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What’s really interesting to me about where we are in modern marketing, communications and social media is this:

If you asked the experts what ONE thing to focus on…you’d get dozens of answers.

This is one reason we’re pleased to announce our next big (HUGE) webinar (that we’re doing TWICE), coming up on March 22nd and March 29th (plus you get a copy of our updated e-book).

Social Search Webinar

We don’t want to give away everything – this is a paid webinar and, even though the price is VERY affordable, we HAVE to save some of what we’ll talk about for the day(s) of the event. BUT, in the spirit of whetting your appetite:

1. There is no silver bullet

That’s a given – if there WERE a silver bullet, everyone would have purchased it. (The price of silver would have gone way up, too, supply and demand being what they are.)

But, and back to our point from earlier, there is no one thing experts can agree on when it comes to where to focus. For every one person who says “Google+ is a vast wasteland” there’s someone else who says “it’s from Google, and it allows you to laser-focus on your niche.” And so on, and so forth.

2. Getting Found, Findability, Inbound Marketing, etc., are still vital

Part of the problem here – and we struggle with it, too – is that you could conceivably focus all your time on the SEO basics – and forget why you’re doing it all in the first place.

I know a guy who’s writing a book, and he’s using the traditional publishing route. The opportunity for him is to leverage all of the time he spent as a blogger of note – and turn that into cachet with publishers. And those publishers are sniffing around on the Internet ANYWAY, looking for the next big thing (topic, author, trend) to turn into a publishable book.

SO…this guy has a nice problem to have in that he’s getting found, but he may not be found for the right things for his book project. Hmmm. See the next point:

3. “Integrated” is the word

Content. Convergence. Whatever you want to call it, all this stuff working together is making this the “Integrated” generation. This means you can’t put out a press release and get a billion hits without telling the rest of the company what the heck you’re up to. And so on, and so forth…

So there’s your 1-2-3 sneak peek. Will we see you on the webinar?

Here’s a clever signup button, too. Again, affordable price, tons of value. We’re here to help you get Social and Search for Marketing and Communications just right.

Thanks, TechSoup for Libraries
Think you want to create a Webinar business? Think you can make a living with Webinars?

It’s not as easy as it sounds.

We went down that road here at Area 224 HQ circa 2008. THAT long ago. We started doing webinars, and we will continue to do webinars. We have found ways to make them work for us, but it’s not without a little trial-and-error.

As opposed to doing a FREE WEBINAR to tell you how to do webinars, we thought we’d do a blog post on doing webinars, and leave you to your own devices. Here goes:

1. Don’t do FREE WEBINARS.

Ha! We have stopped doing Free Webinars.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t (to borrow Chris Brogan’s quote) “give out craptons for free.” We still do.

We just don’t give it out on Free Webinars.

Why? It goes beyond the phone costs. It goes beyond the webinar software costs.

Free Webinars are an absolute pain.

You have done two things with the Free Webinar: you have discounted your own value, and you have discounted the value of the time of the participant.

You have taken your product or service and said, frankly, “you get what you pay for.”

2. Find commissioned sales people, known in the business as “affiliates,” and compensate them well.

We have a couple affiliates that have been with us from the get-go. We take care of them, they take care of us.

Hey, if you want to be in the “list building business,” then have at it. And if you have a huge list, great – reach out to these folks yourself.

On the first point, we don’t wanna. On the second point, see the first point. So there, we NEED affiliates to help us do these webinars and make a little money at it.

3. Value-Added Stuff.

We have already established that you are not doing free webinars anymore. And you are relying on the affiliates to sell for you. So what will really make your work shine?

Giving people a heck of a lot more than they paid for.

Our last webinar was, we think, a sterling example of this. The subject matter was SEO for Corporate Communications Professionals. Attendees could listen and watch the presentation, and they were promised to get a big eBook of stuff that went beyond the presentation.

AND, at the beginning of the presentation, we told them they were going to get a special gift at the end. They did – access to our SEO Samurai product. For free. No strings.

I’m not going to get into the “quantifying value” stuff here — could be worth $50 or $500 or $5000. But it was all dramatically more than what they paid for the webinar.

4. Find a provider of software who will go to bat for you, and let them go to bat for you.

We work with a value-added reseller of webinar software, phone lines and stuff that we don’t understand. They go to bat for us, and, as a result, we keep using them.

They don’t let us do foolish things that will make us look bad – like signing up with fly-by-nighters.

We recommend you do a little due diligence.

5. Don’t be afraid to pull the plug.

We have had a couple webinars that we couldn’t cost-justify doing, so we canceled them and refunded people’s money.

You will look foolish talking to yourself and two friends, plus you’ll feel kinda stupid. Don’t do it – know when to cut your losses.

6. And, while you’re doing the actual webinar…

Beyond all the presentation training stuff that you can find anywhere – and a lot of it is good – keep these two things in mind.

A. Leave time for questions. AND if there aren’t any questions, you happen to have a point that you conveniently didn’t have time for earlier. “While you’re thinking of questions, remember that item in slide 6? Well…”

B. Finish early. You’re gonna lose people in the last 10 minutes anyway, might as well get people headed back to their workday with 10 minutes to spare.

Social and Search for Marketing and Communications