Edited from the Webinar Teleclass Series by Mike Jaffe (www.HumanWakeUpCall.com) and Gail Martin
The Fifth Key is Client Support. Do you need on-air assistance and consultations? Say you get a snafu in the middle of the program. Do you want an engineer who can fix something if it breaks or can you do that by yourself? Do you want someone to do the day-to-day details to the registration?
Here are the lower cost platforms. In this tier, you’ll see GoToWebinar and a program called Yugma. What’s the difference? Capacity, complexity and client support.
Then if we look at the higher end ones, there are Adobe, KRM and Wimba. Wimba is more of an online learning environment. It may not be as much of a webinar presentation as an online learning experience. They are focused more towards education webinars. With Adobe Connect, the capacity is much bigger. They use integrated VOIP. They have services that help with registration, recording and administration. It’s a very high level platform. There is a learning curve and there are so many features it can be overwhelming. You might not need something so sophisticated.
In terms of client support, Adobe has all kinds of things available. KRM does a lot of hand- holding. At the time we wrote this, they have a per-attendee fee depending on the length of your webinar. They do everything for you. They have engineers to handle everything. They provide an account manager, and an event coordinator. They will give you marketing tips but won’t implement your marketing for you. You even get online moderators. They have people with radio voices, people who will record intros. They are like a high-end expert.
A word about capacity. Each of these programs tells you the requirements it needs in order to run. Most need a computer that is two years old or less to have the right components as far as memory and operating system. A lot of programs will do a validation check. When you download their software, they make sure you have enough memory and the right operating system. The other constraint is storing the recordings. Every eight hours of video takes about a gigabyte of memory depending on the quality. That is why I tend to have an external hard drive so it doesn’t choke up my computer.
We’ve tried to cover the essentials in this course, but there is so much more we could say. Use these tips to determine what you want from a webinar program, realizing that the platforms change all the time in terms of features and costs. Don’t be afraid to experiment. I hope that we’ve shown you that webinars are powerful platform-building tools easily within your ability to create. Dive in and start experimenting today!
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