Resources for News
10 Top Tips for a Foolproof B2B Webinar
Posted by: | CommentsLooking for ways to improve brand recognition, demonstrate expertise and attract new business leads? If you have compelling content to share, hosting a webinar is a relatively quick, easy and inexpensive option…if you know what you’re doing.
Follow these 10 tips for the path to a foolproof webinar.
Tip #1 – Clearly Define Your Target Audience and Webinar Goals
Looking to educate new clients? Trying to establish thought leadership on a particular topic or with a specific audience? Focused on generating new sales leads?
Knowing the answers to these questions and clearly outlining your webinar goals will help to craft the content and prove essential when it comes time to select your webinar conferencing software/service provider.
Tip #2 – Use Tip #1 to Drive Selection of the Right Webinar Software/Service Provider
Selecting the right webinar provider will make or break your webinar. A few webinar providers worth considering are On24, Citrix gotoWebinar, and Cisco WebEx, just to name a few.
The truth: there is no right or wrong webinar provider. The best webinar provider for your needs will depend on what you’ve already defined as your webinar goals in Tip #1.
When considering each provider, openly share your webinar goals with the provider. The provider can then help steer you toward the appropriate product for you and address key considerations like adding a toll-free conference bridge (so webinar participants won’t be charged to attend the webinar), your anticipated number of attendees (some providers cap at 1,000 or less), how interactive you’d like the webinar to be (e.g., polls, surveys, etc.) and whether or not you will want an on-demand, recorded version post-event.
Tip #3 – Don’t Rush Through Creating Your Webinar Registration Form
You’ve got the date, time and webinar provider selected and are ready to get the word out. Although it’s tempting to rush through webinar registration form set-up so you can start sharing the news, it’s important to take a strategic approach to building your form.
Again, back to Tip #1 – if you’re looking at this as a potential lead gen effort, you’ll want to select the form fields that will capture all relevant information. Consider your long-term goals – do you anticipate issuing additional research on this topic? Hoping to make this webinar a series? Consider adding a checkbox for registrants to opt-in to future research and webinar invitations.
Finally, treat your registration page like… a registration form page. The same optimization tactics apply like using minimal form fields and keeping form visibility above the fold.
Tip #4 – Make a ‘To Do’ Timeline & Send it to Everyone
Now that your registration form is up, it’s countdown to Webinar Day. To stay organized, create a master to-do list including everything from marketing pushes to technical tasks. Date and assign these items. The sooner everyone knows what’s required of him/her, the more time you have to gauge pre-webinar marketing efforts and troubleshoot forgotten items.
Create a separate Excel tab or document for the day of the webinar. Outline a play-by-play of everything to be done prior to hitting the ‘Live’ button so there’s zero confusion as to when and who is supposed to hit record, mute, etc.
Tip #5 – Get the Word Out!
With the to-do timeline you’ve created in Tip #4, you should already know the how and when of spreading the word.
Don’t be shy about promoting your webinar – send an E-mail to your existing subscriber base if you have one or consider renting an E-mail list or running an ad. Mention the webinar on your Web site. Tweet, blog and spread the world in your online communities and forums like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Tip #6 – Friend Your Webinar Provider Account Rep
As the webinar draws near, make friends with your account rep – the more they know about your webinar, the better they’ll be able to help make your webinar a success. And, knowing someone is a phone call or E-mail away should anything go wrong provides invaluable comfort the day of the webinar.
Tip #7 – Practice, Practice, Practice
The week leading up to the webinar, set aside a daily one-hour window for practice. Begin with practicing the basics of giving controls, recording and launching interactive features like questions and polls. Later in the week, invite attendees (coworkers) to mimic the webinar experience for both the presenter and the audience. Your presenter also gets extra practice, which is always a plus.
Tip #8 – Designate at Least One Person as Day-Of Tech Support
Technology + People = Problems. During the webinar, make sure to have someone monitoring the questions box for anyone who is expressing difficulty with audio or visual. Although many issues will be relative to the user’s own device, it can still alert you to larger issues and will send a positive, professional message to attendees.
Also check the E-mail address used as the default address to send the registration confirmations. Many attendees experiencing trouble will try and E-mail this address the day of the event for some last-minute help.
Tip#9 – Thank Attendees for Attending & Share with all Registrants the On-Demand Version within 48 Hours
Whether or not a person attended the webinar, it’s good practice to send a link to your on-demand version to all attendees and registrants within 48 hours, when the presentation is still fresh in their minds. You may also consider sharing the presentation slides using SlideShare or another online presentation sharing site.
Tip #10 – Get Your On-Demand Version and Additional Webinar Questions on your Web Site
Want to continue the webinar buzz after it’s over? Consider posting answers to all webinar questions you weren’t able to attend on either your company blog or Web site. Hoping to continue to use your webinar to show thought leadership and gain additional leads? Make sure to post your on-demand version to your site with a registration component.
Source: Business.com – 10 Top Tips for a Foolproof B2B Webinar
Online TV Viewing For Catch-Up
Posted by: | Comments| Online TV Viewing For Catch-Up | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jack Loechner, Feb 25, 2010 08:15 AM | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
According to Nielsen’s online panel data of U.S. visitors to online TV sites in the last 30 days, when it comes to viewing behavior, demographics, and ad effectiveness, those watching online TV Network video are closer demographically to DVR users by gender breaks, but closer to the general online population relative to age, reports Jon Gibs, VP for Insights, Online and Cross Media.Americans are consuming more and more video on TV, Web and Mobile according to the recent Nielsen A2/M2 Three Screen Report, but the broader usage patterns suggest that online video is a replacement of DVR use, or used by those who do not have immediate access to TV. TV network content online is used to catch up with programming, and not typically as a replacement for TV viewing, as results from the email survey showed.
Online TV Network consumption appears to be an activity set aside in specific sessions from most other online activities, says the report. For those who go online to watch TV shows, that activity dominates that particular online session, with women and the 18-34 group spending the biggest parts of their sessions on network viewing:.
While many of us may watch TV with friends or family members, the viewing of TV shows online proves to be a rather solitary activity. This may change as internet connectivity to our main TV screens becomes more ubiquitous, but right now, the majority of online viewers prefer to be alone.
TV commercial spots reused online appear to have more impact on recall and likeability than creative just designed for online, as noted in a case study with food and beverage ads.
The writer concludes that “This look into the similarities and differences of TV viewing on the web should be a reminder to brand managers that ‘context’ is just as much king these days as content.” And, to put Online viewing in perspective, another recent Nielsen report finds that the number of unique viewers of online video increased 5.2% year-over-year from 137.4 million unique viewers in January 2009 to 142.7 million in January 2010.
Among the top Web brands ranked by unique viewers in January, Disney Online was the fastest growing month-over-month, increasing 23.3%. Facebook and MSN/WindowsLive/Bing were the second and third fastest growing, increasing 18.6% and 15.6% month-over-month, respectively.
For additional information from Nielsen and this study, please visit here. Source: MediaPost Research Brief – Online TV Viewing For Catch-Up |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Twitter Ad Platform ‘Imminent’
Posted by: | Commentsby Laurie Sullivan
Twitter plans to launch an advertising platform in about a month, according to Seth Goldstein. The chief executive officer and co-founder of socialmedia.com led a panel Monday focused on the next wave of interactive advertising at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2010 in Carlsbad, Calif., that shed light on Twitter’s strategy.Declining to confirm exactly when Twitter would release the platform, Anamitra Banerji, head of product management and monetization at Twitter, told MediaPost following the panel that “we are working on an ad platform, but it’s only in the test phase.”
During the panel, Banerji presented a chart that demonstrated peaks and the total number of tweets during the Super Bowl. One blue line represents tweets about the game. The red line represents tweets about brands and ads during the game. A spike during the final touchdown of the game corresponds to 50% of tweets on Twitter at that moment.
Twitter sees this sort of user behavior across the site all the time, Banerji said. “People are constantly talking and engaging with brands, sharing their feedback,” he explained before the panel transitioned into a question-and-answer session. “What if brands start to participate? What would the chart look like then?”
There’s a movement in Twitter to include hash tags in tweets to suggest the messages represent ads. Banerji said when Twitter launches an ad platform, the company will make it “explicitly clear that a sponsor” paid for the ad, and make it “relevant and useful, so the user doesn’t think of it as an ad.”
Banerji called the hash tag ads a “workaround,” for now. Twitter engineers have a better idea what will and won’t work, he said.
Goldstein, who also co-chairs the IAB social media committee, coaxed Banerji to share details on the “imminent” Twitter ad platform by asking questions such as “you were at Overture before, so what did you learn from that experience” when it comes to “developing the first search ads you’re putting into Twitter?”
“Innovate very, very quickly, before someone innovates on top of you,” Banerji said. “And be very, very focused on execution. Just be dedicated to your own roadmap and don’t worry so much about what’s happening around you.”
Goldstein also asked, you will “likely in the next month or so offer Twitter owned and operated ads, perhaps?” to which Banerji replied, “that’s right.”
Completing the question, Goldstein asked how Twitter will manage that while supporting the ability to let a “thousand flowers bloom around the ecosystem?”
“We don’t think of ourselves as a Web site — essentially it’s a platform,” Banerji said. “We don’t really control the ads or the way the tweets are viewed and then consumed. We are completely open around other people innovating around us. Ultimately, publishers should have choice. But the one area of concern for us — and that’s if bad ads get identified in Twitter — it’s a problem for us in the long term. So, we should do whatever we can to encourage positive behavior.”
