On Thursday 10 November 2016, Jacinta Noonan from PlatformBe, held a greatly instructive workshop on Podcasts, Webinars and Live streaming, the second in our PDW (Professional Development Workshops) series.
Delivering engaging and excellent content is essential for a successful business and we have a considerable variety of formats available online, but we may feel unsure which one is the best for us and our customers.
It is crucial to try out several options ourselves and evaluate the time commitment and the costs involved to learn how to use these tools to make a sound decision. In addition, consistency is the key to build trust, and therefore the choice we make needs to be a long term one.
Choosing which tool is most appealing to us and which platform we feel more comfortable with requires a lot of time and trial and error before we find the good one.
This is why a workshop like Jacinta’s where you get to find out what to consider when taking this decision is a real time saver.
The 9 participants of this workshop had various levels of experience with the different tools which lead to an animated and motivating discussion. Why would one prefer a webinar to a podcast? If we already write blog posts: how can we combine them with another format or would this be too overwhelming for our customers?
Jacinta guided us through the different stages of this decision making process and gave us very important insights on what to consider.
She explained the technical and practical knowhow required for a podcast, webinar and live streaming, and introduced the platform options like Zoom, GoToMeeting, Webex, ClickMeeting, E-Voice, JoinMe, AdobeConnect, ZoHomeeting, Ringcentral.
For obvious time reasons she chose to show us how to use Zoom, a user friendly platform that is surely a great way to get started for those who consider offering webinars.
In order to get from 0 to launching a podcast, webinar or live stream, one should be:
– eager to learn about the technology
– have a good working advertising funnel
– an information flow with the students/customers
– plan the checklists and time lines thoroughly
– decide whether having a producer or not
Last but not least: it is much more fun to try out these tools within a group. In fact, some of the WBII members did this already. We tried out ZOOM, GoToWebinar, and some are practicing doing podcasts.
If anyone would be keen to join a mastermind group please let Jacinta or Ute know. The goal of this group is to mentor each other to set up and try at least one on-line training program, hold each other accountable, move forward and actually do it. This group would be a test group on which to try out ideas, test the technology and practice the tools in a safe group.
The next two PDW workshops will take place on:
Thursday 6th April 2017 on Nailing that first impression on LinkedIn by Petra Fisher.
On a side note: For all those who would like to start offering online courses, platforms like Teachable, Udemy and Coursera are a great way to start (cfr. Ute)
(by Ute Limacher-Riebold)
