ReadyTalk’s video clip playback feature is now publicly available. Video clip playback gives your trainings, sales demos, and webinars a more engaging, personal feel by incorporating a short video clip into the live presentation. Your meetings will never be the same and your participants will thank you for incorporating rich video content in your presentations. With video clip playback you can:

• Upload and store up to 10 video clips to your access code.
• Playback video clips during your meeting for participants to see and hear your content.
• Record your meeting with video clip content included.

We think video clip playback is a great new feature that will enable you to create engaging and memorable presentations. We’ve seen it used in many successful situations from a professionally produced product commercial, to a short CEO update in an all company meeting. This feature improves the ROI of your professionally produced content by allowing you to re purpose it to a live audience and through the recordings you generate. The playback experience for participants and presenters is exceptional as there is very minimal buffering. This means that your participants will be seeing the videos you push to them in real time creating a seamless viewing experience.

For more information on this feature please or to find out how to get started please check out our How-To guide. If you have any questions about this feature please contact ReadyTalk Customer Care at 800.843.9166 or leave your feedback in the comments below. 

Paul was formerly an Account Executive at ReadyTalk gaining valuable experience with competitors and the state of the web and audio conferencing industry. Currently in his role as Product Marketing Manager, he is in charge of the competitive landscape, on-demand audio products, and the web meeting interface. Paul loves the outdoors, his pup Huck, his wife Jess, and getting to the ski slopes as much as possible.

ReadyTalk and PR Newswire have long been mutual customers, benefitting from the various marketing opportunities that result from both platforms and business models. PR Newswire recently launched a self-service platform, iReach^TM, which enables users to easily create and distribute a press release for a low cost. ReadyTalk is always looking for new promotional channels that our customers can take advantage of, and the iReach platform is a perfect fit, especially for those that use webinars to generate new leads for their sales funnel.

Besides being easy-to-use and cost-effective, our integration with iReach by PR Newswire offers several benefits:

• Broader (but targeted!) promotion
  • Automatically promote your webinar on PRNewswire.com and make it findable by search & news engines
  • Ability to target the most relevant audiences when PR Newswire tags your releases for the right industries, subjects and geographies
  • Increase your website visibility
    • Drive more visitors  to your site by including back links in your release
  • Extend the ROI of your webinar
    • Your press release is hosted forever with PR Newswire, which includes a search-friendly permalink URL

ReadyTalk customers have access to two iReach packages at special introductory pricing:

• SearchReach: Promote your webinar online and within search engines for $99 per release (a $30 savings!)
• WebReach: Optimize your press release with an image and drive more traffic to your site for $249 per release (a $50 savings)

And, finally, how do you get started?

Log-in to Conference Center to schedule your upcoming webinar.  After filling in your meeting details in step 1, go to the ‘Promotion Tools’ section in step 2.

Click on ‘Send a Press Release’ and a new browser window will open to the ReadyTalk iReach^TM website.

Choose which option you would like to purchase on Step 1 (SearchReach or WebReach).

You will be taken to Step 2 to start creating the content and details of your press release.  For your convenience, the default meeting registration link will automatically be included in the press release body section, along with the following standard language (don’t worry, it’s editable!)

Please click on the following link to register for the upcoming webinar: Meeting Registration Link

Continue through the remaining steps (preview, pay, release!) to complete the process and promote your upcoming webinar to a broader (but targeted) audience.

A few tips:

• Remember to finish setting up your webinar in Conference Center (invitations, registration form, emails, survey, social media promotion, etc)
• Measure the effectiveness of using the iReach platform by creating a unique campaign url and include it in the press release body. **Remember, the default meeting registration link will be automatically populated, so make sure to swap it out!

Please share any feedback, and results, you have on your experience. We love hearing from our customers!

Beth is a Product Marketing Manager and works with our customers to understand their needs as they relate to Event Services and ReadyTalk’s Conference Center, which is used to setup the details of our clients’ upcoming meetings. Outside of the office, Beth loves to spend time with family and friends, cook, and hit the slopes.

At ReadyTalk, as you would hopefully expect, there are quite a few experts around our hallways that know how to put on the best webinar possible. We’ve had some great posts already in 2012, so I thought, time for a recap!  Take a look at some of the great tips we have already provided, and surely, there will more to come.

Simone, our in-house marketing demand generation manager recently interviewed Wayne Turmal, CEO of Great Web Meetings, how to take your webinar series to the next level.  What were some of the key takeaways?

• Careful execution is key. Plan, plan, PLAN!
• Be familiar with the various tools available for registration, audience engagement, ecommerce, etc. Each of these tools contribute greatly to enhancing your brand, and, of course, lead generation

Brandon, a product marketing manager like me, with a deep respect for all things Batman, kicked off a series on making your PowerPoint presentation more impactful. The most important goal of any PowerPoint presentation should be to get your key message across, in a visually attractive way. Here are some best practices:

• Use a relevant background image that is clean and speaks to your message
• Don’t over-inform: Keep your text simple and to-the-point

Did I mention it’s a series? Make sure to check back in soon for more!

Our resident training expert, Shawn, recently blogged about how to Engage your Audience, with one very important tip: Know your Stuff, and practice the mantra “Learn it, Live it, Love it!”

• Know your topic backwards and forwards….don’t let your audience stump you with outlying questions!
• Practice makes perfect: Talk about your material with peers, colleagues, friends….anyone that will listen!  And, when putting on a webinar, practice using the software!
• Have enthusiasm! Or at least fake it.  If you like your material that will naturally engage your audience.

Finally, a blog from Anita, the Director of Product Marketing, on how to use social media to promote your webinars, and more importantly, deliver results.  She recently joined Deb Evans of Social Geek Radio to talk about ReadyTalk’s social media tools, like our participant sharing capabilities and how to use our recording and playback tools to extend the ROI of your webinar.

What other best practices and tips can we discuss in our upcoming blogs? Share your ideas with us!

Beth is a Product Marketing Manager and works with our customers to understand their needs as they relate to Event Services and ReadyTalk’s Conference Center, which is used to setup the details of our clients’ upcoming meetings. Outside of the office, Beth loves to spend time with family and friends, cook, and hit the slopes.

Today’s post is written by Brett Schklar, CMO, Market Creation Group. During his 14-year career, Brett has become a well-known and respected marketing guru, business visionary and community leader in the Denver area. On February 3, he will be presenting a webinar with the American Marketing Association.

I’m “jump out of my seat” excited to share with the 5 Marketing Forces that I’ve developed over the years and implemented in over 50 companies through Market Creation Group’s strategy process.

Here’s why you should be excited too!  During Friday’s webinar, you will:

1. Learn about the Five Forces of B2B marketing that provide you with a new lens to marketing success/successfully defend your budget and find the areas to invest more based on results
2. Learn how the volume and velocity of demand generation play in ensuring a successful transition to the sales team
3. Understand the right type of social media program you’ll need based on which marketing “force” is most needed
4. See a new way to have a webinar presented with interactive drawing/sketch work done in real-time

During this presentation, I will be unfolding how the 5 Marketing Forces (Awareness, Familiarity, Consideration, Purchase and Experience) are used to create a more focused marketing program based on what is working or what is not working within most marketing programs.  While we explore the 5 Marketing Forces, we’ll also discuss how well or not well your sales program is going and where marketing can put significantly more effort to best align with sales to drive more results.  Whether we look at the Volume/Velocity ratio of leads, the ways to identify your brand recognition and how it impacts demand generation needs, or you’re just fighting to the death for your budget and want to wow people into more funding, we’ve got some new stuff you’ll love to hear about!

I’m also going to take a good look at they types of social media programs you may want to have in place based on the weakest areas of your marketing program.

Now you can see why I’m super-excited about my February 3rd AMA webinar. Want to join me? Register now!

Today we are excited to announce the beta of our pre-recorded video playback feature. Pre-recorded video playback gives your trainings, sales demos, and webinars a more engaging, personal feel by incorporating short video clips into the live presentation. Your meetings will never be the same and your participants will thank you for incorporating rich video content in your presentation. With pre-recorded video playback, you can:

• Upload pre-recorded video clips to your access code
• Playback video clips during your meeting for participants to see and hear your content
• Record your meeting with the pre-recorded video content included

To sign up for beta access to pre-recorded video playback please fill out this form. You will receive an email within 1 business day providing you with instructions on how to get started.

Currently the process for uploading and playing back your pre-recorded video clip is a 4 step process (see diagram below). For more information please be sure to view the recorded demo, the Quick Start Guide, and the Best Practices and Known Issues documentation to gain valuable tips and tricks on how to use pre-recorded video playback in your meetings. When this feature becomes generally available (first half of 2012), the process for uploading and playing back your videos in the live presentation will be very similar to uploading and inserting slides into the ReadyTalk Conference Controls.

We’d love to hear about your experience with pre-recorded video in the feedback form or in the comments below. Tell us how the feature is working, if you’re experiencing any issues, or if you have any specific feature requests. If you have any questions about this feature please contact ReadyTalk Customer Care at 800.843.9166.

Paul was formerly an Account Executive at ReadyTalk gaining valuable experience with competitors and the state of the web and audio conferencing industry. Currently in his role as Product Marketing Manager, he is in charge of the competitive landscape, on-demand audio products, and the web meeting interface. Paul loves the outdoors, his pup Huck, his wife Jess, and getting to the ski slopes as much as possible.