We Peaches say at least 6 times per week that clients need a “trigger” to get their customers to use their online programming. Whether you are selling webinars, online CLE videos, or even knowledge communities, the one thing that seems to be a success factor is scheduling.
In recent posts by Ken Molay, of Webinar Success, and Tim Bourquin, they each discuss how challenging it is to sell webinar recordings and archives. Our clients who offer online continuing education programs know the same thing! We even have seen this trend developing with Knowledge Communities… the trend is this: if you market something as available 24/7/365, your audience will never do it. They don’t have a reason! Even if they benefit from this dramatically, they will likely not do it unless you give them a specific deadline and timeline.
The Knowledge Community observation is the most interesting to me. We’ve found that even communities with good steady flow of content, often don’t get the participation they seek until they schedule a webinar, or rebroadcast, or even a Tweet-up-like chat session (where you schedule a time for your forums and message boards to be active).
While they can be, the triggers don’t have to be expensive, high production events. The point is that it is a scheduled “event” from a reputable organization. That’s enough to get at least some attention and participation.
Here are some Triggers we have used at Peach with clients with some if not great success:
Rebroadcasts – schedule a time to replay a live webcast or live webinar as a “Pre recorded” webinar, but the key is to have your experts online and ready to handle live Text based Q&A. It is likely that the presentation wouldn’t have changed anyway… just the Q&A. So take your well-produced content and schedule it to happen many times over the course of a month. It works.
Live Webcasts – even a simple video from a studio or conference room can be enough to entice people to your site.
Mandatory CE deadlines – of course these are great triggers when they come from large governing bodies. However, if your organization offers certification programs, consider the deadlines for the CEU’s for these programs as great ways to get large audiences of people online and “doing something” on your site. Be ready for the push, and plan to upsell and promote anything you have that is relevant to this segment.
Webinars – tried and true. Enough said! You should always be doing webinars. We do them for ourselves, and they work. Believe me, they work!
Tweet-Chats – during your in-person conferences or active times of the year, schedule times when participants will be online chatting on Twitter using your hashtags.
My goal with this post is to simply get you thinking about Triggers with your online content, regardless of what it may be. If you have more ideas, post them below in the comments section. Now, I’d be happy to come visit your site to see what you have, but when is your next scheduled web event, exactly?
Pull the Trigger(s)! The Value of *Scheduling* any Web Event
We Peaches say at least 6 times per week that clients need a “trigger” to get their customers to use their online programming. Whether you are selling webinars, online CLE videos, or even knowledge communities, the one thing that seems to be a success factor is scheduling.
In recent posts by Ken Molay, of Webinar Success, and Tim Bourquin, they each discuss how challenging it is to sell webinar recordings and archives. Our clients who offer online continuing education programs know the same thing! We even have seen this trend developing with Knowledge Communities… the trend is this: if you market something as available 24/7/365, your audience will never do it. They don’t have a reason! Even if they benefit from this dramatically, they will likely not do it unless you give them a specific deadline and timeline.
The Knowledge Community observation is the most interesting to me. We’ve found that even communities with good steady flow of content, often don’t get the participation they seek until they schedule a webinar, or rebroadcast, or even a Tweet-up-like chat session (where you schedule a time for your forums and message boards to be active).
While they can be, the triggers don’t have to be expensive, high production events. The point is that it is a scheduled “event” from a reputable organization. That’s enough to get at least some attention and participation.
Here are some Triggers we have used at Peach with clients with some if not great success:
My goal with this post is to simply get you thinking about Triggers with your online content, regardless of what it may be. If you have more ideas, post them below in the comments section. Now, I’d be happy to come visit your site to see what you have, but when is your next scheduled web event, exactly?