The Webinar Blog

Effective Webinars With Macromedia Breeze

I am booked to give a presentation on Making Your Webinars More Effective in cooperation with Adobe Systems. They now own Macromedia Breeze, which ranks highly on my contenders list for enterprise webinar software. If you haven't had a chance to see Breeze in action, this is a good opportunity, as well as giving you a chance to benefit from free tips and tricks of the trade covering everything from planning and organizing a webinar, to presentation hints, to proper follow-up considerations.

The presentation is scheduled for Wednesday, August 22 at 11am Pacific Time. If you would like to see that time translated locally for you anywhere on the planet, you can click this link to TimeAndDate.com (my favorite online utility for scheduling and time conversions).

I hope you can make it to the webinar. I promise it will be fact filled and informative... not just a collection of marketing talk and pitches for you to purchase services from Webinar Success!

In case you are reading this on a feed that doesn't preserve click-through links, you can register for the event at www.effectivewebinars.com

 

Technorati Tags: Adobe, Macromedia Breeze, web conference, web conferencing, webcast, webcasting, webinar, Webinar Success

"Open Source" Webinar Content

Ryma Technology Solutions sells a product management application (FeaturePlan) for companies that develop software products. They came up with a wonderful way to get product managers (their target market) to visit their website and build an ongoing relationship with the company.

Ryma created a webinar series that is incredibly rare and unusual for a software company. Instead of running endless demos and marketing pitches about their own product, they opened up the floor to guest speakers from around the continent. Anything of interest to the product marketing community was considered.

Now Ryma has every Wednesday through the end of the year filled with webinars on a huge variety of subjects. The only common denominator is that these are topics designed to appeal to the people they would like to sell to. Attendees are very likely to come back time and again to listen to additional events, since the topics are so plentiful and non-repetitious. Each time, they get a little more exposure to Ryma in a non-threatening way and build trust and goodwill for the company. Ryma gets the benefit of a solid repeating draw without having to spend endless hours on content production themselves. They collect leads, they benefit from some percentage of attendees who will self-select to ask for more information on FeaturePlan, and they also build ties to potential partners and referrers who are grateful for the opportunity to be heard in a public forum.

To keep visitors updated on all things product management, Ryma created a dedicated blog called The Product Management View. It features the usual business-related commentary, news items, and announcements. But it also lists all their upcoming and archived events.

If you look carefully, you'll find me listed as the speaker on Wednesday, September 6. I'll be talking about how public webinars can be created and delivered effectively as part of an overall product management and product marketing strategy. Whether you can make my presentation or not (and I certainly hope you give it a listen!), it's worth checking through the massive collection of speakers and subjects that Ryma has gathered. There is sure to be something that will catch your eye.

Technorati Tags: Ryma, product management, web conference, web conferencing, webcast, webcasting, webinar

Will WebEx Turn Into Kleenex?

I just saw a press release issued by Compuware Corporation. What caught my eye was the last content paragraph. It says:

Compuware will present a one-hour WebEx titled, "Deliver Superior End-User Experience Through Agentless Monitoring," on July 27, 2006 at 2:00 p.m. EDT. The WebEx content is based on the information used in Compuware's recent 15- city North American seminar series. Attendees will learn techniques such as implementing end-to-end transaction level monitoring without the use of agents or scripts as well as determining the root cause of performance problems. Interested parties can register for this free WebEx at: https://compuwaremc.webex.com/compuwaremc/j.php?ED=93091252&RG=1 .

I wonder how the marketing and branding gang at WebEx like the use of their company name as a generic noun for a webinar? On the one hand it's amazingly flattering and a nice indication of how the company has grabbed marketing and recognition prominence in the industry. It can't hurt to have your name show up in client press releases. On the other hand, you don't want to run the risk of turning your brand into a generic (Wait, let me grab a kleenex and wipe my eyes, then I'll xerox a copy of the press release and send it to them). Do you run the risk of annoying your clients by asking them to say "will present a one-hour WebEx brand web seminar?"

Branding is a tricky business!

Technorati Tags: marketing, WebEx

Summary of Forrester/WebEx Wave Webinar

I watched today's WebEx webinar featuring Claire Schooley of Forrester Research. Claire summarized a recent Forrester Wave study she worked on. The study focused on 6 major name web conferencing vendors: Adobe, Elluminate, iLinc, Microsoft, Raindance, and WebEx.

The study analyzed the offerings of the companies regarding software to facilitate collaborative web meetings in large enterprise organizations. Claire emphasized that the study did not deal with products targeted at public presentations and one-to-many webinars. Vendors had to offer web conferencing as a service or hosted model, so that let out companies with site-installed products. Vendors also had to have annual revenues greater than $10 million and more than 200 corporate clients using the products. Given those criteria, the resulting list was not surprising. In response to an audience question, Claire said that Citrix declined to participate, saying that its GoToMeeting product concentrated on the small to mid-size business demographic and would be comparable to the enterprise products.

The high level summary showed no surprises. The big three in terms of functionality and overall strategy (as well as market share) were WebEx, Microsoft, and Adobe. The next tier grouped iLinc and Elluminate, with Raindance taking up the rear.

Claire's take on trends in the web collaboration market started with a statement that basic functionality of sharing slides and applications (desktop) and whiteboarding is pretty much a commodity and all the big names handle that just fine. [I have my preferences on specific functionality within those basics... for instance, support of slide animations and transitions varies greatly]. She put a premium on the ability of users to quickly and easily start a conference from within their normal workflow, without having to fire up a specialized application as a separate activity.

She also saw differentiation in the ease of navigation through the user interface, depth of integration with other applications, ability to record/save/edit/replay a meeting, and support for multimedia. My personal take would echo most of these differentiators with the obvious addition of cost (she chose not to incorporate cost as a ranking factor). Although recording is not a big concern for most in-house meetings, it does come up with HR, legal, or financial topics to cover the company. I think most enterprise conferencing software selectors put a premium on a zero learning curve product. If you have 10,000 employees in your company, training costs and interruption to work to learn a new product far outweigh licensing costs. In this respect, I would have placed Elluminate farther down the list, as it has a complex ramp-up and usually requires more formal training. The product was designed for specialized online educational applications and I would be surprised to find it chosen very often as a standalone online meeting utility.

Claire's trends for the future included:

• Enterprises moving to multimedia conferences
• Voice and data over IP converging
• Usability improving, with one-click web conferences the norm
• Web conferencing integrating with desktop applications and business processes to disappear as a separate standalone application
• Differentiation moving beyond features to focus on usability, price, and service [which was not covered in her ranking criteria]
• Security and reliability improving
• Movement toward one--price integrated conferencing

She also posited a future where the use of web conferencing will far exceed the frequency of today's face to face (F2F) meetings. Interaction and presentation features like application sharing, virtual labs, and video will provide a richer user experience than a live F2F meeting.

Claire urged companies looking at web conferencing to think about its impact on and use by not only internal employees, but customers, partners, and suppliers as well. She thinks this is the year to lay down a serious action plan to incorporate the technology into overall enterprise business communications.

WebEx plans to make the recording of the webinar available on their site in the near future. If they don't restructure their site, you'll probably be able to get to it through this link to recorded events.

UPDATE: WebEx followed through per good practices on a webinar. They sent out a "thank you for attending" email with a direct link to the webinar recording, a copy of the graph ranking the surveyed vendors on Claire's Forrester Wave diagram, and a copy of the WebEx evaluation scorecard from the Forrester study.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, Forrester, Claire Schooley, web conferencing, WebEx

WebEx Frees Up Boston

Last week, the "Big Dig" in Boston (miles of underground traffic corridors to relieve surface street congestion - a horrendous decade-long project) suffered a major setback when some 12 tons of debris collapsed underground, sealing off some of the main traffic arteries. Reconstruction may take anywhere from weeks to months. The Boston Herald today played it up like this.

WebEx has jumped in with an offer to Boston-based businesses, letting them use the WebEx WebOffice collaboration service for free. I haven't seen details or small print on the offer. I just got notice that they were going to put this plan into effect. If you are in Boston and are interested in the offer, you can click the following link: http://www.weboffice.com/go/bigdig/

 

Technorati Tags: Boston, collaboration, Big Dig, WebEx, WebOffice

Forrester Wave Study On Web Collaboration

For them what's interested in tracking industry opinions and trends, you might want to check out Tuesday's webinar from Forrester Research and WebEx. The event is scheduled for July 18 at 10am Pacific Time (1pm Eastern). Since WebEx is a sponsor, we can expect some self-promotion on their products. But the larger academic picture of interest is a look at Forrester's conclusions about a recent study on web collaboration they produced.

I have no advanced knowledge of the content. I'm picking up the above information from their press release. You can use this link to register for the webinar.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, Forrester, WebEx

The Podcast Demographic

Last week I mentioned a study showing great business interest in technical podcasts and webcasts. This week there is a new study available from Nielsen/NetRatings on the demographics of podcast listeners and it's rather interesting.

I like the summary that Jason Lee Miller put together for WebProNews. He looks at the usage statistics for the average podcast listener and finishes with the provocative statement (sure to be good for generating comments) that "for now, your podcast target is the geeky, hipster, upwardly mobile dotcom type who likes decent shoes for mountain biking and tennis, when he's not debating Kirk versus Picard."

Without the hyperbole, we see that when looking at a statistical sample of all available podcast consumption (which includes an AWFUL lot of non-business material), the listeners skew relatively young, visit hip portals to find their material, and use Safari and Firefox more than Internet Explorer as their browser of choice. That suggests to me a lot of college students and recent grads using their Macintosh computers to listen to entertainment and opinion podcasts.

I have not seen a comparable survey of audience demographics for webinar listeners. The material tends to be much more business related rather than entertainment related. My intuition tells me it is more geared towards the Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer crowd (many web conferencing vendors still offer full support only on Windows operating systems). And I'll bet the age demographic shifts a bit older.

There is a big cause and effect question here that I don't have the data to answer. But my take on the matter is that if you are attempting to reach an enterprise business audience, especially people with enough seniority to be decision makers, the time is not yet ripe for throwing away webinars in favor of podcasts. Fortunately you don't have to pick an either/or approach. I'd love to hear anecdotal evidence or hard marketing figures from companies using both broadcast channels on who they are reaching.

Planning For A Pandemic

Kathleen Sibley wrote an article for itbusiness.ca (Canadian Technology News) talking about rational and forward-thinking IT planning for a large scale pandemic. A recent Gartner webinar on the topic presented an opinion that typical business continuity plans geared towards a catastrophic event in a limited area will not be adequate or appropriate for a pandemic situation.

The section of the article that I found interesting stated:

[Ken McGee, vice president of research at Gartner] recommends that organizations negotiate preferential terms with video-, audio- and Web conferencing providers — now, not after a pandemic is declared. 

“The point is to do it now to create the terms and conditions and come to closure on those conditions,” he says. “In the event a pandemic takes place you will be able to invoke these rights to a vendor to whom you have already paid insurance-like premiums. The pandemic will take about 21 days and you’re just not going to have enough time to make those arrangements.” As well, he adds, if you’re going to use conferencing as an alternative means of communication, have dry runs now and work with your clients and customers so you’re not struggling to become familiar with it after the fact. “And get satellite phones for executives – they have a fiduciary responsibility to maintain the business.”

The idea of setting up special preferential arrangements with web conferencing vendors in the face of emergency usage increases is a fascinating thought. I wonder if any of the vendors have put together back room deals of this type for their clients. I haven't heard of it, and if any of my vendors reading the blog have something to say about it, I would welcome the comments.

There are a few web conferencing vendors that require you to go through their production staff for assistance in setting up events or uploading and converting presentations and other documents. Normally I simply view this as an inconvenience, but in the face of a pandemic affecting their own productivity and employee availability, this kind of limitation would prove disastrous for their clients. It's worth thinking about as you consider your vendor selection criteria. Can you continue to operate in a self-service mode even if the vendor's staff is unavailable?

Many health organizations advise that the world is ripe for a global pandemic. Asian bird flu is getting the popular press, and it might eventually mutate to allow human transmission vectors or not. But the massive increase in fast travel and crowded public areas over the last fifty years makes the threat of a nasty worldwide outbreak increasingly likely at some point. A sober examination of how your company would continue its daily operations with reduced employee office availability is a good idea. It's also a good question for your web conferencing vendor... How much on-site staff attention is necessary on their end in order to keep the software and communication channels up and running? Do they maintain their own bridges and networks that require physical maintenance? Could they keep your communications channels open if their own employees had to stay at home and work remotely?

Scary stuff, but a lot better thought out ahead of time than dealt with in a panic situation while everyone else is scrambling.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, pandemic, web conferencing

Promoting Your Event After It's Over

I saw this press release from Thompson ELT and TESOL talking about the success of some webinars they put on. Almost zero news value. No way a journalist is going to pick up the story and write more about it. And an excellent job by the companies involved.

Press releases of this type should be part of an overall marketing strategy associated with your webinar planning. It leverages the fact of the webinar to get additional awareness of your company and its beneficial offerings. It projects value in the outreach and services you are providing to your customers or to the community. It gives you additional inbound links to your company website.

Notice that because their webinars incorporated a simple post-event survey or poll, they were able to put hard numbers and statistics to their attendee satisfaction and show that their events are worth the investment of time (and possibly money... I couldn't tell if they charged).

The only thing I would have pushed for if I had been writing this release is a slightly stronger call to action at the end. The release says that they are planning additional events in October and November. They give a link to the generic home page for the company. It would have been nice to give people a link to the specific page that lists past and future events. Maybe an access point for listening to recordings of the archived events (that can be an additional revenue generator if they are fee-based seminars). And I would rephrase the final sentence in the active voice to tell people to visit the site, rather than a passive line saying that information can be found there.

But that's nitpicking. Remember that the usefulness of your event does not end when the event is over. You can continue to benefit from it in marketing and communications. Take a lesson from Thompson and TESOL.

Technorati Tags: press release, Thomson ESL, TESOL, web conference, web conferencing, webcast, webcasting, webinar

Producing A Technical Webcast/Podcast

Mark Glaser wrote a very good blog entry today talking about the phenomenon of public relations approved quotes that lose their impact (or worse, their meaning) when parroted in different contexts. If your company spokespeople merely trot out an overused buzz phrase every time they speak in public, it won't take long for potential listeners to stop listening.

One of Mark's readers comments that the strategy does seem to be effective in politics and government. How many times have you heard the phrases "We must remain resolute" and "Stay the course" in the last few years?

Of course these kinds of stock phrases, especially when presented as meaningless sound bites (see above), have a real purpose. They serve as an emotional latchkey to be used as an alternative to thoughtful discourse and an examination of substantive underlying issues. They present your face to the world in a consistent manner and end up acting much like a brand tag line ("Just Do It"). I've been involved in marketing and advertising for many years. These things have their uses and I'm not going to be the one to tell you to stop.

But let's view them in the context of another presentation channel... The webcast/podcast/webinar. The SECOND you utter one of your favorite chestnuts in an informational presentation you lose a good portion of your audience (typically, the most intelligent and discerning ones, who really wanted to learn something from you).

KnowledgeStorm put out a press release yesterday summarizing results of a survey completed by more than 3,900 business and IT professionals. These people turn out to be listening to a lot of podcasts and webcasts. And they want more. Consider the following quote lifted from the press release:

The study also revealed that B2B technology buyers want research content, such as white papers and analyst reports, delivered as podcasts. Nearly 60% of respondents said that information on business or technology topics, currently delivered as white papers or analyst reports, would be more interesting as podcasts. Fifty-five percent of respondents would be more likely to consume white papers and analyst reports if they were delivered as podcasts.

That's a significant market waiting to be served, and most companies are ill prepared to produce and present the right content in the right way. The marketing departments that are used to constructing nicely vetted, corporate approved sound bites and presentations don't have the technical knowledge or background to create a presentation format version of a technical white paper. The engineering specialists with the knowledge are typically not trained in the art of spin and dynamic presentation necessary to make their content both engaging and consistent with approved corporate/product messaging. (They also tend to have neither the time nor inclination to dedicate a lot of work to polishing such a creation.)

This kind of situation has come up many times in my professional career in high tech marketing, product management, and webinar support. I learned some time ago that my enjoyment of such things is not universally shared. Maybe it's because I'm a natural ham with acting and tour guiding experience who also happens to have an engineering degree and computer development background. Try to find such a person in your organization. She or he will turn out to be a marvelous outbound communications resource for you.

A few of my clients have asked me to create customer/prospect oriented materials for them based on technical subjects. I don't usually advertise such turnkey projects as Webinar Success service offerings, but in case you are wondering how you should go about it, here are my guidelines.

First, brush up on the technical subject area. Some dedicated time with a major search engine and a list of buzz words for the industry will do wonders. Read competitors' marketing documents and white papers. Look at popular user dictionary entries in locations such as Wikipedia. Take special note of any phrases you don't immediately understand as an outsider. Every one of these has to get a definition or be eliminated in your presentation. Your technical client will tell you that "everybody knows what you are talking about when you say..." -- This is often followed by an acronym that is used for about four different and conflicting subjects. They are wrong. Somewhere in their audience is a decision influencer who needs help on the basics.

Next, look through your company's documents, marketing collateral, and officially produced white papers. Note the key boilerplate phrases that are repeated in everything you churn out. Figure out a way to paraphrase it, explain it, or highlight the importance of it. Learn the key phrase and vow never, ever, to say it in your presentation. This information is occasionally important. If constructed properly, it summarizes the company's business and differentiators (a nice goal and not usually achieved). If you are lucky enough to have this, make sure to incorporate it somewhere in your presentation. In different, conversational terms that don't sound like a marketing brochure.

Start planning your presentation. I won't go into everything needed to create a good presentation, but remember this... writing a script for this medium requires you to say it out loud as you are preparing and refining it. Things that read properly on paper don't sound right when spoken aloud.

Now practice the hell out of your script until you are using the paper as more of a memory jog than a teleprompter. Anybody can spot a person truly reading a document. Know the material as a monologue and remind yourself of the words by looking down at them. This is the difference between recitation with a script and reading a document out loud. Do the former, not the latter.

Finally, you are ready to do the recording or live webcast itself. All the usual niceties come into play about proper technology, equipment, setting, and style.

If you want some help, drop me a line. And if you want me to create a complete turnkey webcast/podcast for you based on interviews, existing presentations, and best marketing practices, don't be afraid to ask.

Technorati Tags: marketing, podcast, podcasting, KnowledgeStorm, web conferencing, webcast, webcasting, webinar