Getting Started Guide for BrightTALK Channels

Transcription

1 Getting Started Guide for BrightTALK Channels Contents Quick Start to Scheduling a Public Webcast... 2 Preparing a Practice Webcast... 3 Enhancing Your Webcast... 4 Building Engaged Communities... 4 Getting Noticed... 6 Increasing Your BrightTALK Profile... 6 Inviting Your Network... 7 Promoting Your Webcasts... 9 Creating Business Opportunities Becoming Expert... 11

2 Quick Start to Scheduling a Public Webcast 1. Schedule and run your public webcast by selecting a time and date. Use the Schedule a Webcast form to enter a presentation title, description, presenter name and details, duration of the webcast, date and time. You can provide tags to help people find your webcasts and you can confirm the time zone that you are presenting in. 2. Upload your slides as soon as they are ready, but no later than 15 minutes before you go live. It is a best practice to upload a cover slide when you schedule your webcast. The cover slide draws attention to your presentation. You can re-upload your slides at any time UP TO 15 MINUTES BEFORE YOUR EVENT GOES LIVE. Each upload replaces the previous version. 3. Invite your network: a. LINK to your webcast from your website and marketing b. EMBED your webcast in your website or blog c. SHARE your webcast using social networking and bookmarking 4. Dial-in 15 minutes in advance and be sure any guest speakers do too. BrightTALK provides you with two dial-in lines. You can add more people to your presentation using your own conference phone. Be ready 15 minutes early and use the time to prepare for your presentation. 5. We provide useful reminders in the run-up to your webcast and a count-down to your golive time. 6. When it is time to start you will see a large Start Presenting button to press. Start your webcast and welcome your audience. As you present, advance your slides using the buttons at the bottom of the screen. Your audience is listening through their computers, so they cannot talk to you, but they can ask questions by typing them into their screen. Enjoy the presentation and encourage your audience to participate with questions, to provide feedback and to share your presentation.

3 Preparing a Practice Webcast 1. Schedule a practice (private) webcast. You can schedule as many practice webcasts as you like. Practice webcasts do not affect the number of public webcasts you can run each month. During practice webcasts you can invite a limited size audience to take part in your webcast. Your webcast will not be displayed in your channel and so is not visible publically, but otherwise it is the same as a public webcast. Your audience will be able to type questions during your webcast. They can also take part in audience votes. Your slides will work as they do in a live webcast. Your practice is recorded as it takes place and is made available for your review immediately after you finish. 2. Prepare your presentation. A webcast is just like any presentation. You need to be well prepared. You need to know your story and develop a good flow with a beginning, middle and end to your webcast. We have presented some ideas on getting ready in this webcast by one of our team members. 3. Upload yours slides as soon as they are ready, but no later than 15 minutes prior to go. It is a best practice to upload a cover slide when you schedule your webcast. The cover slide draws attention to your webcast. You can re-upload your slides at any time UP TO 15 MINUTES BEFORE YOUR EVENT GOES LIVE. Each upload replaces the previous version. 4. Create audience votes. Polls are a great way to link together content in your webcasts and to engage your audience in a dialogue. We recommend launching a poll at the beginning of a new section, asking the audience to participate and then reviewing the results as you finish your topic. The vote acts as the connection between your topics and between you and your audience. 5. Practice your introduction and ending. The first few sentences are the most important but your last few sentences are important too! There are just a few things you want to say up front correctly, especially if you have guest speakers - it s always good to get your speakers' names, jobs and experience clear in your mind before you start. You also want to give the audience your instructions for this webcast, how to participate, how you will do with unanswered questions, how to contact you if they need to and so on. Finish on a strong note by telling your audience what you want them to do after your webcast. You will be surprised how many do it! Lastly, remember to invite them back to your next webcast. 6. Ensure interaction. The audience will be happy to help you create an webcast. By encouraging them to take part, you are improving the quality of the webcast and making it much easier on you the presenter. Encourage the audience to ask questions, take part in votes, provide feedback and ratings and forward the webcast to a friend or colleague.

4 Enhancing Your Webcast 1. Choose a hot topic. This is the time to think like a journalist. What is important to your audience, what are they thinking about right now? If you regularly identify these topics your channel will be a success. Nothing engages an audience like a hot topic. You can measure your success at finding hot topics by the number of people that join your webcast versus the number of questions asked. This ratio is high when the topic is timely, relevant and has an immediate impact on your audience. 2. Prepare a logical flow to your webcast. The best presentations are stories which take people along a journey of understanding. Like all good stories you need a beginning, middle and end. Where are you trying to take your audience on this journey? What do you want them to know at the end of the webcast that they did not at the beginning? What is the best way to get them there? This is the art of telling a good story. 3. Integrate your audience votes into your webcast. Audience votes are a tool to further engage with your audience. Votes work best when they are weaved into the story you are telling. Try to avoid awkward pauses while running votes. Launch your vote and continue your talk. Your audience can listen to you and vote at the same time, in fact they prefer it. It keeps their level of engagement high and is a useful antidote to other things that can distract them. 4. Include photos of your speaker in your slides and provide a speaker biography in the details section. Help your audience establish a relationship with your presenter(s). Photos allow the audience to connect with the speaker(s).you can use the details section of your webcast to provide information on the background of your presenter(s) too. Building Engaged Communities 1. Always maintain a list of upcoming webcasts. We have found that channels with the most subscribers also run the most webcasts, see the chart below. Successful channels attract more people and become increasingly popular. You can learn more from our webcasting statistics in this webcast featured in the BrightTALK Online Academy: BrightTALK Online Event Insights.

5 2. Run regular and frequent webcasts. Running a webcast at the same time each week or each month helps your subscribers to know when to connect with you. It becomes a habit for them to set aside an hour at a specified time each week to listen to your channel. This consistency helps you build your community. 3. Make it easy on yourself to create content a. Invite guest speakers (peers, customers, thought leaders). Once you have your channel established you may choose to invite guest speakers. Invite speakers that have knowledge around one of your identified hot topics of interest to your audience and who would be willing to present to reach them. Remember to ask your guest speakers to invite their network too. Their networks will help build your community. b. Interviews can often be based on a quick introduction to a topic and then four or five questions discussed between a host and one, two or three other presenters. It can help for the speakers to meet before the webcast to discuss the topic and agree on the questions. Otherwise there is not much preparation work to do. c. Reuse content: Repeating a topic with a different title and a slightly different angle is very acceptable. Once you have a good presentation, don t be afraid to reuse it within moderation. 4. Mix up the style of your webcasts. Using a variety of webcast styles keeps the attention of your and makes the webcast more interesting.

6 Getting Noticed 1. Schedule your webcasts several weeks in advance. It helps build your audience when you schedule your webcasts well in advance. There is no limit to how far ahead you can book your webcasts and we recommend booking up to three months out. As your audience gets familiar with your content they become more inclined to register to attend the upcoming webcasts. Having several future webcasts for them to register takes full advantage of this motivation. 2. Upload a cover slide when you schedule your webcast. The slide thumbnail is shown in your events channel and on the BrightTALK website. It is a strong visual reference for your audience. You will get more sign-ups just by having this thumbnail in place. You do not need to upload your whole slide deck, just upload one cover slide and you will have the thumbnail. Nearer the time for your scheduled webcast you can upload the full set of slides and replace the cover slide that you previously uploaded. 3. Be clever with the design of your cover slide. Remember that the slide thumbnail is the size of a postage stamp. Text is difficult to read, but images and logos can stand out very well. 4. Be smart about the title of your presentation. You are trying to capture attention so it is time to think like a headlines editor. A little sensationalism doesn t hurt, such as the death of..., or easy to understand to titles, such as top ten tips on...,...101, X versus Y. Have some fun with the titles and be creative to capture the interest of your audience. 5. Use every opportunity to promote upcoming and previous webcasts. As well as having the webcasts available for registration in your channel you can also promote upcoming and previous webcasts in your s, at the beginning and end-of-webcasts, in your social network sites and anywhere else you and your partners are marketing. 6. Encourage your audience to use the share features. Probably the biggest opportunity to build your engaged community is to get your audience actively spreading your message about your webcast. It is very easy for them to do! They just need to select the social networks that they are members of in the "Share This" tab on the webcast player and their communities with be informed with one click. All you need to do is remind them to share your webcast and your audience will grow. Increasing Your BrightTALK Profile 1. Schedule multiple upcoming webcasts and your channel will feature high in the channels tab. The BrightTALK site is designed to reward best practices and keeping your channel full with upcoming webcasts is one way to be noticed. When browsing the site more people search by channels to find interesting content than any other way. View other BrightTALK channels.

7 2. Suggest a topic for a BrightTALK Summit. BrightTALK organizes a number of summits on topical subjects. If you want to suggest a topic or speak at a summit, our event organizing team will include you or your topic providing it can be accommodated in the upcoming summit program. Request a speaking invite to an upcoming Summit. 3. Add keyword tags and get found when people search the site. Tagging your content helps people find it when they use the search function on BrightTALK. And, more importantly, it also helps Google and other search engines categorize your webcast and make it available through natural search rankings. 4. Work hard for your audience and get good ratings. BrightTALK audiences watch the top rated content. Establishing a good rating helps your webcast get viewed more frequently. Prompt your live audience to rate your webcast and you will get many more ratings than if you forget to prompt them. Live ratings are usually better ratings, because the live audience is more engaged than the on-demand audience. See the top rated events. 5. Get a lot of viewings. Easier said than done, but the most watched webcasts get watched more! Sometimes it is worth the extra effort to promote an important webcast as it can really help build your community. See the top viewed on-demand events. 6. Get more subscribers than anyone else! The BrightTALK audience also look at the channels with the most subscribers so building your subscriber base continues to draw more and more people to your channel. See the top rated channels. Inviting Your Network 1. , , . A direct inviting your customers or target customers to attend your webcast is the most successful technique to attract an audience. Building your database, developing your templates, perfecting the timing of sending s and mastering the techniques of personalization will all help improve the chances of your s delivering your audience. You can learn some more useful tips from this webcast by two leading industry experts from Netprospex and Pinpointe.

8 2. Share your embed code / links with associations, partners, customers, bloggers. In the "Invite Your Network" section, available when you are managing your webcasts, there are some invaluable tools to help you build your audience. You are provided with the link to your webcast, which you can use in your invitations. You are also given the embed code, so that you can add your channel to your website and provide it to any partners, customers, bloggers or media site that have agreed to host your webcast. 3. Social media bookmarking (LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.). At the bottom of the "Invite Your Network" section we provide some tools for advertising your webcasts using social media and bookmarking sites. We recommend joining relevant groups on LinkedIn and informing them of your upcoming webcasts. Also try the wide range of sites available through the "Share This" icon.

9 4. Ask your guest speakers to invite their network. Another great technique for building your number of subscribers is to invite guest speakers to your channel and ask them to invite their network. 5. Use your company s intranet and newsletter. Our final tip in this section may be the biggest one if you are part of a large corporation. Using an Intranet or internal to include your colleagues in your webcasts program has proven to be very effective. Promoting Your Webcasts 1. Press releases and PR to accompany your webcasts. Traditional press releases and PR can help build your audience, but also provide a broader awareness beyond the one webcast you might be promoting. Twitter is an excellent tool for announcing your upcoming webcasts and also for encouraging discussion on your webcast during the live event. If you would like to learn more about how to use Twitter you can listen to a webcast by Rodney Rumford, author of Twitter as a Business Tool: 2. Run contests and provide incentives. We have also seen contests and give-aways act as an interesting incentive so be creative. 3. Set up RSS feeds of your content for ongoing promotion. You can find an RSS feed for your channel in the Promotion tab.

10 4. Advertise with trade media, social media and search engines. If you have the budget, advertising can be very effective. Trade media reliably provide the most focused audience acquisition opportunities, but are often the most expensive. Search engine effectiveness and costs vary depending on the community you are trying to reach. Facebook provides a great tool for narrowing your advertising target, assuming your target audience uses Facebook. Creating Business Opportunities 1. Check your reports regularly and understand your most engaged users to assess your best business opportunities. Review results for each webcast and for your channel through your channel management area. Your reports allow you to review the activity of individual subscribers across multiple webcasts or to review the results of a specific webcast. For each webcast you can find out who registered to attend, who attended, how long they watched, how many times they attended, what votes they took part in or what questions were asked. Over a series of webcasts you are able to establish who your most engaged audience members are and you should consider asking your sales team to talk with them. 2. Ensure that sales call your most engaged audience members. The key to capturing the value you are creating through your webcasting channel is to have your sales team follow up reliably with new audience members and check in with your most frequent viewers on a regular basis. People who have taken the time to participate in your webcasts are highly engaged in your area of expertise and will most likely be receptive to your call. 3. Download reports (BrightTALK Premium and Enterprise Channels only) and integrate the results into your sales management systems. To help your sales team follow up on the opportunities your channel creates we recommend adding these leads to your existing CRM system. If you have many viewers we recommend sorting your subscribers by their level of engagement. You can organize the number of minutes viewed and the number of viewings to gauge who is most active. If you put this information into your sales management system you can improve sales conversion rates.

11 4. Create additional channels targeted at specific communities. If you are doing a lot of webcasting and building a big community we recommend creating multiple channels, each focused on a specific audience and their needs. The more targeted the subject matter, the more accurately your channel will fit the specific interests of your audience. Becoming Expert 1. Develop compelling slide artwork. Your slides are a representation of your company or brand. If you are doing multiple webcasts we recommend employing a designer to develop your unique look. Remember that your cover slide will be a key feature for attracting your audience and is visible in your channel. 2. Find your presentation style experiment with new styles until you are comfortable. Read the feedback that your audience provide. Sometimes they can be brutally honest (and even a little rude!), but pay attention to their complaints and it will significantly improve your performance. a. Speed of delivery is often faster than a physical conference We see a lot of feedback about the speed of presentations, mostly too slow and sometimes too fast either way getting the right pace of delivery is important to your audience. b. Humor: We find that there is a strong connection between presenters who manage to relax and be humorous with receiving positive feedback from the audience. c. Use votes as transitions between subjects. One of the hardest areas to get right, but making votes a seamless part of your webcast is a sign of a true professional. 3. Have existing questions to kick-start the Q&A. There is often a pause at the end of the presentation while a presenter waits for the first few questions to come in. We see the best speakers drumming up questions throughout the presentation or having their own pre-defined questions to get the Q&A session rolling. Once an audience get going with their questions there can be no stopping them, so leave enough time for the Q&A. 4. Keep questions rolling in by building on each question develop a conversation. The best Q&A sessions build on the first question answered, almost like telling a story, one question leads to another and so on. If you already answered a question there is no need to answer it again just because it was asked by a different person. Find a way to tackle the topic and credit a number of people at the same time. 5. Know your audience and use your customer insight to develop topics you are speaking about. Use your votes to test the subject matter for upcoming webcasts. We ve found that renaming a topic can take it from being the least popular to the most popular subject, so be prepared to experiment with titles. Use your audience to ratify the topics of interest.

12 6. Promote, promote, promote especially if you have a BrightTALK Premium or Enterprise Channel. is the most effective tool we know for building your audience and we encourage you to develop your templates to professionally communicate the quality of your webcast program. The social media tools available with your channel provide over 50 free ways to promote your channel. You can also advertise your webcasts and build an audience through an awareness campaign.