The Webinar Blog

Another Bogus Top 10 List For Web Conferencing

Earlier this year I wrote a post dismissing the site ReviewAuthority.com and their listing of the 10 Best Web Conferencing Firms. Today I just saw a press release announcing a similar listing by the website Top10InAction.com.

Following the link in the press release revealed the Top10InAction "Best Web Conference Services." At least they didn't include a defunct company like the other listing had. But they do have some problems with proper branding and capitalization of the products they review. They also shift rather loosely between identifying product names and company names.

Honestly, I didn't spend much time digging in to their facts and figures. It's all nonsense. I noticed that they had GoToMeeting listed at a price of $39/month for a capacity of 500 participants. Actually, the GoToMeeting Pro+ plan allows up to 100 attendees at $56 or $69 per month, depending on whether you prepay at an annual rate.

Scrolling down the page revealed some rather suspect translation to English in the following form:

Given that, I was not surprised to see that the company's contact address was in Shanghai, China. Their website was registered in May of this year, and they have been busy. This week alone they put out press releases announcing new Top 10 lists for Best Web Conference Providers, Best Smartphones, Best Back to School Deals, and Best Serum.

I can't think of any reason not to close with the same statement I wrote the last time I found this kind of superficial listing without proper evaluation of complex technologies:

Pshaw and balderdash. It only bothers me that some people might not instantly recognize this ranking inanity for the obvious paid marketing gimmick it is. Nothing to see here… Move along, please.

Technorati Tags: Top10InAction.com,web conference,web conferencing,web meeting,online conference,online meeting

Lessons From A Dissatisfied Webinar Attendee

Last week I noticed the following tweet:

To be honest, that surprised me a bit, as I have always found ReadyTalk to be one of the easier webinar platforms to use. So I contacted Daniel and asked if I could interview him about his experiences. He graciously agreed, and I think we can take away some lessons from the talk.

Daniel is both a podcaster himself and a podcasting consultant. That makes him particularly sensitive to audio issues (he blogs about them on a regular basis). In the webinar he attended, there was a combination of live narration over PowerPoint slides along with prerecorded video clips.

The first problem Daniel ran into was that he joined the web meeting and couldn't hear anything. That is death to a podcaster, and quite honestly is also death to a webinar host! He checked his computer volume, checked his speakers, and finally noticed a button in the top margin of the ReadyTalk console window marked "Audio." It turned out he had to click this button in order to get an option panel allowing him the choice of listening via his computer or telephone. He was not expecting to have to make the choice, so the initial silence and how to resolve it was frustrating.

LESSON #1) If your web conference technology requires attendees to take an initial action when they join, make this BIG AND BOLD in your login instructions email. Attendees should know exactly what they will have to do when they log in. I have used other technologies that require attendees to log in to the web first, then call in, using a personal identification code presented on the web. Make sure your instructions specify the order and that they should look for their code on the web after login.

Daniel chose to listen via telephone. When the hosts switched to playing a prerecorded video clip, the audio played over attendees' computer speakers but NOT over the telephone. So phone-based attendees heard the live content fine and then suddenly switched to dead air as the videos played. Not a good situation.

LESSON #2) If you include audio or video clips in your webinar content, test them extensively ahead of time - log in as an attendee using each of the available audio connection methods. This limitation is more common than you might think… It is very difficult to synchronize telephone audio with streaming video, since some attendees might experience video buffering during the playback. So quite a few conferencing vendors choose not to play audio/video content out to their telephone bridge. You can get around this by hooking up a hardware bridge to your local phone line (I use the trusty old Dynametric TMP-636), but this requires yet MORE advance testing to make sure you aren't getting a feedback loop in your audio stream).

Then Daniel mentioned something that fascinated me. He said, "It always disappoints me when the host chooses to use a telephone line rather than a computer headset or microphone. It lowers the audio quality." I think this is a case of a podcasting expert having different equipment expectations from the rank and file. Both Daniel and I work in this field quite a lot, so we have high quality computer microphone setups available to us. To be fair, even a modest $40-$50 USB computer headset will typically give you excellent sound. But I have learned over the years how surprisingly uncommon it is for average business users to have computer headsets on hand.

I hear far too many people trying to use built-in microphones on their laptop computers, which produces terrible sound. I hear presenters using good computer microphones, but slow or lossy wi-fi internet connections, creating dropouts. Often a phone gives you better audio quality, but you need a good connection and a good transceiver microphone on your telephone as well. You can run into trouble by using cell phones, cheap in-line (iPhone) earphone/cable microphones, speaker phones, wireless headsets, or phone lines that run over VoIP circuits.

LESSON #3) Test audio for every presenter. Find out what works best with your conferencing technology (some seem to work better with telephone input, others with computer input). Let your presenters know early in the planning process that audio quality is CRITICAL to audience satisfaction and that you expect them to use a quality headset. Test audio on event day at least 30 minutes before your meeting starts and reconnect if necessary to get a clean circuit.

The final thing that influenced Daniel's perception of his webinar was again related to the use of slides and video clips. Daniel used ReadyTalk's attendee button to scale slide content to full screen. But every time the host played a video clip, the video ran at a fixed size in the center of the screen, leaving white space on all sides. It was a jarring discontinuity in the visual flow of the event to see the content repeatedly jumping in size and position… sometimes allowing attendee control and sometimes not.

This is certainly an area where ReadyTalk could afford to place additional development work to smooth the video/slide experience. But again, it is a common issue for conferencing vendors trying to provide smooth audio and video delivery to a general audience on a wide range of computers and internet connections.

LESSON #4) If the size or behavior of your visible content changes during the course of your presentation, tell the audience what to expect. Help smooth over the discontinuity with your patter. It is okay to mention that the video may play back in a smaller area to ensure that everyone has the best performance possible. If they know what is happening and why, it feels less like an unwelcomed interruption to their concentration on the topic.

I appreciate Daniel taking the time to clarify his experience and why he came away with a negative impression of the webinar. This should be a learning experience for web conferencing vendors, hosts, and presenters… Content may be king, but the way the content is delivered and consumed significantly affects the audience's satisfaction. As a host or presenter, you can help minimize attendee distractions with advance testing from their perspective, and as a vendor you should always be looking for ways to reduce barriers to easy consumption of all types of content.

Technorati Tags: Daniel J. Lewis,ReadyTalk,webinar,web seminar,web meeting,web conference,web conferencing,webcast,webcasting,online meeting,online seminar

Is An Educational Webinar Its Own Reward?

I have been working with a client who is offering a series of educational webinars for existing customers and potential sales prospects. He has a lot of great information to present in the target area of expertise.

But we have been struggling with the end of the webinars. The goal is more aligned with "content marketing" than direct "lead generation." Therefore we are not driving people to a specific call to action such as filling out an order form or calling a sales representative.

I keep pushing him to close with a statement of why the information is valuable for the audience and what they should do with it. I ask him to define why he is giving the webinar. He says, "Because I am tired of answering these basic questions over and over again for each company we contact. This is stuff they should all know, but they don't. The education is the purpose."

For a few audience members, that is actually enough. They truly believe in the Animal House college motto: "Knowledge Is Good." But for most business people carving an hour out of their work day to attend a webinar, information for its own sake isn't enough. They need help in completing the link between knowledge and practical value.

At the end of an educational webinar, your job is not to create a summary list of bullets restating the facts you just presented. Your job is to help your attendees want to remember and apply the information. You do that by helping them find the value and the personal impact of the information for themselves.

Your audience should know something they didn't know before. They should believe in the power and value of the information. And they should be ready to apply it in some way. There are your summary bullets. Help them build that three-level connection in their minds:

"So where does that leave us? You now have a better understanding of how cold fusion-powered perpetual motion devices work. You have seen why it has been so hard for companies to properly set up cold fusion in their employee break rooms, but how valuable the technology is when correctly managed and applied to perpetual motion. I hope you now feel ready to kick start a cold fusion project in your own company, perhaps starting with the perpetually-spinning top trick."

Building out the Know-Believe-Apply linkage in an explicit way ensures that you are seen as having provided value. Don't trust that your audience will make the connection for themselves.

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

Penalty For Rushing - Pacing Your Presentation

[From the archives - 2008.]

I attend lots of webinars. And I moderate many more for clients. It never ceases to amaze me how common it is for speakers to run short on time as they near the end of their speaking slot. This is usually accompanied by the following kinds of statements:

· "I'm running short on time, so I'll just hurry through these last slides."

· "They told me to limit my remarks to 30 minutes, so I'm going to skip over this slide, and this one, and this one."

· "Well, I wanted to tell you more, but that's all the time we have."

By using any of these phrases, you leave two negative perceptions in the minds of your audience members:

1. You are unprepared/unprofessional as a presenter.

2. They missed out on something they should have received.

Frustrating your audience is not likely to help advance the goals you set up for your event. But as they say in the movies... "It doesn't have to end this way!"

First, a little tough love for you. Running short on time is YOUR FAULT. It typically means you did not adequately rehearse as a presenter. Rehearsing a presentation means delivering the entire thing word for word as if a live audience was listening. There simply is no other way to check your timings and learn where you can afford to add more detail and where you have to move smartly forward. Most people try to shortcut this step. We quickly look through our slides and make a mental note about the main topic on each one. That's not a rehearsal. Rehearsals are boring. They take up precious time. And they are absolutely essential.

Once you get your timings worked out so you can bring in your speech within the allotted time, find a couple of milestone points and note how many minutes into the presentation you should be as you hit them. Write those down in big numbers on a sheet of paper. As you deliver your live event, you can check yourself and know whether you are moving faster or slower than your target pace.

Now, I'm not completely insensitive to the dynamics of a live event. Sometimes you get a little extra adrenalin and find yourself talking more than during your rehearsal. Sometimes you spend a little extra time dealing with audience questions or analyzing audience polling responses. Sometimes you are sabotaged by a speaker who goes long before you. Okay, you need to adjust.

The important thing is to keep to yourself that you are doing anything different than you had intended. Don't announce to the audience that they are suddenly getting less information or less detail than they otherwise would have received. Don't ever call attention to the clock... You want your audience thinking about your subject materials, not the mechanics of how they are being delivered.

Most of the major web conferencing technologies have a way to jump directly to a slide. We tend to use a "Next Slide" button for convenience, but you should also learn how to jump ahead without flickering over intermediate slides. Work out in advance which slides you can safely skip, or talk about very briefly without sounding rushed. This is your emergency fail-safe in the event of a time crunch.

By the way, if you use a screen sharing product to show your slides in PowerPoint slideshow mode, you may not be aware that you can jump directly to a slide. All you do is type the slide number on your keyboard and hit enter. The audience sees nothing special, but the desired slide is displayed, regardless of the normal sequence. You will have to work out the proper "emergency slide number" ahead of time, and have it written down on your reference sheet.

Doing the proper planning and preparation gives you an extra boost of confidence in your ability to manage the situation, rather than letting it manage you. Your audience never knows that anything unusual has happened. You're a star. How can you lose?

 

Technorati Tags: presentation tips,speaking tips,presenting,webinar,web seminar,web conferencing,web conference,webcast,webcasting

ON24 Does The Webinar Rap

Honestly, I hardly know WHAT to say about this…

 

ON24 is gittin' jiggy wid what Adweek calls "white-guy rapvertising." In this spot created by ad agency Portal A, we get a strange combination of selling points, product positioning, and self-aware exaggeration of corporate-speak buzzwords.

One of the things that interests me is that the rap keeps coming back to the fact that "it's all about lead generation." Obviously webinars are good for many more applications than lead generation (a fact ON24 knows very well with its long background in supporting Investor Relations and employee/customer webcasts). I wonder if they plan a series of these videos covering applications such as training, public outreach, and customer education?

All in all, it reminds me of the late lamented Herbert Kornfeld, the most gangsta accounts receivable supervisor who ever set pen to paper. Look him up, but be prepared for strong NSFW language and glares from people around you annoyed by your gales of laughter.

In the meantime, I guess we owe ON24 a tip o' the hat for keeping it real. Word.

 

Technorati Tags: ON24,webinar,web seminar,webcast,webcasting,web conference,web conferencing,online seminar,online meeting

When Does A Webinar Password Make You Less Secure?

[From the archives - 2008. Updated for 2014.]

Many years ago I had occasion to visit a bank headquarters on a programming job. We went into a secure computer room and I noticed a computer terminal on a table all by itself in the middle of the room. My host said that this was the sole access point to look at account information for any of their customers and that I shouldn't touch it. And there, scotch-taped to a pole next to the table, were the login instructions with the incredibly complex password needed for access. Nobody could ever remember it, so they had written it down for reference.

I was reminded of this blast from my past while working on a client webinar. They had set up their conference in Microsoft Live Meeting and let the software default to picking the attendee password for the event. If you do that, Microsoft chooses a password comprised of upper and lowercase letters, numeric digits, and punctuation marks. So all attendees were supposed to log in using something like qP{4,X as their password.

The problem with a password like this is that it makes your event less secure, rather than more so. Passwords of this sort are designed to thwart "brute force" hacking programs that try sets of common words and birthdates in an attempt to access a protected area. Do you really think a competitor is going to programatically attempt to break in to your meeting with a sophisticated password hacking generator? No, they are going to look for a piece of paper with the entry password written on it. That is the method of choice for the vast majority of security breaches in the world.

The fact is that using the same event-level password for all attendees is not a security feature... It's just something to inconvenience people who stop by to see if they can easily log in without an invitation. Once you've emailed the same password to all registrants and told them that this is how to access the event, security ceases to be a factor. Any one of them can email the instructions to anyone else they want to give access to. You might as well make their lives easier by giving them a code word that is easy to remember.

Try to stay away from characters that are easy to confuse with each other. The number 1 can look like a lowercase l or uppercase I depending on the font. The number 0 can easily look like the letter O.

Event security starts to make more sense when you give registrants their own individual login ids and passwords. If you are responsible for creating each user's password, try to make it easy enough for each person that they don't have to write it down and stick it to the side of their computer! If users are allowed to make their own passwords, turn off advanced security settings that force them to use a combination of upper/lower case, punctuation and numbers.

Honestly, in most cases the fact that you have a password of any sort is enough to keep the unwanted away. Think about the reality of your security needs… Unless you are sharing sensitive information that could severely impact your organization in the event of an unexpected attendee, you are usually better off making attendance more convenient for the people you do want.

 

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

10 Years Of Webinars: Best Of The Archives

I am so grateful to those of you sending me notes this month acknowledging my 10 years in business as an independent consultant, services provider, and journalist concentrating on the webinar industry. It has been such a rewarding decade, and I look forward to many more years of helping the business community achieve "Webinar Success!"

They say that once something is on the internet, it never really disappears. That may be true in a technical sense… It is possible for a dedicated investigator to find old cached material… But sites go away and domains don't get renewed. That has happened to some of my early blog posts, made on a blogging platform that went out of business. I also wrote quite a bit on the old Webinar Wire blog, similarly defunct.

Fortunately I saved the text locally, and I was browsing through the old posts this weekend. If I do say so myself, there were some really useful tips, guidelines, and suggestions in there. I hate for the information to be lost forever, so I have decided to re-run the best of the archives on The Webinar Blog. It will also give me the opportunity to update things where appropriate to account for changes in technology.

I am not trying to put anything over on my audience, so I will label re-use of older material. I just wanted you to know that there is a reason behind the reposting that goes beyond simple laziness! Of course I will continue to add new content to the blog as well, particularly developments in webinar/webcast technology, industry news, and advice.

I would very much appreciate it if you could help spread the word about the blog. The next few weeks are going to be particularly feature-rich, and I think readers will get a lot of value from the information. As you should know, I do not use my readership list for ANY other communications or marketing. You will not get any solicitations or emails beyond automatic notification of new posts (for those who subscribe by email).

If you have a friend or colleague who would benefit, you can direct them to the main blog page: www.TheWebinarBlog.com or you can invite them to subscribe (upper right-hand corner) at https://feeds.feedblitz.com/thewebinarblog. If you want an easy email template, you can click on this link to open an email message you can customize and send. Thank you for your support and continued interest. Here's to the next decade of webinar growth!

-- Your faithful correspondent, Ken Molay

 

Technorati Tags: webinar,web seminar,webcast,webcasting,web conference,web conferencing,online seminar,online meeting,web meeting,Ken Molay,Webinar Blog

Adobe Announces Connect 9.3

Adobe posted an announcement on their blog today giving specifics on their Adobe Connect 9.3 release, due out this Fall. I got a briefing from Alistair Lee, the Sr. Enablement Manager for Adobe Connect, and Rocky Mitarai, Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Connect.

As a "dot release" this upgrade is not intended to add or change major areas of functionality. It allows Adobe to do some incremental bug fixing and refine the operation of existing features. There is a little something for everyone here:

• Easier social media integration - particularly Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Marketers can now use Adobe's integrated content management system to drag a Facebook Like and a Twitter Share button onto a promotional web page. The buttons are automatically linked to the event registration information and you can further customize their operation. You can also include a new Social Media Pod in a Connect meeting room to show tweets and pictures related to a given hashtag.

• Better integration with Salesforce.com. Event administrators have shortcuts allowing them to send meeting invitations to selected contacts or export contact information from Adobe reports directly to Salesforce without requiring an export/import file.

• Email improvements. A new email status report summarizes blocked or spam-diverted emails sent to invitees and administrators can now include an opt-out link in email templates.

• Whiteboard enhancements. A new control bar attempts to make commands more intuitive and more consistent with other Adobe drawing applications. Advanced users may like the fact that they can use pen and pencil strokes that more closely mimic physical pen and pencil marks on paper.

• More control during screen sharing. Presenters now have interaction controls such as video, audio, and chat available to them while running a screen share. You can also see a preview of what is about to be shared before pushing it live to attendees.

• Guided hints for novices. A sort of "tutorial mode" is enabled for new users, giving explanations of different features in the meeting room. This can be disabled to eliminate distractions.

Adobe is trying to satisfy quite a wide range of interests and use cases with all these upgrades. No single user is likely to care about all of them at the same time, but you can probably find at least one or two that are significant to the way you use the product.

For my personal use cases, I expect the screen sharing preview and control enhancements to give me the greatest benefit. I would have said that the in-room Twitter feed was one of the coolest features, but I was not completely satisfied with the way Adobe chose to implement it. When the administrator selects a hashtag to monitor, the screen shows tweets and pictures in separately framed boxes in the pod. It takes up a lot of wasted screen space and I found it hard to get a sense of conversational flow. Tweets look like independent objects rather than a communal thread.

I was also disappointed that the pod can only display tweets for a single hashtag at a time. If you try to monitor a second hashtag, it shows results in another tab. So if I were wanted my attendees to see tweets related to #webinar and #webinars on one of my events, they would have to keep switching between tabs to see everything.

Design preferences aside, I remain very positive about Adobe Connect as a powerful, general-purpose tool for webinars and web conferences and I am also encouraged by their ongoing development and update process.

 

Technorati Tags: Adobe Connect,Alistair Lee,Rocky Mitarai,webinar,web seminar,webcast,webcasting,web conference,web conferencing,web meeting,online meeting,online seminar

MeetingBurner Giving Away One-Year Premier License

I got an email from MeetingBurner this week promoting a contest during early August. Three winners will each get a year of MeetingBurner Premier, with unlimited use and webinar capacity of 1000 attendees.

If you want to enter, you can go to the following link and perform one of the registration activities. If you are willing to tweet about the contest, you can get an additional entry each day.

https://gleam.io/9Bs4Y/meetingburner-1000-person-webinars-for-a-year

The contest ends on August 11. Good luck!

 

Technorati Tags: MeetingBurner,webinar,web seminar,web conference,web conferencing,webcast,webcasting

Content Marketing Webinars - UK/Europe

Did you miss my last public webinar on Best Practices for Content Marketing Webinars? Are you in the UK or Continental Europe and the time wasn't convenient for you? Good news! Citrix EMEA has invited me to present my tips for you next week in a new live online session.

The date and time are Wednesday, 13 August at 3pm London, 4pm Paris. To register, go to http://j.mp/cm13aug

If you want a quick time conversion for your location, you can visit this page with time equivalences around the world: http://j.mp/cm13times

I will cover guidelines such as:

• What types of webinars work best for content marketing?
• How do you write effective promotional materials?
• What types of presenters do audiences respond to?
• How do you balance content dissemination against lead generation?

 

I hope to see you online next week to answer your questions and bring you value in your marketing efforts.

 

Technorati Tags: Citrix Online,Citrix EMEA,GoToWebinar,Content Marketing,marketing,webinar,web seminar,webcast,webcasting,web conference,web conferencing