Posts Tagged ‘Business Owners’

Why Webinars Are a Crucial Marketing and Learning Tool

Kelsey Childress asked:




Webinars, or web seminars, have a great many uses that organizations and individuals alike can use. There are a lot of choices when it comes to choosing the right webinar provider, but many organizations decide based on the following factors – ease of use, cost and intended use.

Cost
Cost is a major factor when choosing what type of webinar appliance or software to use. Because several businesses still consider webinars as a luxury purchase, having an economical price and value will help convince business owners and supervisors to actually purchase the technology. Many companies that provide webinar technology often do so at a monthly or annual subscription plan. However, there are web conferencing appliances that may be the most economical approach– these products only have an initial cost, with no monthly fees or subscription costs for the entire life of the appliance.

Ease of Use
Facilitating webinars has become so easy- with the right computer and software, almost anyone can do it. Making webinars easy to conduct has helped individuals and businesses communicate better with each other, their customers, and other industry professionals. Many organizations are now beginning to use webinars instead of planning large conferences at hotels or convention centers. This saves a substantial amount of money and, in many cases, is just as effective.

Intended Use
There are several great uses for webinars, in almost any industry. Many organizations offer free webinars to interested parties as a learning tool. This not only drives traffic to the hosted website, but it also establishes credibility in the industry.

Besides using webinars as an effective marketing tool, many organizations use webinar technology for internal and client training. Employee orientation or teaching new skills can now be done in any office location. In addition, teaching clients or customers how to use an organization’s products can be as easy as having them join a webinar with an educated instructor.

Holly

Video Conferencing – How to Conduct a Successful Webinar

Cheow Yu Yuan asked:




Video conferencing is taking the market by storm and more businesses are using it to conduct webinars and meetings. The reason why video conferencing is so popular is because it saves travelling cost. With this, business owners do not need to travel to overseas for a face-to-face meeting anymore – they can sit in front of their computer screens and conduct meetings with their associates.

In this article, let me share with you some tips to conduct a successful webinar:

1. Set up your conferencing equipments properly. To hold a successful webinar, you must get the equipments in place. The quality of the equipments is very important as it will directly affect your video. For example, if you use a low pixel camera, the video output will be grainy.

2. Avoid slow Internet connection. The most common reason why webinars fail is because of slow internet connectivity. Your connection speed should be at least 3mbps.

3. Prepare yourself for the webinar. Before you conduct a webinar, you need to prepare. Plan out the agenda and things that you want to share with your participants. Also, familiarize yourself with the video conferencing platform so that you can guide your participants. If you have one bad experience, you should not give up on video conferencing. Practice makes perfect. By holding more webinars, you will improve and become proficient at it.

4. Send out your invitation early. You need to send out invitations to your guests at least 2 weeks before the actual date. If you are holding a commercial webinar, you should consider advertising it. By building buzz around it, you can attract more people to attend it.

5. Try your best to engage your audience. If your webinar is boring, people will leave. Even if you are using it to pitch your product or service to a potential customer, you must make your presentation as engaging as possible. Again, this takes practice. Do not give up just because of a few bad experiences.

6. Set a convenient time for your audience. One main reason why people don’t turn up for your webinar is because it is set at your local timing. You must set a time that is convenient to your target audience, not for yourself.

7. Build rapport with your audience. When you are conducting a webinar, it is not the time to be shy. You must be comfortable with people and bring across your point to them. Be it a sales webinar or shareholders meeting, you need to make a great impression in their minds.

Video conferencing is definitely the way to conduct presentations and meetings. So get yourself comfortable in front of a video camera and start holding webinars now.

Rodney

The Cost of Webinars

Tom Cruz asked:




The cost of hosting a webinar can vary widely. It can vary widely not only from company to company, it can vary widely just from one company program to another. Good webinar hosting vendors offer a range of programs so that different businesses can choose those that best match their needs, niche, size, and marketing bank account.

Due to the fact that they are considered one of the cream of the crop of webinar hosting vendors, let’s look at the different costs for different programs offered by Webex.

Webex were one of the first companies to get into the webinar game. As a result they have considerable experience with webinars and therefore they can be expected to have competitive pricing on relevant webinar packages.

One of their packages is the Special Meetings Plus package. They advertise that this begins as low as $59 per month. If you take this package, you can get: unlimited numbers of hosted monthly webinars from your computer to which you can invite up to 25 people each; the ability to webcam, share presentations and docs, and demo applications with your attending audience; and have VoIP or telecoms included in the price. Different other features can be added for additional cost. Webex advertises that this program is $59 per month is you pay for a year up front.

To this plan can be added a service that might be extremely important to many business owners: WebEx Support Center. With this, you can get a Technical Support Representative (TSR) who can remotely view, diagnose, and solve problems for you online. These TSRs can also transfer customer files for off-line analysis, or, with permission, control the customer’s desktop to download patches and updates. You can order anywhere from one to four TSR “seats” to service you. Depending on how many TSRs you ask for and whether or not you pay for one quarter or a full year in advance, this WebEx Support Center service will cost you anywhere from $149 per month to $689 per month.

With WebEx MeetMeNow, you can pay just $49 per month or, for a one-year contract, just $39 per month to get unlimited monthly meetings that may include up to 15 people at once in a WebEx Meeting Center webinar.

For those who are afraid of commitment, there’s the WebEx Pay-Per-Use program, which permits you to use WebEx Meeting Center on an as-needed basis with no minimum cost. For this, you’ll pay $0.33 per minute per participant and an additional $0.20 per minute flat rate for live integration of audio, video, and data sharing.

WebEx also offers a PCNow service that permits you to access your computer and everything on it remotely. This can be highly useful for a one-on-one web meeting. This costs $12.95 per month.

Sales and promotional services, help with marketing and putting together webinars, and the Webex Training Center are all available to be had as add-on services for additional cost.

So, as you can see, the cost of webinars varies widely and your particular needs and objectives have to be taken into consideration.

Vernon

Choosing Web Conferencing Solutions

Tom Cruz asked:




It doesn’t matter if you have one hundred employees or just one, if they work offsite, you need a convenient and easy way to stay in touch and provide training. Web conferencing is the ideal solution. Big businesses use web conferencing to help manage their huge workforce that may be spread all around the globe. Individual business owners can use web conferencing to train a contract worker or make a sales presentation to a client.

Just as there are many different uses for web conferencing, there are several web conferencing solutions available as well. For some companies that have in-house tech departments, it may be a good choice to host the conferencing software themselves. They would have to buy the proper hardware and software, install it, and maintain it. For most business owners, this option doesn’t make good business sense. They will find a much easier and more affordable option by choosing an online provider that hosts the software and sells access to it.

There are many of these online conferencing providers available today Their services range from under $50 per month to well into the hundreds of dollars per month depending upon the number of features you need and the number of employees you have accessing the system. Web conferencing solutions offer the same basic components: audio conferencing, video conferencing, document sharing, collaboration, and white boarding.

WebEx is a popular company that offers web conferencing solutions to businesses of all sizes and is very affordable. For under $50 per month you can hold web conferences with up to 25 people per session. Sessions can be live or recorded. They allow for multi-user video conferencing and the ability to connect with a mobile device. You can hold training seminars, online events, and sales meetings. They offer a free 14 day trial so you can try their service for yourself.

GoToMeeting is another popular online conferencing provider. They provide a free 30 day trial so you can thoroughly test out their service. They allow you to make presentations and demonstrations, as well as collaborate with other participants. GoToMeeting is integrated with VoIP which saves money on phone calls. GoToMeeting is easy for you to set up and more importantly is easy for your attendees to use. With GoToMeeting, you can share desktops and even share mouse and keyboard control. It also provides drawing tool capability to hold the interest of your audience. You can highlight and circle items on your computer screen. GoToMeeting is priced under $50 per month with a limit of 15 participants in each conference.

GoToMeeting and WebEx are two of the most popular web conferencing solutions available today for the small to mid-size company. Both of these are very easy to use and are quite affordable. They make managing employees much easier and can even help you close sales. Web conferencing increases productivity and helps your company operate more efficiently no matter what its size or number of employees.

Benjamin
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