, including ClickMeeting, are on the lookout for fresh developers, that they can train later on.

Also, the hype for mobile applications is not going to end any time soon. This all means a golden age for online teachers who concentrate on teaching application development.

How to get your hands on it? Well, have you ever tried using webinars to teach programming? Do you know how great webinars are when it comes to showing people how to develop software applications?

  Although it might be enticing for a newbie to learn on his own, without a virtual classroom supervised by an experienced developer, this can make a programming student vulnerable to learn bad habits. Luckily, there’s a solution to teach and learn to code in the most efficient and agile way – and this means webinars. They give the opportunity to inject good programming practices at the very beginning of the learning path – assures Bartłomiej Bałdyga, IT Director at ClickMeeting.

  In this article, you will learn why you should consider webinar software in your work, what to use them for and what webinar tools will support you in this new challenge.

  Why would I use webinars to teach developing applications?

There are several features making webinars a perfect app development teaching tool, especially in a situation when you lecture or run workshops online. Let’s have a look at just a few of them.

Webinars take place in real time on the Internet. So, it doesn’t matter if your students are scattered around the country, the continent or the world – you can gather them all at the same time, in one virtual webinar room, and teach a class.

During a live webinar, you can interact with participants, and they can interact with you. You can see and hear each other, and most importantly, you can have a conversation. Attendees can ask you for an explanation of the most challenging parts, and you can immediately clear their doubts and help them better understand the topic.

As a programming expert running webinars, you make yourself available for students who wouldn’t be able to meet you otherwise. Let’s say they cannot travel to take part in a course you host at a university. Alternatively, you can’t be bothered to spend hours on a plane to be present at an industry event and run a workshop there. With webinars, you can meet halfway.

Click’s Tip:

How to make your webinars interactive? How to enable your online students to broadcast audio-video so you can hear and see them during your class?

This is how we do it in ClickMeeting:

You can set it up during the webinar. First, I go to my attendees’ list on the right-hand side. Second, I choose a person I would like to enable to broadcast audio or audio and video. So, I click on the person on the list, and then – I click the “Turn mic on” or “Turn camera on” button. That’s it – now the host and the rest of the students can hear and see that person during the webinar – explains Rajmund Dziemaszkiewicz, Product Owner at ClickMeeting.

  If you run an online course webinar for less than 25 students, you can switch to a Discussion Mode, and then each student will be able to be an active part of the discussion – explains Rajmund Dziemaszkiewicz.

  How can I use webinars to teach programming?

A great way to show how to solve a coding problem is running a live coding session. Invite your students to a live coding webinar so they can watch how you write code step by step. They can comment in real time as you write and you can stop any time and encourage them to suggest further steps.

You can go one step further and plan a series of such webinars. In each part of the series, focus on a different problem that needs to be solved. Show your students how to deal with the most common challenges they will have to face when they start their programming career.

If you don’t want to limit yourself to teaching only one technology or programming language, set up a series of live coding webinars co-hosted by experts in various areas of software development. Invite them to run live online workshops with you and share their expertise in JavaScript, Python, Java, PHP, Ruby, C# and so forth.

Apart from live coding, you can also use webinars to teach other programming-related topics. What topics to cover? Teach your attendees about the best practices of clean code writing. Discuss the most common mistakes beginners at software development do and tell your audience how to avoid them. Advise them on how and where to look for their first programming job.

  What tools will help me run an excellent webinar about coding?

Webinar platforms offer a whole host of tools that will support you in your webinar challenge.

Before you plan live coding online events, make sure your webinar platform enables you to share your screen in real time. A screen-sharing tool is indispensable if you want your audience to see what you are doing on your computer.

There is no doubt that your participants are going to have plenty of questions. You can answer most of them via chat or during a Q&A session after the webinar is over. However, if you need to write or sketch anything while you speak to help them understand a topic, a whiteboard tool will come in handy.

If you find our suggestion to invite a co-presenter interesting, check whether there is a multi-user feature available in your monthly plan. It will let you run your webinar with another expert even if you are located in two different parts of the world.

Moreover, for those who couldn’t make it to your live event, prepare a series of programming webinars they can watch whenever it’s most convenient for them. Use an on-demand webinars feature, like the one ClickMeeting offers, record your webinars and make them available from your website, Facebook page or YouTube channel.

  Conclusion

If you are a programming teacher and you haven’t yet tried to share your knowledge via a webinar platform, do give it a go. It’s interactive, engaging and fun and it’s an excellent way to build your own programming class. Future developers will be delighted to have an opportunity to take part in a live coding session or learn the best software development practices during a live online event.

  New to webinars?

Haven’t tried webinars yet? Check our State of Webinars report and revolutionize your digital business today!

Try ClickMeeting on a free trial!

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HTML5 Rewrites Proving Difficult For Flash Webinar Vendors

In the past two weeks, I have seen preview demos from two well-known, established web conferencing software vendors who have stable, flexible, powerful webinar products that can handle just about any kind of content and web event interaction my clients might think up. Unfortunately, both products rely on Adobe Flash as the underlying communications/application protocol, so the vendors have been forced to rewrite their webinar products from the ground up using HTML5.

Flash goes away completely in 2020, but many companies have already forbidden it on employee computers because of security concerns. So webcast/webinar vendors have no choice but to rewrite their code using the new communications protocol of choice for the web… HTML5. 

I have not been involved in the engineering and programming side of this forced conversion (thank goodness!), but I can tell it’s been a harder struggle than the vendors thought it would be, as announced delivery dates get pushed back further and further, with pieces of functionality promised for “a future release.” This does not bode well for power users who have come to rely on specific features of their favorite products.

What kinds of things are proving the most difficult?

Vendors that previously relied on an upload/convert step to turn PowerPoint slides into Flash animations for display in a conference now need to change this to an HTML5-compatible conversion process. Getting native PowerPoint animations, timings, and slide transition effects to appear properly in the conference is proving tricky. I have seen several vendors effectively give up, telling customers that if they want to show slide decks with effects, they should run them in slide show mode and use screen sharing to display the slides. Maybe the vendors will add the ability to reproduce animations and transitions in their upload/convert process later, maybe not. I have also seen instances of reduced functionality in direct access display of slides outside of a simple “previous/next slide” capability.

Both the vendors I just saw make a selling point of the fact that their Flash-based products can record web conferences not just as “view-only” audio/video files, but as fully interactive replays with the ability for on-demand viewers to do the same things that live attendees can do… Download files, click on interactive hyperlinks, respond to polls, and so on. That is apparently more difficult with the new HTML5 releases, and I’m hearing that it will be a while (if ever) before they can provide the same functionality. Instead, recordings are being captured as simple MP4 video files in their new releases.

Phone/streaming audio integration is also proving tricky for some code rewrites. At least one vendor has banished the phone integration they used to support, requiring presenters and attendees to use only computer audio inputs and outputs. Others seem to have conquered the issue, but users have to deal with long (10-30 second) buffer delays before the audio/video content is seen on attendee computers. This makes quick two-way interactions very difficult.

I have also noticed cases of reduced functionality dealing with chat management and question management in some new HTML5 rewrites. The most common design style I see now is made to look like instant messaging displays that mobile device users are familiar with. I am not a fan of this design style for managing large numbers of simultaneous typed interactions from diverse audience members. I want to retain the ability to delete, copy, paste, highlight, or prioritize individual typed submissions. Some of my preview sessions indicated those capabilities going away.

Then you get into all kinds of specialized functionality that may or may not be supported. Maps, timers, fancy types of polls and graphical displays may be amenable to re-creation in HTML5 and then again, they may not be. I know that in my preview sessions I heard several instances of ��not in this first release” and “coming later.” These kinds of compromises and staggered functionality introduction are fine and expected for new products being designed from the ground up, but existing customers are less willing to accept them as dropped functionality in a redesign of something they are already using.

I feel immensely sorry for the affected vendors. They devoted huge numbers of person-hours in development over many years and many release upgrades to get to the current level of sophisticated, advanced functionality. Now the underlying infrastructure has been yanked away, leaving the vendors rushing to re-create their offerings on a platform that wasn’t designed to handle the same capabilities. All while continuing to support and maintain the existing Flash versions. It’s a terrible situation. But sympathy does not mean turning a blind eye to the realities of the situation for customers. If your web conferencing vendor has created a new HTML5 version of their product, test it thoroughly and make sure you know its new set of capabilities and limitations. Make no assumptions that things will work just the same as they had.

Technorati Tags: HTML5,Adobe Flash,web conference,web conferencing,webinar,web seminar,webcast,webcasting,web collaboration,online collaboration,web meeting,online meeting

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How to Explain Aggressive Investing with Webinars

You are an investment and personal finance expert. You have made a lot of people a lot of money through your aggressive investing strategy. But, it’s not for everyone. How can you share what you know with potential clients, weed out who’s not ready for aggressive investing and make money in the process?

Webinars are a great way to position yourself as an expert in your field and help you attract the right kinds of clients.

  Cast a Wide Net

Webinars help you reach a large audience that you typically wouldn’t have access to. ClickMeeting allows you to share information about your webinar on social media with the click of a button. You can also live stream your webinar on Facebook or YouTube.

But, don’t tell too much when you’re live streaming. Provide enough information to show your audience your breadth of knowledge, but don’t give away all of your investing secrets. Give your audience a taste – show the results you’ve gotten for other clients to make your audience want more. This also serves to position you as an expert in your field.

Setting up your webinar is easy, and ClickMeeting has multiple tools that can help explain your strategy so that your audience understands it and feels more comfortable. The Presentation feature allows you to provide multi-media information to potential clients so that they can see and hear what you are talking about. This will help them better understand the information.

The Whiteboard allows you to make the complex simple. It is a great feature to show your audience formulas or calculate how you arrive at certain financial results. For even greater impact, use Screen-Sharing. You can show the market in real time so that potential investors can see how it all works.

  Aggressive Investment is Not For Everyone

During your webinar, you can collect information from your audience. Use Polls & Surveys to determine what kinds of investments your audience is ready for.

Aggressive investment is only for those clients who are willing and able to take risks. A 40-year-old business-man with 3 kids and a hefty mortgage is probably not your client and is rather more into conservative investing. However, a 20-something single woman with a low debt-to-income ratio might be the perfect fit for your business.

You can use webinars to educate your potential client base and save yourself time and money on people who are not ready or in the right position for your services. Use the Polls & Surveys to help weed out those people who might not be right for your particular strategy and then point them in the right direction.

Live Q&A is a great tool to engage with your audience and answer questions. Your audience might be nervous about making these kinds of high-risk investments. This is your opportunity to build trust and allay their fears personally.

  Make Money

You are an high growth expert, and your knowledge is worth something. You can use Paid Webinars and make money to share your knowledge. You charge a flat fee for people to attend your webinar. This not only makes you money, but it also lets you know who is serious and ready for your kind of investing.

But, that’s not the end of the story. Use the Call to Action button to turn your audience into clients. This button directs your audience to your website where they can sign up for a consultation with you or even purchase your services.

Follow up is an important part of any marketing strategy, and webinars are no different. You’ve provided your audience with a lot of information. And, because you’ve used Polls and Q&A, you have a lot of information from them. Use this information to tailor your marketing strategy to reach the right audience with the right information.

If you’re ready to make webinars part of your marketing strategy, learn more about ClickMeeting Features. It’s a low-risk, high-reward way to increase your investment business and reach new clients!

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Issuer Direct Acquires VisualWebcaster From Onstream Media

I thought we would see more acquisitions and mergers in the web conferencing industry in 2019, but I didn’t think it would start so early!

Thursday’s slate of press releases brought notice that Issuer Direct has bought the VisualWebcaster platform from Onstream Media for $2.788 million in cash.

I must confess that although Issuer Direct is based not far from me here in central North Carolina, I was not familiar with the name. Then in reviewing their history, I realized that it’s a rebranding of the old My EDGAR business, which I knew well. They have acquired a number of other companies with familiar names such as PrecisionIR and Accesswire.

Issuer Direct offers a variety of services targeted primarily at corporate investor relations (IR) necessities. These include press release distribution, IR website design and management, investor proxy analysis, and communications with existing or potential investors.

According to the press release, they have more than 2500 customers – but only 225 of those currently use the company’s webcasting services. The acquisition immediately boosts their webcasting business by 50 percent. That’s a nice short-term increase, but it’s obvious that the real growth potential comes from offering the rest of Issuer Direct’s customer base a compelling reason to add on webcasting services (presumably with the help of an improved, commercially-proven new offering).

IR is a well-established application for webcasting, and other IR-focused companies have included in-house technology offerings for their clients. The interesting question is whether Issuer Direct will attempt to continue to market and support VisualWebcaster as a stand-alone webcast platform for general non-IR uses. My guess is that it won’t be a priority for them, but I have not spoken to anyone in the company yet to verify or dispute this assumption.

We’ll see if this marks the start of an acquisition race in the new year. The number of available, commercially viable web conferencing technologies is dwindling rapidly. Which will go next, and who will buy it? Polish your crystal ball and let me know what you foresee for 2019!

Technorati Tags: Issuer Direct,Onstream Media,VisualWebcaster,webcasting,webcast,web conferencing,web conference,webinar,investor relations,web collaboration,online collaboration

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Email Copywriting Techniques to Increase an Audience for Your Online Course 

Attracting people to your online course should be easy. After all, what a convenient way to present your materials to a wide audience. Learners get the benefit of your instruction, especially if you use a great webinar/web conferencing platform and valuable and compelling subject matter. In spite of this, it takes some work to draw in that target audience.

According to Statista, 269 billion emails were sent and received daily in 2017. It’s not a surprise that your messages can get lost among this growing amount of correspondence. So why even bother? Well, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect up to $32 in return. It just takes a bit of finesse to get the most out of it. Below are some copywriting techniques that you can use to get the best results.

  Come up With a Catchy Subject Line

35% of email recipients decide whether or not to open marketing emails just based on the subject line. That makes the subject line a pretty big deal. Whatever you have to share about your course is lost in the ethers, if your subject line doesn’t compel people to click.

Here are a few tips for writing attention-getting subject lines:

Use Numbers

Include Power Words

Personalize and Localize

Test Subject Line Variations

Create a Sense of Urgency

Finally, if it fits with your audience, use a bit of humor. For example, try creating a Buzzfeed-worthy subject line like, ‘10 Unbelievable Sales Techniques: Your Competitors hate us!’

  Add Customer Testimonials

Christopher K. Mercer, digital marketer and founder of Citatior says,

Nothing drives customer buy-in more than the buy-in of other customers. This is why testimonials are so powerful. To have another person state that they paid for your course, and the value is provided, is more compelling than anything you could say.

Encourage people who take your course to provide you with feedback. Then, ask to include the most positive testimonials in your marketing emails.

  Keep it Short and Pay Attention to Formatting

The truth is, it’s an accomplishment just getting someone to open a marketing email. Once that happens, don’t lose the sale with a long and winding email. Instead, get right to the point. At a glance, the reader should know:

What the course is about

How they will benefit from it

Where to go to register

Where they can go to ask questions

While you’re getting to the point, pay careful attention to formatting. Be mindful of readers who access email from their phones, which is more than half of them. Write emails that are mobile friendly, then test them using mobile devices or a mobile emulator.

  Use Statistics

Amanda Sparks, an in-house marketing specialist at Essaysupply.com states,

A great value proposition can really drive conversions. Still, simply saying so is only so effective. If your course has clear benefits, share those. Then, back your claims with statistics.

This is why collecting data on your courses, and establishing metrics is so important. You can use this information when sharing the benefits of your course and satisfy the data wonks in your audience.

  Engage with Visuals

Chances are your website, blog posts, landing pages, and other content is full of visuals. Don’t forget to make your emails even more engaging by including visuals there as well. Done right, visual elements can enhance every part of your email. You should:

Make your CTA visually appealing

Use images such as infographics to drive home the data you share

Appeal to readers’ emotions with memes and GIFs

Finally, don’t forget that the little things impact visual appeal. Try colorful email backgrounds, and new fonts to create stylish and attractive content.

  Polish Your Email

Take the time to be sure that your email doesn’t contain spelling and grammar mistakes. These errors may be human, but they’re sure to leave a negative impression about you as an educator. As you finalize your marketing emails, consider using some helpful resources to help you with last-minute proofreading and editing. We like Flash Essay, Grammarly, Whitesmoke, Online Writers Rating, and Language Tool.

Of course, if you choose an automated tool, don’t let that be a substitute for your own editing. There are some things that only a human can catch. One useful trick is to read your emails out loud. If they don’t ‘sound’ the way you intend, you may need to revisit phrasing.

  Provide the Right Venue and Registration Info

A web conferencing format is the best – it allows a more informal and interactive course, and participants can personally relate to your instruction as well as other participants. ClickMeeting is a webinar platform that will provide just this type of environment.

Make the registration seamless and fast. No one wants to try to figure out how to sign up for a course. If you use Click Meeting, the process will be perfect.

  Close with an Irresistible Offer

A strong closing is essential. You want recipients to act quickly and presenting them with a great offer at the very end is a great way to accomplish this. Veronica Right, CEO at Resumes Centre shares,

We’re approached with training offerings from a variety of companies. Many have something of value to offer, but we can only afford a limited number of webinars per year. Because there are so many similarities from one course offering to another, sometimes it’s a special offer that makes the difference.

  Final Thoughts

Marketing emails, if done right, will attract and convert customers. Use the techniques outlined above, choose the right venue for your course, and you will have a winner.

Author’s bio:

James Scott is an independent blogger and a marketing consultant to small businesses. He is especially passionate about team building and management, having run his own company for a number of years.

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Christmas Magic Can Happen: How Social Networking Can Make Kids Dreams Come True

What would be your Christmas wish if you were a child suffering from a disease? Kuba, a 6-year-old boy from Gdańsk, Poland, had his big dream – getting an autograph from his idol – Robert Lewandowski. But, how can a child score a signed photo from a living legend? This is a story about the power of social networking. This is a story about humanity at its best. This Christmas story that made our hearts melt.

Christmas and webinars – it’s about sharing

We believe in sharing. Sharing knowledge, ideas, business insights, and technical how-to’s with webinars. We’re embracing Christmas as a special time when sharing matters the most. That’s why we’re happy to support the Pankracy Foundation – our local NGO which does an incredible job helping children in need.

Among the many great things they do, the foundation organizes Christmas gift packages for the children they look after.

One of them was Kuba.

His mother asked for very basic items, like a quilt, pair of shoes, or a frying pan,

says Mrs. Dorothy from Pankracy Foundation.

But Kuba was also dreaming about something very special. And this is when the magic started.

  Mission impossible?

Robert Lewandowski is more than just a football superstar. He’s a Polish national team captain, Bayern Munich striker, a disciplined athlete, and a media celebrity worth millions! He’s a natural-born idol for thousands of kids all over the World. Kuba, a huge football fan, dreamt of getting an autograph from Lewandowski. He shared his wish with his mom, and she passed it on to the foundation.

That’s where Martyna comes into the story. Martyna Winkelmann, our irreplaceable Administration Specialist, puts a lot of heart into organizing charity activities, and her immense energy engages all of ClickMeeting’s team members.

Martyna made a call to the foundation and asked whether they had a family that needs some special support this Christmas. It was Wednesday morning when Martyna received the information about Kuba and his special wish. She read the letter written by the boy’s mother.

The family situation was really hard, but this dream cast some light and hope. It seemed big and impossible, but Martyna didn’t give up thinking about it. She wanted to get involved on a big scale.

But how could she reach the unreachable? How could she make the little boy’s dream come true?

She decided to take her best shot.

  The power of social media networking

Her first thought was Instagram. What would happen if she tagged Lewandowski on this social media platform?

Then I realized he has nearly 14 million followers on Instagram, and it’s even impossible to count how many fans tag him every day,

Martyna recalls.

However, opportunity was just around the corner. The very next day, the Polish national team was set to play a friendly match in Gdańsk. It was money in the bank that Robert Lewandowski would be playing against the Czech Republic team.

Why not seize the moment? There was a chance to get through to people working the match – security, stewards, stadium staff, you name it!

On Wednesday evening, a night before the kickoff, Martyna decided to reach her own Instagram followers. She created an Insta Story where she described the difficult situation of Kuba and asked for help with getting Lewandowski’s autograph. Soon after posting the story, her mobile phone turned red from all the notification buzzes. The story of Kuba went viral!

  His dream moved thousands of people

On Thursday morning, the day of the football match, Martyna’s mobile was still buzzing like crazy! Her post scored thousands of likes and shares. This social network was an unstoppable machine. Not only her friends and fans reacted; it went far beyond her own reach and her personal contacts.

People not only shared this post with their networks but started to buy tickets for the match hoping to get through to the Polish captain with a photo to sign. There were also many signals from staff recruited for the match – many of them also promised to help.

Martyna was overwhelmed with the number of questions she received. People kept on asking about Kuba and his sad situation. It was all happening very fast…

  Don’t worry. I’ll get it done

One contact led to another, and on Thursday afternoon someone from the national team close surroundings gave Martyna a call. He offered help but insisted on staying anonymous.

’Just send me your address now, and I’ll get this done,’ he said,

says Martyna with a sincere smile in her eyes.

On Monday, the dream became reality! A package got to our office and landed on Martyna’s desk. Inside, there was the Lewandowski’s photo with his fresh autograph! This secret Santa Claus made sure that everything was OK with the package.

It was amazing! When I confirmed I got it, and I really don’t know how to thank him, he just said – I’m happy I could help.

  What if there was more?

The Instagram post was on fire all day Thursday. One of Martyna’s friends, Cezary, reposted it on his Instagram and Facebook profiles. It escalated fast. People from his contact list sent him messages offering help.

Martyna’s phone rang on Thursday evening. It was Cezary with breaking news – Kuba would also get a football signed by Lewandowski! This was beyond our wildest expectations! How did it happen?

One of the messages Cezary received, came from a friend, the mother of a 10-year-old boy. Her son already had a football with Lewandowski’s autograph on it. They both read the post about Kuba, and it moved them. Her son came up with the idea that was truly epic. He decided to make Kuba happy for Christmas by sending him the ball as a gift. All he wanted in return was to see a photo of Kuba holding the football.

Christmas magic can happen

It started with the shy wish of a 6-year-old boy. It was a spark that ignited thousands of people. With the phenomenon of social media buzz, the power of networking, and the strong belief that it CAN HAPPEN, a wish returned as a double gift: a photo with an autograph, and a ball signed by the international football superstar – Robert Lewandowski.

Kuba and his family will soon receive the entire Christmas package with all the items they need to fulfill their basic needs, and these two miracle gifts,

assures Mrs. Izabela from the Pankracy Foundation.

We really can’t wait to hear about their reactions!

This is the magic of Christmas; it’s all about sharing.

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Happy New Year!

Happy Christmas from the ClickMeeting Team!

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Thank You for Making our 2018 Awesome! Now Get Ready to hit 2019 With Us!

The end of the year is a perfect time to reflect on what we have accomplished this year and our plans for next year. Here at ClickMeeting, we’re reflecting on 2018, and we must say – it was quite a year!

We’ve worked hard to make our webinar platform better, smoother, and richer. Your feedback was the most valuable source of information for us. We based every update, every feature, and all of our work on your feedback and needs.

For that, and for being with us, we’d like to THANK YOU!

  What happened in 2018?

We started early – it actually began at the end of 2017 with our integrations with the analytical and remarketing tools:

Google Analytics

Google Tag Manager

Facebook Pixel

Data is essential for your webinar’s success, so these integrations were a must! They give you an opportunity to track your audiences’ behavior on all your webinar pages. This leads to improving your webinar performance and creating tailored ads for your prospects.

Then, 2018 officially started and we hit it hard! In March we launched an open beta version our completely rebuilt webinar room! This was exciting because pretty much everything was new! The technology operates more smoothly, the design is based on the latest UX trends, and we have a responsive room layout! And on top of that we have new, cool features:

Question Mode, which enables you to add selected chat messages to the question list to be answered later in the event.

Recording Layouts, where users can choose from various room layouts for the webinar recordings, depending on what they want to focus on.

Call to Action pop-up, for redirecting your attendees from the webinar room directly to any external URL. A handy tool for making instant sales!

The following months brought yet more news. In June, we introduced Paid Webinars!

This tool enables you to integrate your ClickMeeting account with PayPal. Once you do that, you can start selling access to your webinars and make money on your knowledge!

This summer was packed with new features. The month after we introduced Paid Webinars, we launched a brand-new tool for boosting your lead base and enhancing your rank in the webinar business: On-Demand Webinars.

To put it simply, On-Demand webinars give your audience an opportunity to watch your recorded webinars anywhere and anytime. In exchange for access to your webinar, though, interested prospects will have to leave their emails addresses, increasing your prospect list.

Another month, another feature! Now that we look at it, we were quite busy this summer! Sunny August came and brought Live Streaming on Facebook & YouTube to you!

We all know that the more exposure you get, the better chance your business will grow. And that’s what this feature is all about – giving you a chance to synchronize your webinar events with your social media network on Facebook and YouTube so that you can reach the widest audience possible.

That same month we gave you access to a new integration: Pipedrive! Pipedrive is a CRM software designed to help sales team run and manage sales processes.

ClickMeeting’s integration with Pipedrive allows you to automatically export the webinar registrants and attendees’ data to the Pipedrive account. With data stored in the CRM’s, you can plan a follow-up tailored to a specific group and nurture their interest in your product or service.

The summer turned to fall, but we kept our summer pace going! The following months brought more awesome news! We redesigned our Branding Tool and enriched it with an Unsplash integration!

You can still brand your webinars with your logo and company colors. But, from now on, you can make your webinar pages look remarkable and coherent with a wide choice of amazing  photos from  Unsplash.

New features were not the only thing we introduced this year! For the last few months, we’ve collected martech and webinar terms and created the one and only: Webinar Glossary!

It can be hard to execute a great online marketing strategy without understanding what the terms mean. Now, you have all the terms you need in one place, so you don’t have to worry about the difference between on-demand and automated webinars!

We hope you will enjoy it and all the features we worked on for you.

  Holiday Recipe for Elevating Your Webinar Strategy

The holidays  are  a  time for sharing, so we wanted to give you something to make your work with webinars easier and more effective. Let’s call it  a  recipe for success! We’ve mixed all the features from 2018 with  some  best practices and  then  added some expertise!

Trust us; it’s a must for your 2019 business strategy!

We hope 2018 was as productive and rewarding for you as it was for us! Thank you for being with us! The upcoming year is going to be even more spectacular for our platform! Big changes are coming, and we’d love you to be with us when they happen. Stay tuned!

And from  all of  your friends at  ClickMeeting – Happy Holidays and a Fantastic New Year!

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LinkedIn Events – Your New Chance to Hack Webinar Growth

Are you on a hunt for game-changing tools to apply in your marketing strategy for 2019? Still looking for a missing puzzle to reach B2B prospects with your webinars? Then you should keep an eye on LinkedIn’s pilot feature – LinkedIn events! Why? Let’s dive into it!

  LinkedIn Events – what took them so long?

This announcement certainly grabbed marketers’ attention. This career networking giant is releasing a platform that can make a huge difference for digital marketing players. Although LinkedIn events start as an MVP, a pilot version for users from San Francisco and New York, it will be available worldwide in the next few months. What’s it about?

LinkedIn events is a tool for creating online events, much like Facebook events. Yes, you’re right – that’s not the first feature that LinkedIn has borrowed from Facebook. Although they did the same with the carousel ads (among other things), the events tool is really something we’ve been missing.

  How will they work?

Before we all sigh “Finally!”, let’s see what we’ll be able to do with the new tool:

Create an event.This is the core of it – we can create events by setting up a name, date, description, and relevant hashtag. For webinar business, it refers to the title, date, and content of your webinar.

Promote an event. This is the true power. Imagine inviting all your professional connections from LinkedIn to your webinar. How much will it simplify your process and power up your lead nurturing? This will be real!

Manage an event. It’s all about tracking your attendees and invitees, updating your event, and most importantly – running follow-ups after your webinar!

Host conversations with other attendees. This is social networking at its best. All event attendees can gather around the event, chat with each other, and build relationships. For you, it’s a chance to build a community around your webinar, and – from a wider perspective – around your brand!

Check who else is attending. This is a useful tool from the attendee’s point of view. If you consider joining an event but hesitate – you can check if any players from your business sector are attending and do the same.

LinkedIn promises more pros are coming in the future, like finding events that are similar to your interests or to events you have hosted or attended. But, before that becomes a reality, you might think “OK, but this feature is a copy of Facebook events, where’s the disruption?”

  B2B shot callers are out there

Time to do some business intelligence. B2B decision makers love video content and webinars, and that’s a fact! Quoting ClickMeeting’s State of Webinars 2018 report: 76% of B2B buyers attended webinars to make purchasing decisions. This statistic already points a direction when it comes to allocating your marketing efforts.

As you know, LinkedIn is heaven for the B2B sector. All the C level managers and execs are out there, ready to interact and find new solutions for their businesses. According to LinkedIn itself, their network site is: “the most effective social media platform for delivering content and securing audience engagement.” (2017)

If you still feel unconvinced, we highly encourage you to explore the Hubspot’s Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics for 2018. Let’s take a look at few findings about LinkedIn:

LinkedIn has 562 million members. (LinkedIn, 2018)

CEOs on LinkedIn have an average of 930 connections. (LinkedIn, 2017)

40% of members visit the professional social network each day. (Omnicore Agency, 2018)

In the past two years, content consumption on LinkedIn has increased by 21%. (HubSpot, 2016)

  How can you reach them?

From solo entrepreneurs up to top level managers and CEOs – all serious players are active on LinkedIn and reaching them is easier than ever before. They want and need content to justify their business decisions. Let’s get back to the Hubspot’s report: “96% of B2B buyers want content with more input from industry thought leaders.” (Demand Gen Report, 2016)

That’s a huge opportunity for you. Think of your webinars as premium content. Invite an influencer – an expert from your niche that will be recognizable to your C level prospects. Try Ninja Outreach or Buzzsumo to find the most relevant ones.

Prepare content that will answer your prospects’ needs. Observe your contacts on LinkedIn. Check what they share, what they post, how they comment, what tags they use.

Be ready when LinkedIn launches their events feature globally. Schedule your webinar and create an event on LinkedIn. Invite your most promising contacts and deliver your best quality to attract them!

  What about Facebook events?

We’re definitely not saying to stop creating events on Facebook. Although it’s not easy to cut through the enormous clutter of entertainment, culture, sports, or even totally nonsense and hilarious events on Facebook, this is still a smart thing to do. Why? Because according to Hubspot’s report:

74% of people say they use Facebook for professional purposes. (HubSpot, 2017)

79% of people online use Facebook. (Pew Research Center, 2016)

So, if you promote your webinars with Facebook events (and most importantly – it works for you), keep doing it!

Keep your eyes open. As soon as LinkedIn kicks off their event platform for all users, apply it to your digital marketing playbook. Do Facebook and LinkedIn events on a regular basis, and measure the effects. At the end of the day – it’s about hacking your webinar growth!

  New to webinars?

Haven’t tried webinars yet? Check our State of Webinars report and revolutionize your digital business today!

Try ClickMeeting on a free trial!

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Will Webinars Ever Get Any Better?

It snowed here in North Carolina this week. Yes, I’m going to relate that to webinar tips… Just watch.

The first snow of the season often reminds me of one of my favorite movies: Groundhog Day. Snow moving in plays a key part in the plot. No, we have not got to the webinars part yet… It’s coming up soon.

In the movie, Bill Murray finds himself reliving the same day over and over. At his lowest point, he asks a rhetorical question about what if every day was exactly the same and nothing you did mattered?

After moderating a series of mediocre client webinars lately, I’ve found myself thinking about that scene. Those of us who work in the industry sometimes feel like we’re in the movie “Groundhog Day” – We give the same advice, over and over, yet nothing seems to change. The basics of giving a good online presentation have been covered time and again… in this blog and in other articles, courses, blogs, and yes… webinars.

The basics are not complicated. You already know what they are, because you complain every time you attend a webinar that doesn’t pay attention to them:

Set Expectations – Build promotional materials that describe the content in enough detail to let the right audience find you and elect to attend. Don’t gauge your marketing performance by how many registrations you can get. I would rather have ten people who end up satisfied and willing to return than 100 who go away thinking that my webinar and my company are a waste of their time.

Meet Expectations -- Make sure the presentation gives people exactly what they showed up expecting to hear. Ensure that content creators and presenters study the promotional materials so that the presentation references and satisfies the promises that were made in the description. Stay focused and deliver value quickly and clearly.

Be Interesting -- Slides full of bullet-point text are not interesting. Presenters who read text off the slides are not interesting. Monotones are not interesting. Reciting long data dumps or lists of facts are not interesting. People who don’t sound interested in or enthusiastic about their own subject are not interesting.

Prepare For Presentation – Complete slides well before the delivery date. Make sure they get reviewed, proofed, and made cosmetically consistent. Give presenters a tech familiarization with the webinar software and how the event will run… Who has which responsibilities, who hands off to whom, how long is spent on each segment. Demand that presenters practice their delivery so they know what they will say, how they will say it, and how long it will take them to say it.

Prepare For Follow Up -- Know what materials will be provided afterwards for attendees and how they will be provided. Create handouts and have them ready immediately following the session. Have a point of contact selected. Have follow up emails prepared and approved by stakeholders, ready to go out quickly.

Optimize Audio And Video Quality -- Use wired connections over wireless if possible. (This is one disturbing trend we often can’t control… wired Ethernet connections are increasingly difficult to find, and many computers don’t even offer cable connectors anymore. However good you think your wifi signal is… It isn’t good enough to carry high speed audio and video for a solid hour without a glitch creeping in somewhere.) Don’t use built-in laptop microphones and speakers. Don’t use smartphones. Don’t use speaker phones. Don’t use “iPhone-style” earbud headsets with the microphone built into the cable. Don’t use a laptop webcam shooting up from your desk into your nostrils.

While these basics are not complicated, they are not convenient either. You don’t have the time. You don’t have the personnel. You can’t get schedules to match up to get the team together in advance of the webinar. You can’t dictate what hardware and connections your guest presenters use. I get it.

You know what? You don’t have to do any of these things. You’ll end up with a kind of okay, marginally executed, forgettable webinar… Just like everyone else’s. That is your prerogative.

But you have a choice. Just like Bill Murray’s character in the movie, you can make a conscious decision to improve. It takes time. It takes commitment. It takes the will to break out of the trap of convenience. The rewards are a webinar that stands out from all the other stuck-in-a-rut presentations out there. Something that makes people want to come back and build a relationship with your company. That can be an awfully nice feeling. You should try it!

Technorati Tags: webinar,web seminar,online seminar,web meeting,online meeting,webcasting,webcast,web collaboration,online collaboration,presentation advice,presentation tips

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[Webinar highlights] Leveraging Live Videos and Webinars for Your Business

If we could use one word to describe our webinar with Owen Video, it would be: POWERFUL! Powerful not only because of the great content and Owen’s energy. We used that word because of your engagement during the webinar and the great feedback we received after! Thank you for joining us. Below we’ve gathered some highlights from this event, including our Q&A.

  1. Importance of live video

This webinar was all about the live video and its role in business. That’s why we couldn’t think of anyone else than Owen Video to be our guest speaker. Owen is a video marketing rock star. He knows all the nooks and crannies of this marketing tool, and he teaches businesses how to leverage it. We wanted to give you an opportunity to learn some tips from the best.

There is also another reason this event was special. We’ve combined the power of webinar with live streaming on Facebook using our awesome feature. Why is this important, you may ask? Besides reaching the wider audience, which worked great for us, we wanted to show you how mixing channels increase your event effectiveness.

Watch the recording our webinar we streamed on our Facebook Page and find out why this feature is a must for your video marketing strategy!

With this event, we wanted you to get inspired with live video, so you can start benefiting from it on a regular basis. We all know that the more exposure you get, the better chance your business will grow.

What are the other benefits of using live streaming and webinars:

Reach a wider audience

Boost your content visibility

Engage your social media network

Generate more leads

  2. Q&A session – Your questions answered

As always, we’ve hosted a live Q&A with our guest. You’ve asked many important questions and we’ve selected the best here. We hope you will find them useful!

  A. What’s the different between Facebook live streams and webinars? 

Webinars and live videos may offer you some different features, but basically, both should be considered synonymous. The webinar or live streaming on Facebook or YouTube, it doesn’t matter. You would see exactly the same content.

They both can be leveraged different ways, though. One scenario is using your YouTube or Facebook content to attract people to your product demo webinar. Social media streams enable you to reach your network, but they don’t have all the features to run an effective demo. That’s why you can combine them with webinars, to increase your effectiveness.

If you don’t have a big contact list, don’t be discouraged. Start with going live, publicly. More often. No registration. No opt-in. Get your audience addicted to you and then take it away. Do that for 3-4 months. After this time, start hosting live events with enabled registration. That way, in order to watch your webinars, interested people will have to leave their emails.

  B. What’s the best time to go live?

The best time to go live is simply the time when you’re able to. You can find a lot of information on when people are the most engaged online. Those numbers shouldn’t be your concern, though. What you should be focusing on instead, is trying to go live frequently. Start with weekly events and engage the people that are out there.

Attendance rates are not the case for you. Don’t get discouraged if you won’t gather 500 attendees. If you can engage 5, 10 or 20 qualified people during your webinar, you’re way ahead of the game already!

  C. I’m not on Facebook and actually I’m not inclined to do it. Do you think I miss much?

Facebook may not be your thing, but it’s definitely a place where your customers spend much time. They want to hear from you. If you’re not communicating with them, your competitors will definitely do that for you.

Being on Facebook is not about you. It’s about your business and your customers. You don’t have to be an active user of every group from your industry. You need to have a general presence, though, so your customers and prospects know you’re still there, taking care of them.

  D. How to engage our followers better?

Start with going live on the same day, at the same time, every single week. Whether it will be a 10 minutes or 60 minutes stream, make sure it’s the same length each week. You’re conditioning your audience. You want to get to the place, where your audience knows you your style.

With your weekly live show, you’re building your personal brand. You’re also building relationships that result in gaining a loyal and engaged network.

  Thank you for joining this event and for your amazing feedback, appreciate it. If you want to watch or relive our webinar with Owen Video, check it on our YouTube channel today!

There are more fantastic events to come very soon! Stay tuned, follow our blog and social media. And if you have any webinar topic ideas, feel free share them with us. Maybe we’ll cover it during our upcoming event.

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[What’s New] Your New Webinar Appearance – Easy and Unique

How to stand out from the crowd in the digital business universe? How to make a great first impression on your prospects? What tools do you need to make your online appearance look professional and attractive at the same time?

These questions play a huge role also in building your webinar strategy. That’s why we are proud to present you our new webinar appearance settings – your ultimate tool to make your webinar pages look unique and consistent.

  It’s all about triggering emotions

Let’s face it – most of the decisions we make every day are under the huge influence of emotions. From choosing a holiday destination or picking an education path, through a career or investment decision, up to signing a meaningful B2B agreement. Our emotions drive us to make a final call in all personal and professional aspects. How to trigger them?

With good-looking appearance! It has an impact, not only on personal relationships and romantic situations but also in business interactions. We feel safer and more convinced when we land on a campaign landing page, company website, or in a webinar room, where visually everything makes sense. Where a logo is in its place, and colors form a coherent brand identity, and your background image…

  …comes from amazing Unsplash free photo base!

Yes! From now on, you can set a powerful background image that will appear on all your webinar pages. Our integration with free Unsplash photo directory opens new possibilities when it comes to designing your:

Webinar Room

Profile page

Waiting room, and

Registration page

You can do it in a few easy steps. First, you need to log into your account. Then, to set up the appearance for a long-distance run, go to your Appearance Settings.

After uploading your logo, and selecting your main color, you can take your time to explore the amazing Unsplash photo base. In the search field, type in a keyword that reflects your business, and – ideally – the one that will describe your niche.

Discover the pleasure of browsing the results. Scroll down the gallery and pick a photo that will do the best performance as a background image on your webinar pages! Save it, and from that moment, all your online events will have the same, professional and stunning look!

Keep in mind, that you can also customize the appearance of a single webinar. If you like to differentiate a particular event and create specific colors and background for it, you can do it easily. All you need to do is to click “Schedule Event” on your dashboard and go to the “Appearance” tab.

Then, use the same set of tools as before. Decide if you want to change the logo and the main color, and feel free to discover a new outstanding photo to boost your webinar branding.

  Design it all in one place

With our new appearance settings, you can now create and customize all your webinar pages from one handy place. You don’t have to tailor each page separately. Save time and effort and discover how easy it is!

Watch our video tutorial and start impressing your audience with your brand-new webinar appearance!

Ready to stand out from the crowd?

Log into your ClickMeeting account and try our new tool today! Don’t have a ClickMeeting account yet? Try it for free!

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8 Ways to Save Time on Your Webinar Marketing Plan

Without marketing, even the best webinar will not generate awareness or profit. For that purpose, you need to invest all the focus and creativity in creating an efficient and attention-grabbing marketing strategy.

A thorough webinar marketing plan takes hours, if not days, to put together. Fortunately, a marketing team can do the task efficiently by following a few simple tips. These eight steps can be your secret weapon and save you the much appreciated time when putting together a webinar marketing plan.

  1. Define Your Audience

It’s a waste of time to advertise to the wrong people. That is why you need to know where to direct your efforts when advertising. One of the ways to define your audience is to go through the list of your attendees. This will help you to have awareness of the number of people you will be refereeing to. Many webinar platforms will help you with this and provide you with the lists of attendees and non-attendees.

Make the most out of the lists by identifying demographics such as dominating gender of the audience and possibly the age groups.

To further shape the content according to the audience, you’ll want to create target listeners personas.

Think about several profiles that represent your audience and keep them in mind as your target audience. This will enable a more directed approach and help you to focus on your webinar plan.

Define your audience and make sure you have delivered it properly to your team. Having a clear picture of who you need to target will speed up the process and prevent a conflict of opinions.

  2. Think about the People on Your Mailing List

Keep in mind the people who are already on your mailing list – what do they need and want?

You have so many useful pieces of information on your hand, just know where to look for. The mailing list is one of those existing sources that can be of great help. They are a readymade source of data regarding your audience’s needs and desires and you should make the most of it.

Revising the people on your mailing list can be the source of useful information such as:

Demographics of your target audience

What their interests are (focus on their feedback)

What they dislike about the previous webinars

Their requests

It will be easier and less time-consuming to form a webinar marketing plan if you already have this information.

  3. Use a Simple Landing Page Template

Use a good landing page template and keep it simple to save time. If you opt for some grand options they will take up your time and can confuse the audience. The purpose of the landing page is to provide all the important information about the webinar, engage the audience, and encourage them to register for your webinar.

There is no need for over-the-top graphics and confusing essay-like content. Keep it short and sweet.

Make sure that your landing page is optimized and has all the essentials:

Information about what you’re going to talk about and what they can learn from it (that is, how this can help solve the problem they’re having)

The date and time of the webinar

The speakers who will be participating

A form where they can register

  4. Email Sequence

Think about your customer’s journey, and put together an email sequence. This will save time because you won’t have to write each one as you go along. Here is a suggested baseline but feel free to alter it so that it fits your email database.

Invite (2 weeks before) – The content should be similar to the landing page. This lets your recipients know you’re having a webinar and give them all the important information. Make sure all the necessary information is present, such as what the webinar is about when it is, and provide an easy way to register.

Reminder – Send the reminders before your webinar to remind your registrants that it’s about to happen. Inside each of those emails, you should include the date, time, and the link for your webinar room. We suggest that you send two reminders:

First reminder (1 week before) – break this email into two separate emails sent to 1) people who clicked on your last email but did not register, and 2) people who did not click on your last email at all. Both emails should remind the recipient of the webinar but also ask for some feedback on why they haven’t registered yet.

Second reminder (1 day before) – this should be the last reminder you sent just to give them a heads up and refresh their memory about the time and place.

Thank-you email (1 day after) – This should be a short confirmation email thanking them for registering for the webinar. You can also include dates, times, and links for your webinar room.

A feedback request (3-5 days after) –Send a survey or feedback email to anyone who attended your webinar. This will help you to improve your content and stay connected with your audience. If they offer up some praise, reply to them and ask if you can use that testimonial for future webinars.

  5. Automate the Above Sequence

There is no need to send the above-mentioned emails one by one when there is technology to give you a helping hand.

An automatic email campaign is set up once. Then it is automatically sent to a particular individual when that person meets a certain trigger.

Most email marketing tools have an API that you can connect to, and sync whatever data you need to make your automated emails work.

Creating the automated sending process for your emails will give you more time to focus on pulling together the best webinar for your audience.

  6. Take Advantage of the Feedback

Using feedback will help you plan a better webinar next time, and help you understand what to emphasize in your marketing communications. It’s a quick form of research.

Attain feedback from the email responses and surveys you get from the previously sent automated emails.

You can also ask the attendees to leave some feedback on their way out. Besides providing you with much-needed information, this also shows your audience that you appreciate their opinion.

  7. Partner Up with Influencers

We are all familiar with the power of influencers. Why shouldn’t you take advantage of that?

Save the time by applying this influencer marketing strategy.

Ask influencers to help you tell others about the webinar via their website/social media platforms.

Make sure that you target influencers whose audience has similar interests as your audience. Use tools such as Ninja Outreach or Buzzsumo to find and reach influencers. To make it easy for them to share, you can even pre-write the messages and just embed the share button within the email.

In order to get the influencer to agree on the cooperation, you can create an affiliate program. Consider giving a part of the profits generated when a referred attendee purchases the product promoted at the end of the webinar.

  8. Schedule Social Media Posts

Save the time by scheduling social media posts about the webinar in advance.

There is no need to think about what, when, and where you need to publish on social media when you can simply use tools which can help you to schedule your social media posts.

Schedule posts for all of your social accounts at once and publish them automatically, according to the posting schedule you put in place.

Some of the tools you can use for this purpose are Buffer, SocialBakers, MeetEdgar, and SproutSocial.

Take into account time differences if you have an international audience.

  Final Thoughts

With these tips and tricks in mind, you should be ready to put together your webinar marketing plan and save some valuable time. Make the most out of social media, good email strategy, clear and concise landing page, and valuable information from your audience to make this happen.

So what are you waiting for? Apply these tips, save time, and focus on pulling together the best webinar marketing plan.

  Author’s bio.

Daniela McVicker is a passionate digital marketer. Daniela is interested in everything related to SEO and blogging. She collaborates with Top Writers Review and other websites where she shares her experience and helps marketers make their name in the online world.

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