Effective promotion can make or break your webinar. In a world where webinars are becoming an increasingly popular marketing vehicle, audiences are being bombarded with email invitations. These invites may get caught in spam filters, deleted out of habit or simply lost in the shuffle of an already-overflowing inbox. To drive registrants (and leads), you’ve got to think outside the box.

Social media offers a whole new frontier for webinar promotion. Sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn provide an easy and budget-friendly way to get the word out about your upcoming live event or even your on-demand recording.

If you haven’t already started using social media to market your webinars, here are a few places to begin:

1. Blog about the topic of your upcoming event and point to the registration page.
2. Tweet, tweet, and tweet again about your event. Because Twitter posts are fleeting, you need repetition to get the message out.
3. Post webinar details and a registration link on your organization’s Facebook page.
4. Create LinkedIn groups that will attract members who are interested in your topic, then promote appropriate webinars to them.
5. Tap into the social networks of your speakers by asking them to blog, tweet, post, etc. about the event.
6. Create a Twitter hashtag for your event and include it in email invites, reminders, etc. to engage your audience before, during and after the webinar.
7. Expand the life span of your content by embedding the conference recording on your blog and on Facebook and promoting it on Twitter.

ReadyTalk is about to launch some cool new tools that automate social media promotion for webinars. With a few clicks of the mouse, you can post details about a scheduled web conference to Facebook or tweet them to your followers on Twitter. You can also quickly embed the webinar recording on Facebook and promote it on Twitter. Get a sneak peek at these features and lots of other enhancements in Web Meeting 6 Preview.

Interested in hearing more on social media promotion plus tips for webinar planning? Join webinar marketing experts Alli Libb of the American Marketing Association, Jessica Walker from Gallup and Paul Barron from Networld Alliance on Tuesday March 23rd at 2:30pm Eastern. Register today for this can’t-miss event!

Now, it’s your turn. Share how you currently market (or want to market) your webinars through social media so we can figure out which social media features to build next …

I hate to be late. When I’m attending a meeting in-person, I want to be the first person in the conference room, not the last. This same philosophy applies to web conferencing.

I sit on a lot of webinars that use competitive products, sometimes I’m doing competitive research and sometimes I sign up because of the topic (social media, word of mouth marketing, prospecting, lead generation, PR, etc.).

It’s guaranteed that I have a meeting right before, which usually gives me about 30 seconds to join the webinar on time. Guess what? That’s never enough time. By the time the software launches, I’m late to join the meeting. Plus, if it’s the first time using that web conferencing software, I likely have to download their application. This means I have to have an IT administrator install the software before I can join. If I’m lucky, I’ll only be 10 minutes late to the webinar.

For me, this is a big deal and is one of the reasons why I’m excited about the launch of Web Meeting 6, which is ReadyTalk’s new web meeting product that will launch later this spring. Web Meeting 6 doesn’t require participants to download any special software (not even Java). That’s right, no participant downloads required. Participants use a Flash-based player that makes joining a conference easy and FAST. More on Web Meeting 6 is available here.

I wanted to find out exactly what ‘fast’ meant, so today I did some time trials on joining a meeting. As a participant using Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome, I was able to join the meeting in 11 seconds. I could join via Firefox in just 9 seconds. Oh, and it only took two mouse clicks to join.

Want to try it out? Web Meeting 6 is currently available in an exclusive Preview environment. Current customers can access Preview at http://www.readytalk.com/preview using their current ReadyTalk access number and pass code and get started. Not a ReadyTalk customer? Contact sales@readytalk.com and they’ll set you up with a free 30-day trial account that also includes exclusive access to the Preview environment.

Please comment below on how quickly you’re able to join a meeting. Also, please share your thoughts on the new interface and features like enhanced polling. We love getting honest feedback.

We released Conference Center 4 today which provides some very nice enhancements to our already fully featured conference management interface. For those new to ReadyTalk or not familiar, the Conference Center is where customers go to schedule meetings, create invitation and registration pages, generate reports, track campaigns, manage recording, distribute recordings and launch their audio and web conferences. It is the hub of everything they do.

For a complete list of all of the enhancements,visit our Conference Center 4 page or you can watch this short video.

I wanted to highlight some of the more important features of the release.

1. First and Last name were separated on registration reports. This was important for importing information into your CRM.
2. You can now upload confirmed attendees. Now you can use the 3rd party registration program of your choice and then upload a list of confirmed attendees. This allows you to take advantage of the Conference Center’s advanced email capabilities.
3. The ReadyTalk Media Player got a lot of love. I will cover most of this in another post but briefly the player got a facelift which involved new embedded controls, new slide view and thumbnail view as well as it being scalable and embeddable
4. We also added Broadcast Audio to our Event packages. Our Broadcast Audio is streaming audio that allows the participant to listen to your conference on their computer. It has been optimized for large events and delivers high quality audio

You can check out all of these new features by taking one of our demos.

In previous blogs, I’ve been discussing the “Ps” in podcasting. The first “P” was the “Popularity” of podcasting, The second “P” was the “Pros” for companies to podcast. The third “P” of the peas in a pod metaphor I’m hacking to death here is the “Possibilities” for business podcasts. It isn’t exactly enough for a meal yet, but hey, I’m getting there.

You can blog about anything or nothing, and many people do. The same is true for podcasting. But if you want people to actually listen to your podcasts, you need to make sure they provide useful information or are entertaining to your audience – preferably both. That’s not always possible, of course. Podcasting your earnings reports isn’t going get too many yuks from the financial community (at least we hope not), but they’ll find them useful.

One way to come up with podcasting ideas is to analyze all the types of communications you use inside your company and with your customers. Some of these may be suitable for podcasting, or even be more effectively delivered as podcasts. This exercise may also generate some completely new ideas for communication that are uniquely suited for podcasting. Here are some possibilities to get you thinking:

Corporate:

• Financial updates such as quarterly earnings reports
• Business news such as company announcements, industry news and trends
• Internal company announcements, newsletters
• Management fireside chats

Sales and Marketing:

• Product news, such as new features and release schedules
• Product promotions and discounts
• Account management status and updates for customers and clients
• Interviews with industry experts
• Whitepapers
• Research paper summaries

Human Resoures:

• HR training courses
• HR initiative announcements
• Policies and procedures
• Management tips and best practices
• Employee commentaries

Customer Support:

• Product usage tips and best practices
• Problem reports, status and workarounds
• Product training

Another way to come up with business podcasting ideas is to go to iTunes and listen to some business podcasts. And talk to other companies to find out what they’re podcasting. You’ll have a bowlful of possibilities before you know it.

Are you doing business podcasting? I’d love to hear what you’re podcasting and how it’s going.

Technorati Tags: B2B, Customer Service, Human Resource, Marketing, Podcasting, Podcasts, Public Relations, Sales, Social Media

My peas that I planted this summer are really producing right now. That’s more than can be said for my contributions to the ReadyTalk blog lately, ever since I came up with the peas in a pod metaphor a few weeks ago to talk about podcasting. In that blog entry, I introduced the first “P” in podcasting – “Popularity” – and argued that both the popularity and potential for podcasting are growing. (Okay – that was 2 “Ps”, but who’s counting?)

Spurred into action by my garden, I’ll continue with the 2nd “P”, the “Pros” (advantages) of podcasting:

• Podcasting is new and interesting, which makes it fun. People get bored with the same ol’, same ol’ and are naturally attracted to new things. Just ask my 11-year-old son.
• Podcasting is inexpensive. In fact, it doesn’t cost anything to podcast, if you use ReadyTalk. Podcasting features come standard with every ReadyTalk account.
• Podcasts cut costs associated with other forms of communication, including postage, printing, paper, meeting expenses, and e-mail storage.
• Podcasts are a convenient, efficient form of communication. Because your audience listens to them when and where they want rather than when and where you want, they’re more likely to actually get your message. Even during a morning jog.
• Podcasts make information personal because you’re talking to your audience. This lets you add depth to your message that an e-mail or document can’t convey – the ones that actually get read.

Those are some of the pros of podcasting. Perhaps the biggest pro of all is that if you are a ReadyTalk customer, we do it all for you. As for the cons, there’s one biggie: If you record your podcasts yourself, you’ll have to get used to your own voice, which I think we can all agree sounds really weird (to you, not necessarily to anyone else). Don’t worry, though, you’ll get used to it.

Technorati Tags: B2B, Podcasting, Podcasts, Social Media