Somewhere between the living room and the kitchen I had a thought…  maybe the paint fumes played a big role in this, but I started to wonder where I could find a pure white semi-gloss that I can apply to my life with the same amazingly satisfying results.

You see, just one quick stroke of pure white semi-gloss paint on my baseboards covered up all of the smudges, wood putty and the bruises from the vacuum.   All it took me was about 90 minutes and now my baseboards are one solid shade of bright, white, goodness.

So what’s my point?  I think we all have quite a few versions of pure white semi-gloss at our fingertips just waiting for us to crack them open and apply to our lives.  Maybe you can find your’s at our upcoming Association New Media Summit, a Peach Knowledge Community webinar or maybe it’s just that “phenominal” book you bought 6 months ago…  Whatever it is for you – I encourage you to find it, crack open the can and get to painting!

The 2010 New Media Summit will take place on June 8th in the Association of Fundraising  Professionals’ Training Center in Arlington, VA.  We’ll welcome in person attendees as well as live webcast attendees from all over the nation for this fun day of collaboration.  We’ve lined up some great presenters and contributors for the day including association executives just like you, Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation, Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer of SocialFish, and other association technology experts.

Our goal for the day is to foster a conversation – to allow us each to contribute and learn from each other about what works, what doesn’t, and what we can do tomorrow to lead our organizations to success.  Some of the topics we’ll cover throughout the day include:

• What’s hot now in online learning and what are the upcoming trends?
• How mobile and portable devices fit into the 21st century association.
• How does new media change our role from “educator” to “curator”?
• A “three is the magic number” framework and how to implement it in your association.
• What revenue generating opportunities are available via online learning programs?

To find out the answers to these questions and more, make plans to join us on June 8th.  I look forward to seeing you there… in person or online!

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:

“From my experience, a successful webinar depends upon many things. One of the most important is the engagement of the speaker. Are they passionate and knowledgeable about the topic? Are they a relaxed speaker? Can they talk to the audience and not at them? And of course, the topic is very important. Are the expectations of the audience met by the presentation/presenter?

Other thoughts:

Actual program needs to cover the advertised topics
Provide real-world examples
Provide actionable suggestions, tools, and next steps
Know the audience. If multi-national, be prepared to offer country-specific resources for information.
Avoid self-promotion or sales pitches
Have handouts that list sources for additional information for easy reference
If appropriate, pull up actual websites that may be helpful or provide screen shots
Use polling questions to engage the audience
Use the annotation tools to provide additional visual stimulation

And most importantly, have some fun. It comes across well to the audience if you are not too serious.”

Let me be the first to say, Webinars are not new! They have been in existence for over 10 years and whether your organization has 8 years of webinar experience under your belt or has just begun your foray into webinars this year, here are 4 Factors that will affect the health of your webinar program:

1. Webinar Frequency & Schedule – A set webinar schedule is not for every organization, but it is something to strongly consider.  We see many associations who have their entire next calendar year of webinars planned and scheduled by September.  That way people can plan for their webinars at the beginning of the year and plan their schedule around them.  Your Takeaway – Whatever the frequency of your webinars may be, the key is to maintain that frequency so people come to rely on and expect your webinars.
2. Webinar Timeliness  (Make a HOT TOPIC Webinar Available) – In many industries these are very important, as some topics or initiatives come up and a webinar is a great way to present on them.  If you can find a good combination of frequent webinars and ad hoc webinars, that may be a great fit.  Your Takeaway – As the trusted source of information within your industry, you should always be searching out critical topics and be ready to host a webinar on those topics.
3. Marketing Efforts – The best call to action to foster registration for a webinar is via a dedicated email blast about the webinar –and not just 1.  Send at minimum 2 and hopefully 3.  Different from a plug in a newsletter and/or website banner about the event (both of which are good compliments to the dedicated email), the dedicated email is the most effective way to promote a webinar.  You have to make it clear and simple, avoid clutter and too many calls to action.  Give people a visible place to click and register for the webinar.  Your Takeaway – Plan on distributing at least 2 dedicated emails for every webinar you host.
4. Integration – Too many organizations have their webinars in one place, their podcasts in another and their social media networks scattered all over the place.  However the most successful organizations have adopted Knowledge Communities.
   Definition – A knowledge community brings together your education and online learning content (ie. live webinars, archived webinars, webcasts, podcasts etc.) and social media presence, displaying it all side by side.  Someone can read your blog, see your last tweet, follow you on Facebook, watch your YouTube channel, register for a live webinar and submit online continuing education credit ALL IN THE SAME PLACE! Your Takeaway – In today’s learning environment you should consider the integration of your online learning with your social media to enhance the learning experience and drive your community.