How to Host Your First Webinar

Posted by Ellie Mirman, Hubspot On March 28, 2011

Webinars are one of the best ways to offer unique and differentiating content that attracts your best leads and customers to your business. In HubSpot's history, webinars have been absolutely key in growing our reach as a company, educating our audience about a new market - inbound marketing - and generating low-cost organic leads for our sales team.

You do not need to be a rocket scientist to host a webinar. All you need is a webinar checklist - and here we are to provide it. To unveil all the steps and tips and tricks we've learned along the way hosting hundreds of marketing webinars over the last 4 years. First we'll start with the basics of how to host your first webinar.

How to Host Your First Webinar - Part 1: Before the Webinar

Stage 1: Prepare

8 weeks before the webinar

• Choose a Topic – Think about your customers’ problems and questions. These are the same ideas you may brainstorm for blog posts.
• Choose a Speaker – Choose a presenter who can be a face of the company, someone with expertise and experience presenting (or make sure they practice). Consider also acting as a moderator to handle Q&A and make the webinar more interesting for listeners.
•  Choose a Date – No one date/time works for every company. Think about your target audience’s time zones and choose a time you think will work for them. For example, for webinars for US attendees choose afternoon eastern time / morning pacific time.
• Choose a Webinar System - For a typical webinar, you likely won't find a better value than GotoWebinar. It's inexpensive and easy-to-use and they even have a 30-day free trial so you can test it out for free for your first webinar. "

"Also, there is another company called comf5 that provides unlimited webacsts and webinar services for $40/month.  With this system the host or speaker can schedule the webinars at will.  The comf5 system provides the ability to use a powerpoint presentation during the broadcasts, screen sharing, show videos from YouTube and bring in a co-host during the live presentation.  For More Information on this complete system Click Here" - this part not included in original article

How to Host Your First Webinar - Part 2: Day of the Webinar

Stage 3: Execute

1 hour before the webinar

• Remind Your Registrants - It's that time again, time to remind your registrants that it's almost time for your wonderful webinar! Again, this email can be scheduled ahead of time using a system like GotoWebinar.
• Setup Your Webinar Room - Use the Webinar Room Requirements List below to get everything - and everyone - in your reserved room.
• Log into the Webinar - Your presenter should be logged in and sharing his/her screen. Make sure your presenter closes any unnecessary and distracting applications like email and instant messenger. You also should turn off or remove any cell phones as they can cause interference. The moderator should be logged in and able to moderate the Q&A. And, finally, use your mock attendee computer to log in as a normal attendee would and use the headphones to hear the audio from the event. The mock attendee computer will help you catch any issues as soon as they happen.

Webinar Room Requirements List

1. Presenter's computer plugged into a/c power and Internet (wired is better than wireless).
2. Moderator's computer plugged into a/c power and Internet (wired is better than wireless).
3. Mock attendee's computer plugged into a/c power and Internet, with headphones.
4. Phone (not a cell phone) to deliver speaker audio.
5. Water or other drinks for speakers - you'll get thirsty!
6. "Webinar in Progress" sign for the door - not only will you feel official, but people will be less likely to interrupt your live event.

2 minutes after webinar start time

• Start the Webinar - You typically don't want to start right on the dot of your start time. That's because many people will try to arrive right at that time and you don't want a majority of your audience to come in mid-introductions.
• Review Housekeeping Items - No, I don't mean how to fold the corners of your bed sheets. Housekeeping items for a webinar include how the audience can interact with you (Are you doing Q&A? Will you answer questions live or via chat?) and if attendees will get the slides and/or video recording after the event is over.
• Record - If you're planning on recording your presentation (most webinar systems let you do this), remember to hit that record button!
• Present - Present your wonderful content and cap off the presentation with some live Q&A and thanks to the audience.

1 minute after the webinar

• End the Webinar - Log out of the webinar and end the event for the attendees. Make sure you've hung up the phone before you start talking about how the presentation went!
• Pat Yourself on the Back - You just completed your first webinar! Congratulations!

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/8442/How-to-Host-Your-First-Webinar.aspx#ixzz1HxUOY2Lk

comF5 Rewind - Connecting People Through Technology

MainStreet Economic Conference

MainStreet Economic Conference

You are cordially invited to attend the FREE High-Powered Small Business Conference in Sacramento and San Jose, designed to give participants:

• Social Media Strategies to Market Your Business & Build Your Brand
• Underground Internet Marketing Tactics that Convert into Sales
• Technology that Expands Small Businesses Locally, Nationally, and on a Global Scale

FOR REGISTRATION AND MORE INFORMATION CLICK HERE 

“BIG BUSINESS Solutions for Small Business” Harness the Power of Technology, Digital Marketing, Lead Generation, Video, Online Presence Management and More The MainStreet Economic Conference is a One-Day Dynamic event designed for small business owners, by small business owners.

Gain powerful business skills, resources and tools that will help you take your business to the next level in 2011. Get a chance to engage in our interactive business forums and hear powerful speakers that will address the challenges we face in this economy and provide some REAL-TIME SOLUTIONS that can help small businesses in our communities.

WWW.MAINSTREETECONOMICCONFERENCE.COM

 

For all my guests you will get in free to this very informative event.  Please sign in and write that Yolanda  Dawan is the person that invited you.
I know you will benefit from this conference so be sure to let me know your thoughts after its over so we can get you started.

 As small business owners, we understand the challenges that we collectively share and want to help you navigate through them by providing some REAL-TIME solutions that will help you breakthrough your trials and achieve the results you want in your business.

Don't let this opportunity pass you buy. Register now! This Conference is a GAME CHANGER!

To Your Success!
MainStreet Economic Conference

Ever Thought About Having a Live Internet T.V. Station?

Every business needs a social media presence, and in this technology driven, facebook and YouTube world it needs to be on the internet.   
The Omega Group uses comF5® eMarketEngine^TM to promote its’ business, create auto responders, contact lists and forms. It provides people with a simple powerful and affordable set of applications to communicate across digital interactive channels –email, mobile, social and the web. 

We can record an infomercial with you promoting your business.  This can be a testimonial or special discounts for the week.  The main idea is get YOUR COMPANY and YOUR BRAND in the video showing the world what you do.  We can then use the video in a customized template that we create for you and send as a video email to your contacts, subscribers, friends etc. 

That same video or the many others we record for you can be uploaded to any number of social media sites of your choice. Picture your weekly or monthly newsletter with professional looking graphics, audio and video. In fact, for those who want to promote their brand we can make the template to match your existing website or blog. 

If you are in an industry that has to do a lot of training or demonstrations, then this is for you.  Imagine putting on a live training just once that showcases all of your products.  Ever do the same tutorial over and over just to have the same questions asked again and again? 

Did you ever think that if you could record this and just let it play the world would be a better place?  I have...and I'm sure you have too. 

Record it just once and have it accessible and available to your entire team or down-line any where in the world at any time of the day or night. Well, if this sounds good you will love having your own Internet T.V. station.  Imagine being able to promote and broadcast your business and its services to customers, clients, friends 24/7. NO Limits NO increased time zone or peak hour rates.  It's the same price if you broadcast 4 times a day or once a week. 

FREE CONSULTATION WITH NO OBLIGATION

I want to show you how profitable this can be and cost effective for any marketing budget. If you are ready now and want to get started today fill out the form below.

* Your Email Address:
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	Email marketing by MarketingF5

 

7 Missed Social Media Lead Generation Opportunities

Posted by Kipp Bodnar

Thu, Mar 03, 2011 @ 03:00 PM

HubSpot

In the world of inbound marketing and social media, lots of fluffy terms like engagement and conversation get thrown around. But for marketers social media should be about one thing: leads. If your social media marketing efforts aren’t driving revenue for your businesses, it is time to evaluate your strategies and tactics. Many marketers are leaving far too many leads on the table.
Lets take a look at opportunities that many marketers are missing in the battle for online lead generation. Many of these issues stem from not including calls to action (CTA's)  - "Call to Action" alongside valuable and relevant content that is being shared on social media.

7 Missed Social Media Lead Generation Opportunities 

1. No Blog CTA - Business blogs are great, because they are a social media asset that a company owns and completely controls. Businesses that blog get 55% more website traffic than those that don’t. However, it doesn’t help your business if those new visitors remain anonymous. Many businesses forget to include CTA's on their blog, preventing traffic from turning into leads. At HubSpot, we have found that putting CTA's at the end of blog posts works well to increase lead generation.

2. No Referral Process - If you are sending social media followers to interesting blog content with CTAs, then some of them will become leads for your business. The next problem to solve is getting more followers so that you can continue to grow your flow of new leads. It is important to have some type of process that encourages people to follow your business on social media and recommend others to follow your business. This process could be a contest on Twitter or Facebook or could be as simple as occasionally asking your followers to recommend to others in their online community to follow your business.

3. Having a Facebook Page Without A Landing Page - The fewer clicks needed for someone to become a lead for your business, the better. One way to reduce this friction is to integrate lead capture forms into social media platforms where possible. You can add an offer and landing page as part of your Facebook page. If you are a HubSpot customer or trial user, you can now do this very easily.

4. Missing Social Media Bio Opportunities - Often the first pieces of content a potential new follower or lead sees on the social Web is your profile information. On Twitter, for example, the profile information for your account is in the sidebar of your page. There, most businesses simply put in the link to their home page. However, it is a better option to send them to a custom page only for Twitter users that features special content as well as a relevant offer to people who may follow you on Twitter.

5. Missing Social Signature Links - Signatures matter whether they are in your email, a blog comment or on a site like LinkedIn. Forgetting to include a signature with a link is a major mistake. When selecting the link to go into your signature, make sure you pick a relevant resource that also has potential to convert some visitors into leads for your business.

6. Boring Content - You can have the most amazing CTA and lead generation offer in the world, but if it is surround by boring content, no one will ever see it. If your content is boring and talks only about your product, it won’t attract any attention through social media or any other channel, for that matter. So focus on creating content that is about your industry and the problems that your customers are trying to solve.

7. Too Many Clicks - Don't make people work hard. In the case of social media lead generation, working too hard means making people click too many times to find the information they want. Going from anonymous Web visitor to a lead could also involve a lot of work. Examine your lead generation paths throughout your social media tactics and make sure that you have reduced friction as much as possible.

Great social media marketing is about combing awesome and relevant content with voluntary opportunities for prospects to get closer to your business, whether that'd mean becoming a follower, subscriber or a lead.

What other missed opportunities would you add to this list?

IBD Founder Bill O’Neil talks the markets on American Scene - Investors.com

IBD Founder Bill O’Neil talks the markets on American Scene - Investors.com

Investors. com is a great source to learn about the stock market, who the leaders of industry are and if they are leaders or laggers.  Founder Bill O'Neil teaches the CANSLIM(R) method to determine whether a stock is a good purchase or a bad one.  The two books I use to help me are The Successful Investor, (2009) and How to Make Money in Stocks, (2009); 4th Edition.

 

C A N S L I M method outlined in William J. O’Neil’s book How to Make Money in Stocks.

Current Quarterly Earnings per Share: The Higher, the Better

Annual Earnings Increases: Look for Significant Growth

New Products, New Management, New highs: Buying at the Right Time

Supply and Demand: Shares Outstanding Plus Big Volume Demand

Leader or Laggard: Which is Your Stock?

Institutional Sponsorship: Follow the Leaders

Market Direction: How to Determine It