The Ever Popular Webinar

I've passed the three Webinar invitations per day threshold and the trend doesn't seem to be slowing down. Everyone wants an hour of my time. They all promise to answer the toughest questions and provide valuable insight that will change my business. Too often, the change they have in mind involves cutting them a check every month and the information consists of their accounts receivable mailing address.

Enough. There must be some accountability here. People will not continue to stand by while vendors line them up for hour-long sales pitches. Here are some tips for managing expectations better with this Web 2.0 tool.

1) Set webinar goals in terms of the attendee, not the host. It's not about you getting 50 qualified leads (at least it's not only about that), it's about attendees walking away better informed about something than they were when they got there.

2) Don't turn the webinar into a product demo unless the attendees have signed up for a product demo. If you promise to talk about industry trends, you better lay them out.

3) Quit wasting an hour of our time. Who has an hour to spend on a webinar? If the attendee has that much time on his hands, he's not making any money. Cut them down to 30 minutes, max.

4) If you promise attendees will get a free white paper or other informational product, make it easy for them to get it. Luring them in and then making them complete the Mackay 66 before you give them the link is not cool.

5) Don't let untrained executives run the webinar. Hire someone who can get the program moving and keep it moving. It does not serve the host well to have attendees hang up the phone and sigh in relief. You want them to leave the meeting wishing they had more time.

Is this to say that the host can't have any goals for the webinar? Of course not, but they are secondary to the goals and needs of the attendees or you will get people in the doors once and only once. In my next post, I'll talk about how to make webinars pay dividends for the company that hosts them.

Apple preloads company content

Apple is making an appeal directly to corporate communications and marketing departments by making it's iPod line of portable music and video players available with pre-loaded company content. Smart.

We've been doing that for some time because giving away an iPod is a great attention-grabbing tactic. Preloading it with your company sales message is just the extension of a good idea.

Keeping the Team on the Same Page

One of the great uses of new media is keeping everyone inside the organization on the same page. I have seen so many companies with great product offerings and a willing market fall down because the whole team couldn't pull together.

One team that does a great job of this is Oklahoma City-based a la mode. I was out at their annual users conference in Las Vegas recently and was really impressed with the way all of the folks I podcasted with seemed to be on the same page related to the a la mode Labs initiative and its overall mission. So I asked Communication's Director Matt Barr how it was done.

"There's no trick to it. It all comes down to Dave's leadership. Many owners and corporate officers are good at communicating; leadership is communicating what you believe and believing what you communicate," Matt said.

He's right about that. I listened to a la mode's founder and owner Dave Biggers talk to his customers for three days. His message never changed and he was passionate about what his team was doing the whole time.

Matt went on, "Adam [Calvery] and Chris [Low] hear what Dave says about the company and the Labs and then the Lab Fellows hear from Adam and Chris what they'd hear if Dave told them himself. This, incidentally, is where you would start if you ever explored the reasons behind a la mode's phenomenal success as a company over the last 22 years."

Nice plug, Matt. But he's got a point. Leaders have to use every tool available to get everyone in their organization on the same page and pulling in the same direction. I was proud to be chosen by the company to produce some podcasts to serve that end. But the best tools are probably passion and consistency. They are being employed here to good benefit.

The Chivas life includes video blogging

These were the folks who first took advantage of pervasive e-mail by sending us those little comics. Now, they have fully embraced the video podcast. Some nice work here. Check it out.

http://thisisthelife.msn.com/

Podcasting at a la mode's annual convention

I'm in Vegas this week for the a la mode Annual Users Conference. The company estimates that close to 1,000 attendees will visit the event for at least one of its three days. I'm on the blogging team for the event. You can find the convention blog here.

Later today, I'll be podcasting with the company's Lab Fellows. These forward-thinking residential real estate appraisers are part of an inititative the company hopes will put better technology in the hands of the nation's only independent auditors of the real estate transaction. The podcasts will end up on the Labs website.

a la mode is one of an increasing number of companies that is realizing that you must make these stories available in a variety of media. The blog, podcasts and the Lab-focused live sessions at the event are all aimed at disseminating a story that is critical to the success of the firm's marketing efforts.

Talking New Media at MBA Secondary

I made it into New York City for the Mortgage Bankers Association's Secondary Market show a couple of weeks back. I love conventions because it allows me to catch up with all of the folks I've been writing about for years.

I spent some time at the Avista Solutions booth visiting with Ken Ellis. He's been reading the blog and wondered what I thought of Webinars as opposed to podcasts.

I never liked being told when to appear online or on a conference call to receive the same news everyone else was getting by someone who either didn't know what my schedule was or didn't care. Most journalists, at least in the financial services trade media, are under very heavy deadline pressure just about all the time. That was surely the case when I worked for Source Media and October Research. It wasn't very nice to hear that if I didn't show up at the appointed time everyone but me would get the news.

But, as Ken pointed out, companies need to know who is looking at their content if they hope to capitalize on the sales leads that content is intended to deliver. That's true enough.

You can tell who is present on a Webinar, especially if you force people to pre-register. If you just put content out there for free, anyone can pick it up and it's very difficult to track. Making people cough up a bunch of information before you send them to the download page is a sure way to annoy them.

So what's the answer? You have to use a combination of free content--designed to unlock the three golden doors that lead to sales, 1) show them you understand their problem, 2) show them you are smart enough to solve their problem and 3) show them you care about helping them solve their problem--and more secure content designed to deliver the qualified sales lead.

Ken was kind enough to point out a good example:

I think SalesPOP! does an exceptional job of presenting this on their website. They offer podcasts requiring no information, but if you want to hear the longer Webinar there is a form that is required. Their website is www.salespop.biz\home.htm.

By way of disclosure, neither Ken nor I do any business with this company, nor are we affiliated with it, but Ken admits that he knows a SalesPOP founder, Craig Pyne, a previous coworker. Check out the site and think about how you can leverage this idea.

Blogging for Business

I'm getting more calls from business executives who are interested in finding out more about blogging. In the past, these queries were generally limited to go/no go information intended to help companies make the decision whether to move forward with their investigation of the medium or to abandon it until later.

More recently, I'm getting calls from business leaders who have already decided to move forward with a blog and are now interested in finding out how to do it. I'll be outlining some of the advice I generally give in this space, but I'm far from the only one you should be listening to.

I just downloaded an eBook from Yaro Starak, a self-style blog guru who helps others profit from their blogs. He seems to work primarily with individuals who already have a blog and want to turn it into a day job. The more I read his electronic newsletter, the more I like what he has to say. I'll read his book and review it later in this space. You can find out more about Yaro on his website.

Keep watching this blog and I'll tell you about other folks who have a good understanding of business blogging and might be able to help you with your own.

Fred Thomson to use New Media in bid for White House

According to a story on Tennessean.com, former Congressman and actor Fred Thompson will enter the race for the Republican nomination for President. In the story, he admits he won't be able to drive his truck across the country as he drove across Tennessee in his successful 1994 run for office. This time, he says, he'll be using the Internet.

Thompson plans to use blogs, video blogs "to cut through the clutter and go directly to the people."

This could pose a serious threat to other Republican candidates who don't plan to use New Media, don't know how to leverage it properly or can't attract a Web-based audience interested in hearing what they say. As an established actor, most recently appearing on the highly successful NBC Law & Order program, Thompson has already proven he can attract an audience.

Spreading the good word...about stories

Communications technology is worthless if you don't have a good story to tell. I don't care how well you understand RSS or Web 2.0 or New Media, if you can't get your listener engaged, you may as well go back to a string and tin cans for all the good it will do you.

But don't take my word for it. If you want to learn from someone who lives or dies by getting people to listen to them, tune in to a preacher. I recently found this great post. Notice rule 5:

"Tell stories. People will tune out unless you engage their emotions."

Now if that's good advice for someone preaching from the pulpit, and I'm sure it is, how much moreso is it for us in the world of business communications?

People don't file into our offices or store fronts once a week to sit down in front of us and try to pay attention for an hour (but wouldn't that be nice!). We have fleeting moments to get their attention, engage them and start forging a relationship.

There is only one way to be successful at that. You gotta tell stories.

How simple is Real Simple Syndication?

Too simple, apparently, at least according to opponents of a new service called SplashCast. As outlined in this post on the Podcasting News Blog (which I highly recommend -- though I am not paid or otherwise rewarded for saying so), the service lets users set up their own podcast channels and share them via RSS (Real Simple Syndication).

The problem is that in doing so, the service reportedly mangles the original RSS feed somewhat, making it more difficult for podcast producers to track listeners for advertising purposes. There is also some question about how well the links back to the producer's site work after the feed is "Splashed" and recast.

Not sure how this will work out yet. I doubt it will result in everyone filing suit a la YouTube, as most podcast producers don't have that kind of money and extra lawyers milling about. But they do have audience and can make life hard on this newcomer.

Which, I guess, is another example of the circle of life. Podcasters had it tough in the early days, but they bulled their way through in typical high-tech entrepreneurial fashion. They overcame the obstacles and created an audience. Now, they're into the monetization phase. But wait, someone is stepping in with a new way to distribute their content and suddenly it's not about The Man getting hot because you're spinning your old 45 collection on your podcast anymore. Now, it's personal. Everyone move up one seat and the game begins again.

Fortunately, we don't have to worry about all that in the B2B space. It was never about social media with us. It was always about building a brand and capitalizing on it in the marketplace. Most B2B podcasts aren't currently being used to close sales. They are door openers. They are non-threatening ways to get prospects educated so that the sales process goes more smoothly. We like it when someone steals our content and takes it to a greater market, giving us the shivers that come with an attack of viral marketing. We like companies like SplashCast that make it easier for our target markets to hear our voices and want to seek us out.

Does that make us socially conscious dot-com good-niks? Naw, just good marketing folk.

Is Podcasting like DTP?

An interesting post I found today on Brad Grier's blog is worth checking out. He compares the podcasting wave to the phenomenon we witnessed after the introduction of affordable Desktop Publishing software back in the 80s.

I posted a reply you'll find on his site.

Podcasts are not Audio Brochures

Marketing folk are starting to get the idea that podcasts can be effecting tools for getting the story out about company products and services. They are marching down this path in exactly the same way the major auto manufacturers did over two years ago.

A top-three auto maker was among the first to try out the new podcast format. Instead of letting an executive (or better, a design engineer) wax poetically about the passion built into the new year's model, the company stripped the audio stream out of a webcast and published it as a podcast. Not only could you not see what the speaker was describing, it was exactly the kind of brochureware that doomed those webcasts to deliver lackluster results.

A podcast is not a chance to read your company's latest brochure to people who are presumably illiterate. For most of us, especially those of us working in the financial services industry, our customers are very literate, intelligent and discerning. That's why they've adopted new media as a source of information about the products and services they want to buy. They don't need help reading your sales material. They don't need to hear your brand name five times in the first 30 seconds.

What do they need? Good question!

There are three things a podcast listener needs from you before they can make a buy decision:

1) They need to know you are a real person, not some extremely highly paid executive hired to speak buzzwords in an appropriately animated tone. Not that there's anything wrong with being extremely highly paid. Just remember that people do business with people they know and like. If you can't be likable at your pay grade, get someone else to do the podcast.

2) They need to know you know their business. This is the heart of the podcast! This is your chance to connect with prospects by letting them know that you know their pain. They must believe that you really understand their situation if they are to trust you to provide a solution.

3) They need to know that you have a passion for serving them. I fancy myself a decent wordsmith and yet my best work cannot come close to describing the honest commitment a good company feels in regard to serving its customers. A little honesty here can be magnified into an extremely powerful sales tool. Likewise, a standard sales pitch will provide the expected results.

The podcast is your chance to start an honest conversation with your prospects. Conversations are the gateway to relationships, which is the only thing that leads to a sale.

Talking New Media at MBA Tech

Had a great time at the recent Mortgage Bankers Association's Technology in Mortgage Banking show in Tampa. While some argued that the show was rather light on lender attendance, those firms that did their homework ahead of the show seemed to be pretty busy.

For my part, I had a great time catching up with all the folks I've been reporting on over the years. I love these shows for that reason.

On the last day of the show, I got to participate in a panel session on New Media. Fidelity and eLynx spoke about their podcasting experience, Martopia gave a good overview of New Media and the firm's one-to-one video marketing product. I got to speak about leveraging New Media in the B2C space.

If you're interested in my slides, drop me an e-mail.

Talking Web 2.0 at TAVMA

I got the opportunity to speak on a panel on Web 2.0 at the Title/Appraisal Vendor Management Association's annual convention here in Orlando earlier today. I was joined by Raelin Sawka Musuraca, president of Sharp Creative. She's both.

It was a great session. We got to talk about the history of the Web for B2B players, the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, and what it takes to start capitalizing on some of the new tools that available today, including blogs, podcasts, online video, wiki pages, groups, and RSS.

A few of the attendees admitted that their companies were beginning to dip their toes in the water with new blogs, but no one had gone beyond that. No one in the audience was aware of Second Life. But they were interested and eager to learn.

While many of the tools that consumers are enjoying right now probably won't be leveraged on the B2B side anytime soon, plenty of folks in the audience were smiling and nodding, which I take as a good sign that we'll see more New Media activity from these folks soon.

New Media on tap at upcoming conferences

Those of you planning to attend the upcoming TAVMA convention in Orlando or the Mortgage Bankers Association's Technology in Mortgage Banking show in Tampa, will have the opportunity to hear more about these new media tools and how they are being used in our industry today.

I'll be on a panel at both shows, talking about how these tools can be leveraged and why financial services industry players should be learning how to use them now.

Don't impersonate your customers

It's not legal for a consumer to pretend to represent a company if he doesn't. Does it make any sense for marketing executives to impersonate customers? In a way, that's what advertising has always done. Now that we're leveraging new tools to get company messages across, some of the rules are changing.

In his blog, Communities Dominate Brands, Alan Moore talks about a new law in Europe that will penalize companies that use New Media tools to pretend to be their customers.

In America, we've already seen some high profile blunders caused by companies and public relations firms that thought they could sneak a company spokesperson into a blog or podcast without telling their audience.

It's one thing to put a smiling face in an advertisement and hope that people jump to the conclusion that they'll be smiling too if they only buy the company's product. Don't try that with a blog or podcast. The results will not be satisfying.

Inman features the bubble bloggers

Inman is running an interesting series on real estate bloggers who have chosen to write about real estate bubbles.

I think these business bloggers have been successful because they are writing at the intersection of the real estate business and the general public's information focus. People have been trained by the mainstream media to accept a real estate bubble as an important issue even though very few are real estate speculators and most have yet to see any negative home price appreciation. If you were writing a blog about capital requirements for mortgage bankers, you wouldn't get this kind of readership.

While this is a good way to use New Media to make a name for yourself, bubble your site to the top of the search engine listings and engage an audience you hope to sell to, it's gotta be tough for a real estate agent to make a lot of money telling people that the market is going to implode.

I like hearing these stories because it helps get the message across to business that these tools can be useful. When we read stories about bloggers attracting huge audiences, it helps marketing executives take blogs more seriously, because they've been trained to look for big numbers when it comes to media impressions.

In truth, it doesn't matter how big your market is if your product has a high enough margin and you can engage that audience effectively. I know mortgage loan origination vendors that can earn millions on a single implementation. Do they need to attract a blog audience big enough to get on the cover of an industry trade publication? Nope. They can be blissfully ignored as they use their blogs to move their customers swiftly through the sales cycle to the close.

Social Media by the numbers

Social Media. Need a quick look at the numbers? Check out this blog post and see why it's important that you get a handle on this stuff.

MediaToob goes straight to the phones

And now we have another easy way to deliver podcast audio and video content directly to mobile phones. If you think iPods are great, the handheld phone/MP3 player/PDA/God-knows-what-else is going to be really great.

Get this podcasting stuff down. All of our content will come to us like this in the future.

Inman: Into the wiki space

I've got to hand it to Brad Inman and his Inman News company. These guys really get out and try new things.

They were the first trade publication to host a group blog and featured some of the top thinkers in the industry. It faded away as these folks got busy, lack of effective moderation failed to keep the thinkers on track and, presumably, the link between writing and reward stretched thin, but for a while it was a very good read.

Inman still hosts its blog, though these days it's mostly written by Inman reporters. Still, I often find it very interesting and have pointed to it in my own blogs more than once.

Now, Inman is trying something new. Well, new for us anyway. Wiki pages have been around for some time, with Wikipedia being the best known example. The basic idea is that you give a bunch of folks the ability to edit the Web page and a much better (or informative or interesting or even weird) page will result. Inman's new wiki page is online now and I can't wait to see how it develops.

New Media demands innovation from those who hope to benefit from the advantages it offers. Inman, as you probably know, offers its own industry innovation awards every year. This is another perfect example of the company taking its own medicine. Well done!