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:

1. 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.
2. Live Webcasts – even a simple video from a studio or conference room can be enough to entice people to your site.
3. 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.
4. Webinars – tried and true. Enough said! You should always be doing webinars. We do them for ourselves, and they work.  Believe me, they work!
5. 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?

Here is the wave:

Some of you may have noticed through our August 6^th webinar “Creating an Online Knowledge Community: 6 Tips for Association Executives” that Peach New Media is exploring this topic as it relates to our clients and their professional development goals.  The fact is that there is not a right answer when you’re talking about a closed or open community – you can have both and they can work together or you can pick one or the other.  They each serve a different purpose as it relates to the type of collaboration and community you are trying to develop.

Want to learn more?

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We’re excited to host Jeff De Cagna, experienced association professional and founder of Principled Innovation, as he will be leading a 3-part webinar series starting on September 25.  This will be a great opportunity to learn more about how your association can leverage the social web and develop a community strategy.  All 3 webinars are being offered for just $299, which gives you full access to each 90 minute session and the associated webinar recording and handouts.  To take advantage of this great opportunity or learn more CLICK HERE.

Every day I hear from Association Executives and business owners that they want to do {fill in the blank with choice of social media tool}. Usually it’s because they have found some connection with that particular tool or they know someone else who is doing it. What are lacking in most cases are a strategy, a plan, and measurable metrics to identify if your plan is working.

Well, this is part 2 with a few more tips: (see previous post for first 2 tips)

3. Create a blended solution – Create a goal, strategy and id your tactics
Not everyone learns best from whitepapers, or podcasts, or webinars and webcasts. Some like short snippits and sound-bites to keep them informed and others want a video clip as it may be more stimulating. There are a number of tools out there you can utilize create a blended solution for your community. And surely the right mix will help appeal to the right people interested in your content.
It may be easier to pick out the tools if you start thinking about your goals. What do you want to accomplish? Once you know that, you can figure out how you’re going to get there. That’s your strategy. And then of course what tactics you’re going to use along the way. This is a complex process and probably a good blog post in and of itself. But this is the start to identifying the tools best for your online community.

4. Speak to the people and for the people – no jargon – keep it personable
Remember, you’re probably not writing a whitepaper or a commercial. This is a community. It’s the neighborhood around your specialty. Talk to me like a person, not a commercial. Leave the big words out of it. Save the big words for professors, pharmaceutical companies and rich people!

5. Provide valuable content in a pyramid structure – start simple and lead to depth
Think about content like a resume. I think the best resumes are 1 page. I’ll bet Ronald Reagan had a good 2 page resume, but imagine his one page resume!?! Tease people into getting more information. Don’t go crazy with content. Keep it simple and short.

More to come….