From the beginning of time, people have been “selling” their ideas to each other. The practice of sharing with and educating others hasn’t changed. We just have a whole lot more options when it comes to choosing the medium. Here are 6 ways Webinars can help you grow your business.

1.    Sell more

By presenting a sales presentation using your computer and over the phone, you offer much more interactivity and a stronger personal connection than you can through a website or direct mail piece.

2.    Create products

The webinars themselves can be turned into products or classes.  You can sell access to your live events, or you can record them and sell them later as video download or audio downloads.  And that’s just for starters.

3.    Get to know your audience

Being able to interact with your audience in real time allows an unprecedented level of market research, right in the moment.

4.    Establish yourself

If you interview experts in your area, you will quickly be seen as an expert by association.

5.    Build your list

Webinars are popular ways to introduce yourself to a new market. It’s easy to invite people to your free events — and as they sign up, they become part of your list.

6.    Create trust

Trust is crucial when you want to do business online.  And one of the best ways to build trust with your audience is to interact with them directly. As they hear your voice live on the call — and as they ask questions and get answers right then and there — you become “real” to them and they’ll be able to bond with you.  This is something that’s much harder to accomplish through sales letters and emails.

With the ready availability of low-cost (or no-cost) long-distance service and conference call lines, and screen sharing applications, webinars have become increasingly popular. Instead of spending thousands of dollars traveling to give an in-person presentation, you can meet your customers and prospects right where they are.  Webinars are a great way to:

• Introduce new products
• Get known in a new market — and get to know that market in turn
• Explain how a product or service works
• Interview experts and share their knowledge with your audience
• Answer questions about your area of expertise

But what about skills?  What do you need to know to host a webinar? Stop wondering! If you have enough experience to start a business, you have enough experience to produce and host a webinar. Stay tuned for my next post when we’ll discuss how to go about producing and hosting a webinar.

Until next time,

Robin

In my last blog post, we discussed the necessary steps to properly plan out your webinar.  Here are 5 more tips to help you create a successful webinar experience.

1.      Sound Natural

You want to keep your viewer’s attention; get rid of the monotone voice! Try standing up, using inflection by practicing and practicing again. Highlight or bold words in your script (tip #1) to remind yourself to use inflection at key stages during the recording process. Try smiling;  I know this sounds odd but it really works.

2.      Start with the Right Apps

You must have quality applications in your toolbox to record, edit and product your webinar. I recommend using Camtasia for video recording and editing and Audacity  for audio recording and editing. To share versions of your Webinar with clients and others take a look at screen sharing software such as Dropbox, Amazon S3 or Screencast.

3.      Pause Early & Often During Recording

Pause, early and often when recording both the audio and video portion of your webinar. This will give you time to re-focus if you lose your concentration. Remember inflection and correct errors as you go. The pause key in your recording software will become your best friend!

4.      Use Custom Settings

Use the custom setting features in your application. This will allow you to create parameters for your webinar that you can use over and over again for future projects.

5.      Repurpose Your Webinar

Once you’ve created an awesome webinar, let it to work for you! You can create CD’s, DVD’s and MP3 podcasts. You can post these on your website as freeware or market them to visitors to your site.

I love getting feedback. Tell me about your webinar experiences! Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv. That’s a plug in that allows you to leave a link back to your own site when you leave a comment.

Until next time,

Robin

Creating awesome marketing or training webinars takes knowledge and effort and I’ve discovered the following must do steps will help you be successful. If you follow these tips, your end result will be much more professional and your skill in recording, editing and producing webinars will be in demand.

1. Spend Enough Time Up Front Planning

This is an extremely important step if you want to create a dynamic webinar. You should spend 70% of your time upfront defining your webinar scope, mind mapping key messages, and developing a comprehensive project plan and storyboard. You MUST know your target audience – remember – you have about 7 seconds to grab your viewers’ attention before they will move on to something else!

2. Write a Script

You want to sound as natural as possible and believe it or not the best way to do this is to write a script of everything you plan to say. You can bold or italicize key words in your script that you want to emphasize while recording.

3. Have the Right Equipment

A good quality headset is a MUST to produce crisp, clear audio recordings. As well, screen sharing software such as Glance, GoToMeeting or GoToWebinar, will help you capture your webinar content effectively.

4. Record Your Audio Track First

Recording and editing your webinar will go much more smoothly if you start with a high quality audio recording. By recording your audio track first, you will get a quality finished product. Make sure you pause a few seconds before you start talking and use the pause key, early and often.

5. Fix Mistakes As You Go

When you are recording your webinar, take the time to fix mistakes as you make them. Pause often and don’t worry about the ‘ums and ahs’, you’ll edit these out later.

Do you have any great tips to share? I love getting feedback. Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv. That’s a plug in that allows you to leave a link back to your own site when you leave a comment.

Until next time,

Robin

Virtually Anything Office – Lessons Learned at a Trade Show

Recently, I hosted a vendor table at a local networking event.   I thought I would share my first trade show experience with you. It was an interesting experience and I sure learned some things that I would do differently the next time. Here are my 7 tips to think about when participating at a Trade Show.

1. Budgeting

Watch your budget;  it’s not something I initially  thought of but WOW you can really spend getting ready for these shows. Make sure the event will warrant your investment.

2. Plan Ahead

I spent hours developing my presentation board (did I tell you I’m a big planner?), an absolute must if you are going to have a memorable, show-stopping display! I gathered whatever I could think of – testimonials from my clients, information about myself and a portfolio of work I’ve completed to show my services.

3. Be Professional

I wanted to make my booth look ‘professional’, after all, I’m a VA offering professional business solutions, so I thought It would be important to dress the part. I’m glad I did. It’s important for your booth to look professional, and to dress professionally too! Your business image is dependent on your appearance and how your display/conduct yourself.  As always, make sure you’ve got a succinct infomercial/elevator speech that you can deliver quickly to all passersby.

4. Handouts

Don’t try to tell everyone about all the services you provide; have this available on a handout. Focus on one key area of your business that you want to expand and talk about this to everyone that stops looking for information. This is a great idea since you can then change your area of focus at every event you attend.

I learned to have MORE handouts to give out; you don’t want to run out of material that people can take with them to remember you by.  I didn’t bring enough with me, but fortunately most stoppers-by picked up my business card on their way through.   Also, have your business cards stuck to everything at your table. Your goal should be to be well represented and remembered by the time all the vendor’s have been visited at the event.

I also found that having something to nibble on helped stop passersby at my table. It’s amazing what chocolate will do to draw people to you!

5. Giveaways

Everyone likes giveaways, so make sure you have lots of them. Aside from samples of your work that people can take away with them, have some other small items available  that they can take along. This doesn’t have to be anything expensive (magnets, pens etc are a great momento and reminder about your services).

6. Bring Extra Supplies

Some of the things I should have had and didn’t (the lessons learned part) included extra supplies of tape, scissors, name tags, a signup sheet for people that wanted more information about my business.  I also learned there are 101 uses for double sided Velcro. Even though I painstakingly taped my information sheets to my presentation board, inevitably some of them started to give way and fall off; and double sided Velcro lets you quickly stick things back on securely. Next time I’ll make sure everything is ‘stuck’ with Velcro before I go to a trade show.

7. Physical Demands

I learned that I should have brought extra shoes! My feet were hurting after standing in one place for an extended period of time.  Also, take water! When you’re talking to everyone, you’ll need to wet your whistle every once in a while so you don’t get a creaky voice.

All in all I had a great day. I was able to interface with many like minded business people and I’m geared up to do another trade show when the opportunity arises.

How about you? Do you have tips to share? I’d love to get your feedback. Here on my blog, you get commentluv.  That’s a plugin that allows you to leave a link back to your own site when you leave a comment.  You’ll find the comment link below.

Until next time,

Robin