146.000 Google Results For Sme’s Webinars! Whats Right For My Business?

March 9, 2010 - PRLog -- Roland Steimnetz
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146.000 GOOGLE RESULTS FOR SME’S WEBINARS! WHATS RIGHT FOR MY BUSINESS?

Webinars and web events are becoming very popular with small and medium businesses across all industries. They are the most cost efficient and time efficient route to get your message, live, to your prospects, customers, staff, partners and suppliers. Time is precious and in today’s business communities, people are becoming “time poor”.
Whilst, in some cases, business people may enjoy travelling to meet customers or prospects, it is expensive, time consuming and inefficient. Instead of having to drive to a meeting, your attendees meet you from any location, across the corners of Ireland or indeed anywhere across the world via the Internet. Web events are also a green, environmentally friendly way to meet so it will you as a business to meet your commitments to be green and lower your carbon footprint which is a significant advantage.
Web Events can vary hugely in size of participants. They can be extremely effective with small groups for meetings, discussions, training or a business review. They can be equally effective for large worldwide groups with hundreds of attendees for product or service launches, promotions, broadcasts, Quarterly updates, announcements or new developments.
A webinar (web seminar) or webcast (web broadcast) is simple. The meeting is delivered live from your computer direct to the audience who are also joining form their own or a shared computer. The meeting or event is accessed directly through a link in the Internet. You set up an account, load your slides or whatever you want to use for your meeting and all you need in addition is a telephone, web camera, a microphone and a bit of practice! As with most things practice makes perfect and the more comfortable you feel with delivering the web event, the more natural and successful your delivery and your results will be.


You can also record your web event and re-use it on websites, in newsletters, in emails or blogs.
In the web event you can see who is attending; you can  text chat with people, run surveys and share a large variety of content including live video, Power Point, Word and Excel files, your desktop or software sitting on your computer. People can also ask questions, either privately to the presenter or to the open forum.
Here are our top ten tips for choosing the right webinar, webcast or web event solution for you:
1.   Simplicity is key! Talk to an independent vendor that will help you to choose webinar software that matches your needs. Many solutions are over loaded with features and functions that can make them complicated to use and you will never need them. An expert will ensure you get the right start and succeed with your first webinar.
2.   Cross platform is important! The more platforms (Windows, Mac OS) and browsers (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari) the software can deal with the higher the chance is that all your participants can connect across the country or the world.
3.   Try it! Join a demo with the solution you are looking at and see how your experience is as a participant. Watch out in particular how easy it is for you to join that demo. If you like it and it looks and feels good, your participants are going to like it too.
4.   Make sure you can be heard! Try the audio options available (conference call and VoIP or telephone conference only). Check the quality of the audio and how easy it is to use.
5.   Recording makes your event go a long way! Make sure the solution provider has a hosted recording solution or provides a playback hosting for your recording. This means you simply get a link which takes you back to your recording. It is then simple to re-use your recording in Emails, websites or newsletters.
6.   Video is good! Don’t be shy, look for good video capabilities for your webinar. Having a live video feed of the presenter makes your web event personal, people will remember it better, it feels closer to them and overall your web event will have more depth. Don’t shy away from video, your audience will thank you for it.
7.   Think clearly and brainstorm with your team what you want to achieve in the webinar and how will you get there. Your webinar provider can help with good input and ideas. Make sure you talk to them about your objectives.
8.   Don’t let the price of the solution dictate your choice. The cheapest solution is not necessarily the worst but likewise, the most expensive is not necessarily the best! Make your decision based on what fits your needs, where you feel you will get the support you need and what was good when you tried it.
9.   Flat Fee solutions are they way to go as they are efficient as you flex your meetings. Pay-as-you-go models work with small once off events but as soon as you get a larger group in one event or run more than three events a month, a flat fee is a more appropriate solution for you. Pricing for the solution only, can start from as low as €40/month and go to €4000 and more. For a typical self run SME webinar, with a basic webcast solution, you should be covered within the €100 per month. Conference calls, hosted recording or other features may be charged separately based on usage.    
10.   Practice makes perfect. Run sessions with colleagues and people that you know before you go live with the real event. Look for honest feedback and take it on board. Webinars are a lot easier to deliver than live in-house events in front of a large group. With the right solution and a bit of practice you will be delivering your first live web event in no time.  
Feel free to give us a call at anytime to have a chat about webinars, webcasting, web events, video conferencing or any other means of live, remote communication.
Find out more about easy to use webinar and web events solutions on our website

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With Meeting.ie, company meetings instantly become more agile, more interactive and more efficient.Meeting.ie is an independent advisor and full service provider for remote communications for Europe. We are a distributor for best-of-breed video, web and call conferencing as well as webcasting solutions. Meeting.ie makes it easy to select, deploy and adopt the service by providing localized consulting, training, support and installation services.