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Promoting your Virtual Event to Increase your Audience
Posted by BeaconLive, March 12, 2012 10:43 am
At BeaconLive, we received requests from our customers for ways to increase the attendance during their webinar or webcast. While each of our customers host webinars with different content and audiences with varying interests, we often cannot provide a definitive …
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Posted by BeaconLive, March 5, 2012 10:05 am
The BeaconLive office have been busy working on increasing our own brand awareness, as well as providing our customers the opportunities to increase their own brand awareness during their webinar and webcasts. We like to say, our goal is not …
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Posted by BeaconLive, October 19, 2011 10:16 am
4+ Alternatives to PowerPoint Let’s face it: no matter how many offices move over to Mac, Microsoft Office products are superior to all other alternatives in the market. However, occasionally we need to test our loyalties in order to reassure …
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15 Rules of Presentation Engagement
Posted by BeaconLive, October 12, 2011 11:01 am
Your presentation is not your book, your company or your service. Don’t sell when your audience is already there. They may have already paid to attend, purchased the book or use your service. They are attending your presentation to see …
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Customer Testimonial : Dee Shephard
Posted by BeaconLive, September 29, 2011 11:04 am
Customer Testimonial : Dee Shepherd, Director to CLE Programs, The Missouri Bar What was your introduction to webinars? The Missouri Bar participated in some free webinars in marketing and meeting management, and saw the potential as a delivery method to provide continuing …
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A Beacon Book Review : The Whuffie Factor
Posted by BeaconLive, September 13, 2011 1:27 pm
I came upon The Whuffie Factor almost by accident when browsing through the business section of a now defunct Borders store. The title itself nearly turned me off the purchase, (Whuffie? What? What would people think seeing me reading this …
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Customer Testimonial : Mark Alpert
Posted by BeaconLive, September 1, 2011 12:42 pm
What was your introduction to webinars? I had been participating in webinars for years prior to joining Pegasus Communications in 2009. We used webinars internally to train engineers and technicians spread across North America. Over time we expanded our webinars …
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Cubicle Life: My Cubicle Is Killing Me…Literally.
Posted by BeaconLive, August 22, 2011 7:18 pm
In the working world, there are good days and there are bad days. Some days, you are on top of your work, you are productive, and you genuinely enjoy the work you are doing. Other days, everything may seem to …
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Posted by BeaconLive, August 22, 2011 7:17 pm
With over 20 years of virtual conferencing experience, the BeaconLive team has taken the time to perfect every detail necessary for the flawless delivery of your content. Always ahead of the curve, the Beacon team imagines, invents and implements new …
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Do Your QR Codes have a built in Lifespan?
Posted by BeaconLive, August 17, 2011 7:20 pm
Recently, we created three QR Codes to use for two tradeshows that we would be attending within a two-week span. The first would be placed on a postcard to be mailed to the attendees inviting them to a networking happy …
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I feel I must first introduce Whuffie, to get beyond the blockade that likely stands between a person in need and a person who has major whuffie (Not that any of you would judge a book by its cover, or title). Whuffie is merely your reputation, your currency and your personal bankability in the business and social media world. A name which takes its roots from science fiction theory (read more about that here), is a little less silly, as it is to say it (Hey, Google, Yahoo and Twitter once sounded weird before becoming a part of our everyday vocabulary). We all live on our reputation. When we offer advice at a tradeshow, it is our Whuffie that allows our conversation participant to determine our value and credibility. When we sell a service, its our word that determines our worth.
Besides the extremely useful social marketing tips taken from this book, I also found myself engrossed in the case studies weaved throughout the chapters which describe the challenges that companies faced and how they found solutions by using various social networking tools. The case studies are truly what motivate the reader, and marketer, to search for innovative ways (as well as implementing blaringly obvious ones) to look at their customers and decide how to engage them rather than speak at them and hope for the best. It’s a rather obvious technique that we already instinctively know, but many of us ignore, as we continually don’t find our customers accepting our social proposal of engagement. The Whuffie Factor takes on the subject well, offering varying suggestions to reattempt the conversation.
In this book, you will learn the correct ways of joining the social community that your customers are in, ways to create amazing customer experience (through trial and error examples), and ways to market your product or service in an arena where people seek what you have to say. The whole book is extremely readable – just be prepared with a notepad for taking notes.
While most marketing books are old news by the time they are published, The Whuffie Factor does an excellent job of staying relevant by offering more than a description of social networking sites, but teaches us how to engage with our customers through a standard social media medium. The Whuffie Factor was published in 2009 (3 years ago!) in a fast moving industry where if you aren’t the biggest thing, you hardly deem to exist, but still manages to be a reliable source for how to use social media effectively for your business (just ignore the section where they introduce that new micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters- you already know that part). I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in using social media for their business, small or large, but needs to know where to start. This book is also a great read for all the social media experts out there who assume they know how to engage their customers, because, its can’t hurt to learn a little bit more.
Update: While I did purchase The Whuffie Factor at Borders, the two copies that I purchased for my small business owner friends were titled The Power of Social Networking: Using the Whuffie Factor to Build your Business. It seems, I wasn’t the only one potentially scared off by the Whuffie title, as the second editions name was changed.
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In the working world, there are good days and there are bad days. Some days, you are on top of your work, you are productive, and you genuinely enjoy the work you are doing. Other days, everything may seem to be going wrong and you can’t seem to find any joy in your work. You roll out of bed 20 minutes behind your normal morning schedule, you hit an hour of traffic during your commute to work, and your local Starbucks somehow runs out of espresso for your morning latte. At this point, the last place you want to spend the next 8 hours of your day is confined within a 6’x6’ box.
However, what you may not realize is that you are 100% justified in this desire. Though you may begin to protest that you feel as though your cubicle is draining the mere life out of you, there is some grain of truth to your complaints. Sufficient research has been conducted to reveal a correlation between your life span and the effect your cubicle is taking on your livelihood – specifically, sitting is a lot worse for you than you may think. According to a recent Infographic posted by Mashable.com, sitting at a desk all day can actually increase your risk for cardiovascular diseases and other fatal conditions. With this recent research, it’s no wonder why employees in these positions are pushing to implement standing desks in their workplace. Although standing is not as comfortable than sitting, it may just save your life.
Though you may have already given your cubicle a facelift after reading the first installment in this series, those changes won’t necessarily get you out of your chair and onto your feet. To combat against sitting-related health concerns, here are some tips for those cube dwellers who feel restless and restricted in their small work areas. And even though these suggestions may seem trivial, remember: your life (and productivity) may depend on them!
Even in the most hectic times at work, there is always time to move around. If your body is tired, your mind must be tired too. Staring at a computer screen all day will inevitably cause your mind to run off track and turn your brain to mush. If you’re feeling as though projects and ideas are running together, you owe it to your mind and your body to take a quick break because:
Do you have stairs in your building? Although the elevator can seem particularly convenient when you stroll into work 20 minutes late, the small bit of exercise you get from walking up a few flights of stairs can be the boost your body needs to wake up in the morning (and also, to stay awake throughout the day). Now, I am not preaching for everyone to completely denounce the use of elevators. I understand that someone who works on the 60th floor of the John Hancock Tower is undeniably going to be a little apprehensive to take the stairs every morning. However, if you are someone who works in a small office space with only 5 floors, taking the stairs will give you that extra bit of exercise each day to help combat the effects of a “sitting” job.
If you do work in a fancy, 30+-story office building in the heart of Boston, there are other ways to keep your body active. Remember, emailing is not the only form of communication in the workplace. While it may seem convenient to send a colleague an email about a project you are working on, there may be times where a quick trip down the hall can be a more efficient use of your time and can also be beneficial to your health. If it is a simple question or a quick thought (something that doesn’t need to be recorded into an email for future recollection), take a walk and ask that person verbally. The trip will exercise your body and stimulate your muscles, and the human interaction will awaken your mind and increase alertness. Once you return to your desk, you can approach your work again with a refreshed body and mind.
You would never think that your body and muscle movement play such an important role in workplace productivity. Engaging your whole body will effectively engage your mind, allowing you to stay invested in your work and generate better quality thoughts throughout the day. Also remember that cubicle décor can also affect your work ethic in a positive way – check out the first blog in this series, “Turning Your Cubicle Into A Home-icle,” and send us your before-and-after photos. Check up on our Twitter page to see other readers’ ideas as well as the improvements the BeaconLive team has made to their cubes (coming soon!).
[post_title] => Cubicle Life: My Cubicle Is Killing Me…Literally.
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With over 20 years of virtual conferencing experience, the BeaconLive team has taken the time to perfect every detail necessary for the flawless delivery of your content. Always ahead of the curve, the Beacon team imagines, invents and implements new ways to streamline the delivery process. In the next chapter of BeaconLive, we are concentrating our efforts on building original services into BeaconLiveWEB for the Continuing Education Industries to test and verify their content delivery to their audience.
Behind the closed doors of BeaconLive, the engineers work hard to develop original services to suit our customer and industry needs. While they stick to the developing chamber, we’d like to give you a quick glimpse at what goes on in front of those closed doors. Better than most, we know that webinars are a modern technology that many of our customers couldn’t imagine not having at their fingertips. To coincide with the contemporary technology that BeaconLive provides, we recognize that our appearance needs to step into the twenty-teens. While our customers might remain loyal to our extensive portfolio of services regardless of the aestheticism of our website, we realize that our old branding might not accurately represent our position as a leader in content delivery and may not grab the full attention of both current and prospective clients. A new look and feel is necessary. However, the reason for the rebranding is not only to compete with the larger webinar vendors for the consideration of future prospects, but also to convert Beaconlive.com into an online events resource center for anyone interested in hosting webinars, webcasts or discovering tips and trends in promoting their online events.
For the last six months, the whole Beacon Team has provided feedback on how they believe BeaconLive should be represented. Modern and clean to match our streamlined web room. Simplistic and intuitive for those who visit us from their smartphones. Trendy and informative for those looking for a place to find marketing tips. We provided all of these synonyms and ideas to our web designers and held our breath while they worked their magic with our important content. Thousands of emails, logo revisions, and page edits later, we all finally agreed on a look that would represent BeaconLive’s future, while holding onto an image that brought us to where we currently stand in the industry. We’re all very excited to launch the new BeaconLive.com, but we have a few more minor tweaks, tests and tweets to complete before the new branding goes live.
While most of the content on our site will be immediately available on the new BeaconLive.com, we ask for your patience while we continue to edit and tweak the new site to perfection over the next few weeks. Please check back often to find the new gems that we will be launching along with the newly branded site.
Follow along with as we launch the new BeaconLive Brand. Follow us on Twitter or watch for our hashtag#BeaconReloaded to continually find more new stuff with BeaconLive.
[post_title] => A New BeaconLive is coming
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[post_content] => 
Recently, we created three QR Codes to use for two tradeshows that we would be attending within a two-week span. The first would be placed on a postcard to be mailed to the attendees inviting them to a networking happy hour. The second code would placed on signage in the booth that, when scanned, would direct the attendee to a landing page that collected their info to be entered into a raffle. The last code would go into an email newsletter to direct the scanner to a different raffle for a different conference.
Here’s what we learned…
1. Its easy to get those things mixed up! Make sure each landing page is different for each QR Code. Even if YOU take the time to read the title of the page, the person scanning may not, resulting in them not entering their name the second time.
2. Sure, we’re marketing enthusiasts, and we like to stay on top of the latest trends. When we first saw QR codes, we quickly downloaded the app and scanned everything in sight, making mental lists of every possible location to place a code. But again, we’re marketers and that’s our job. At the first conference we attended with our QR codes, we were surrounded by extremely intelligent people, but they spend more time concentrating on their own professional content than what’s new in the marketing industry. Many of them didn’t know what a QR code was, didn’t have the Reader App, or didn’t even have a smart phone to scan the code. Luckily, we came prepared with our own smart phones-each of the marketing team members scanned and scanned away at the same QR code, and passed our phones over to the attendee to submit their contact info (the attendees ate up this new trend, and thanked us for teaching them to use it). This quick fix allotted us more time with the conference attendee, and also placed us as marketing experts in their minds because we taught them something new, useful and intriguing. Now, each time they see the code on their credit card bill, at the grocery store or in the newspaper, they will think of us as the ones who introduced the trend in their minds.
3. Once that raffle was over, the QR code (and its signage) was ready to be buried in a marketing cemetery. It doesn’t matter that the cost to design and print the signage was significant for an eight-hour event, the destination of the QR code was branded with the raffle information for that particular conference. Although successful in its prime, that QR code has since been buried 6 feet under. In the future, we might use a generic URL, allowing us to change the landing page content, and repurposing the QR code (and signage).
4. We directed each landing page submission for the raffle and happy hour event to our emails, and quickly developed a spreadsheet with the information. However, it quickly became noticeable that these submissions could be mixed up when simultaneously used. (Luckily for us, we had yet to send the email with the third code for the upcoming event, and waited until the current event was over. Too many similar campaigns could cause overload). A happy little accident that we fell upon, without having to face the possible consequences. We learned, while QR codes are a great way to get peoples attention, we should prepare for all possible results.
5. QR codes are a great way to cut down on printing costs. At one conference, an attendee grabbed one of each of our flyers and mentioned that she would scan them and email them to her coworkers. A bell went off in our heads, why not place a QR code on the flyers, and allow the customers to scan them rather than carrying around paperwork. But then what do they do with them? Read the content over their phones? QR codes are made for quickly accessing information while on the move, not for carrying around a lot of content. We suggest placing the QR codes on the marketing flyers, and directing the scanner to a landing pace where they can select which flyers they would like to have emailed to them. This way, they will have the marketing information when they return to their desks, rather than stuck on their phones.
6. We included a QR code for the raffle in our newsletter to the conference attendees, allowing them the opportunity to scan early and enter multiple times. In addition to the code, we provided a link to where the email recipient could download the link to the QR reader application. Of the 64% open rate, 30% of the newsletter recipients clicked on the link to get the app. When using a QR code, get familiar with the best reader apps for smart phones to inform your scanner of which App to download.
7. QR overload IS possible. I recently wrote a blog suggesting ways to use QR codes in your own marketing efforts, but just because there is a way to utilize them, doesn’t mean you should. While at the conference, I suggested to a Mobile App exhibitor to place a QR code on his shirt for the next tradeshow he attends (without a booth). A mobile App company is the perfect example of who could get away with the QR code on their shirts, and gain a lot of attention without appearing gimmicky . However, I wouldn’t recommend printing QR shirts for all companies. Keep in mind who your audience is. If your customers already require a (smart) mobile phone for your product or service, this could be a great way for them access your website. If a cellphone has little to nothing to do with what your company provides, a QR code on a shirt (or in your ads) likely wouldn’t be as effective.
8. While having a smart phone is crucial to scanning a QR code, there are other requirements to consider as well. Be sure that you will have internet access and cell service where you will be placing your code. Try testing the code with blackberry, android and Iphones. Un-scanable codes could mean a missed marketing opportunity.
While each of the QR codes were scanned or clicked a combined total of 300 times, we found different results for each placement of the code. The code on the postcard inviting the attendees to a happy hour received the fewest scans. This, we believe was likely because the audience it was sent to knew little about QR codes, and lacked the code reader on their phone. We also found that the potential scanners were apprehensive about providing their email addresses to potential spammers. However, we found that the attendees who DID scan the code to be very enthusiastic about us using QR codes in our marketing (and for the happy hour).
The second code that was placed next to our booth at the conference, and gained a lot of scans/entries into our raffle, but was greatly successful due to the persuasion of our marketing staff influencing the attendee to scan. This was useful because in the small area, if two people were surrounding the easel with the code, it drew attention of the other attendees. In the end, this was the most successful QR code that we used because it came with a person to introduce the code to the scanner while describe the benefits. We found that the attendee essentially needed their hand held for their first scan.
The final QR code was used in the newsletter to an upcoming conference allowing the attendee to scan early to enter the raffle. We included a link for the attendee to download the QR reader on their smart phone, but didn’t see a large number of them returning to scan the code after clicking the QR reader link. While we had a lot of entries into our raffle, we only had two people at the conference mention that they read the previous email containing the code. Perhaps, placing a QR code in an email newsletter is an extra (unnecessary) step when clicking a link would do the same thing.
So, while we’re all getting comfortable with this latest marketing trend, we should keep in mind that not all possible locations to place a QR code are good locations. Be smart with where and how you use your codes. Always consider the possibilities of people not having a smart phone, or how you will track multiple campaigns. Also, unless you want to spend a lot of money on signage, consider the ways to repurpose your landing page in order to reuse the same code. Best of Luck in the QR world!!
Scan me! You don’t know what you’re missing..
How are you using QR Codes in your marketing efforts?
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[post_content] => At BeaconLive, we received requests from our customers for ways to increase the attendance during their webinar or webcast. While each of our customers host webinars with different content and audiences with varying interests, we often cannot provide a definitive answer of 'how to', but often find ourselves suggesting the same formula for promoting their events to their potential attendees. Use Social Media! You're already connected with your audience (if you're not, find them and follow them!) so let them know about your upcoming event through their chosen medium. If they don’t want to know about it, they can simply ignore your tweet or post, but often times, they are connected with you because this is how they prefer to receive information from you. Social Networking. This idea seems so simple, and yet following through can be more difficult that a simple tweet. The first and most important rule is to make sure you select the social network that your prospective attendees are participating within. Perhaps it is Twitter and LinkedIn, or perhaps their are using a niche social network to connect with colleagues and peers. Do your research to find where they are, and invest your time in that arena.
Beyond finding where your attendees are hanging out online, the general formula for how to use social media to promote your event is similar throughout many fields. Create intrigue to get them to click on your registration link. Use hashtags for your audience to quickly recognize the event and see what others are saying about it. Keep promoting - Don’t assume everyone will see the first tweet when you send it. And mainly, engage with your attendees, if they’ve already registered, tell them you're looking forward to seeing them at the event, or ask them to re-tweet the event to their followers. Also, son’t forget to Tweet us about your event, and we'll reTweet it to our followers. Just add our Twitter handle @BeaconLive (or the the hashtag #BeaconLive) and once we see it, we'll continue your promotional efforts.
Below, is a list of articles and blogs we've found that can help you develop a social media campaign for your next virtual webinar. We've also created a hashtag (#BeaconVirtual) to see what others are saying. Share your ideas, whats worked, what hasn’t, and ideas for future events.
Best of luck, and keep following us @beaconlive for more tips.
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