This post is from Daphne Bousquet

http://eventstrategysolutions.com/tag/daphne-bousquet

In the previous post, we talked about what you need in order to be ready for a 6-figure seminar.  But what if you are not there yet?  What if you have no list or a just a small list?  Much of your seminar marketing depends not only on the list you have, but also on the responsiveness of that list.

So you can see that building your community of subscribers and filling your funnel is essential not only to your workshops and seminars, but also to your business in general.

If you have no list at all, the first thing you do is to set up your website so that you can start building one.  You can do this with a few simple tweaks to your existing site. My free eBook, “How To Turn Your Website Into A Lead Generating Machine” goes in further detail on how to do that. Once you have that set up, it is time for you to start building.

Here are the 3 top strategies to build your community with people that are eager to learn from you.

Strategy #1 – Host teleseminars
 The easiest way to start teaching your expertise and getting people interested in your topic in your community is to start teaching teleseminars.  All you need is an opt-in page and a phone.  Many of the bridgelines are free to use and will let you record your teleseminar at no cost as well.

Teleseminars are also a great way to test your topic.  When you have a large number of people sign up for your call, you know you have a good topic that people are interested in.  If you have no response, you may have to reposition your topic, get a better headline or more benefit oriented sales copy.

Strategy #2 – Start Speaking 
The second way to build your list is to get in front of audiences, even if they are not your own.  There are lots of groups that need speakers, so contact local networking groups, associations and other groups that share your ideal audience.  Leverage your relationships with other experts that do have their own events, and get on their stages.

Your audience will now have experienced you and have a pretty good idea of your topic, teaching style and how good your event would be. It is a great opportunity to build a responsive list, or even to fill your own seminar by selling your event from the platform.

Strategy #3 – Attend Events 
 People who go to events are more likely to attend your seminar.  So attend seminars, make connections and build relationships.  You will not only find a good pool of potential attendees, but also potential partners that can promote your (tele) seminar, through affiliate or joint venture relationships.
Some of those people present speaking opportunities that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.  You can also introduce some of your new contacts to your own audience and build a list through interviewing other experts.

Bonus Strategy – Create Online Video
Online video is the wave of the future, if not the “Now” wave.  It is rapidly increasing in popularity with consumers and online marketers.  The reason it is so popular is because the technology is getting more and more accessible and easier to use.  YouTube is the largest search engine behind Google and has a huge amount of viewers every day.

Video is also a great way to establish a personal connection with people when they see you and hear your voice, without actually having to be in front of people.  Your audience can get a sense of your teaching style and they can imagine what a seminar with you would be like.

Although there are many more ways of building your list, these are my favorites because of their effectiveness and potential to create a powerful connection with your audience.  They are also some of the quickest ways to build your list.
So start building your community.  They need you and your message.  Get it out there, so you can help more people and make a big impact with your own workshop or seminar.  Read more

October 20,  2011 – Speaker Services Update

Marketing & Training Services since 1992

Speaker Services http://www.speakerservices.com

In this issue
- Note from Susan Levin
- News from our colleagues & friends

I am preparing to attend Maurice DiMino’s Presentations that Sell Bootcamp in Los Angeles the next few days.  In this Bootcamp the attendees learn how to craft a talk and once they have it together they are challenged to connect with audiences.  Here’s where I come in. Maurice invited me to have a vendor table  as I am a great resource for the attendees. I am looking forward to connecting with them tonight at dinner and over the weekend.

I just downloaded Seth Godins latest book We Are All Weird.  Jacqueline Novogratz wrote a terrific review of the book.  We Are All Weird is a song of freedom, an exuberant manifesto with the richness of choice that comes with wealth, the markets, the internet, our increasing connection with one another across the globe. He argues that the era of mass marketing is over (thankfully) and that as humans we seek not just to consume but to connect, and therefore we find those who love what we love and, when it works best, create or join tribes. We are allowed, indeed, encouraged to be individuals, to specialize rather than fit in or be normal and this is where richness begins. As Seth says, Stuff is not the point. Connection, choice, pursuing what we love is.  BTW:  It was only $2.99!

Are you a speaker, expert, author, coach or entrepreneur attempting to connect with audiences who want to hear your message?

Have you considered adding speaking to your marketing plan?

Do you know how to monetize your speaking gigs?

Would you like one-one coaching with a marketing expert? http://www.speakerservices.com/marketing.html

Are you attempting to find gigs on your own and not getting a response from the event planner?

Would you like to know the names of the decision makers in the college and association and corporate markets?

Maybe you need a coach to assist you in branding and helping you put your talks together?

Wondering how to get a great video(s) for your website and social media?

Speaker Services team can assist you.

Whether you are a beginning speaker or further  along the path our agency can customize a package to fit your needs.

Here are some options for you to consider:

CONNECT WITH AUDIENCES via Speaker Services online paid listing directory brings speakers together with audiences since 1992.   We connect you with audiences that you might not find on your own.  We reach out to 5,000 event planners every month who are searching for experts for their audiences. See http:www.speakerservices.com

INVEST IN A WORKSHOP

Saturday, October 29, Market Yourself as a Speaker, Susan Levin in Marina del Rey http://bit.ly/pxk58a

The information, techniques and tools that you’ll receive from attending Market Yourself as a Speaker are essential to building your speaking business.

Immediate Benefits:

- Design a masterful presentation package that attracts meeting planners to hire you

- Create your one-sheets, introductions and rating forms

- Customize your programs with pre-program questionnaires and more

Monday, November 7, Speak Your Way to More Clients, Capistrano Beach with Ursula Mentjes and Susan Levin http://www.salescoachnow.com/speak-your-way-to-more-clients/

You will leave with a Proven Formula to Create the Perfect Speaking Business Plan for YOU in 2012

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Like to listen to mp3s?

SPEAKERS COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIP GROUP

Join the Speakers Community Membership 60 days for free & a modest $19.95 a month.  Listen to the expert interviews live or download mp3s.

NOTE: 10/26 Complimentary teleclass

Post Do You Have Professional Marketing Materials? http://t.co/GwZ7x94o & comp teleclass 10/26 same topic register http://t.co/5JxUQ8R0

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NEWS & TIPS FROM OUR COLLEAGUES

The new frontier, Seth Godin

 http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/10/the-new-frontier.html

What, exactly, is wrong with the old frontier?

When Google + launched, millions of formerly optimistic people became optimistic again. Maybe this was going to be the one, the social network with just the smart people and none of the lame stuff, none of the spam or the pitches or the people we’re trying to avoid.

And the same thing is true when the pack runs to the new nightclub, the new technology, the new suburban subdivision. Maybe this will be the one…

Of course, it rarely is. So much disappointment and so much bitterness. It’s never as great as you hoped it would be. Ennui and then, eventually, waiting for yet another new frontier.

It’s the old frontier that actually presents the most interesting opportunities, because the shine has worn off. This is your platform for real innovation, innovation in a place or a market or a situation that truly is ready for it

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Need Some Marketing Inspiration? Download @HubSpot’s New eBook: 101 Marketing Quotes: http://t.co/oItXB2tn #101Quotes

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Did anyone catch our speaker and author Author Carole Lieberman on TV Sat night talking about the Michael Jackson case? She is an expert witness too. See her speaker listing http://www.speakerservices.com/speakers/detail/413

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Learn the latest trends in the world of speaker marketing 10/29 in LA w Susan Levin Market Yourself as a Speaker Wksp http://t.co/XwKiTPYQ

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New blog post How Sponsors Define Value: Vickie Sullivan, http://t.co/PSkPZsYK

Blog post Is Cold Calling Dead? 6 tips to success http://t.co/4AyLkhXz

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What our clients are saying about Speaker Services:

Susan provides a toolbox of services and experts for the business person or author who wants to develop a revenue stream from speaking engagements. I used both her training and directory and more than doubled my speaking revenue in less than 90 days.
- Betty LaMarr, Executive Coach, Speaker

Susan is just amazing at getting new speakers up and running in the profession.
- Debra Valle, Coach

I had the occasion to refer a client to Susan and Speaker Services. The reports from my client were glowing, beyond her expectations. She reported tremendous value from the experience with Susan. I will refer to her again and again.
- Rory Cohen, Founder and President , Entelekey, Inc. Take 10 Now

I am ready to answer all your questions and concerns and make suggestions to fit your budget and marketing plan.  E-mail me at susan@speakerservices.com for an appointment to chat.

Susan Levin

Speaker Services, susan@speakerservices.com

310-822-4922 PT

SPEAK YOUR WAY TO MORE BUSINESS

Speaker Services- October 17,  2011 Update

Marketing & Training Services since 1992

Speaker Services http://www.speakerservices.com

In this issue
- Note from Susan Levin
- Tips and Advice
- Teleclasses & Workshops
- Tweets & Blog Posts of interest

Hello,

I spent the last two days shopping for a car with my friend and it was exhausting.  We finally made the deal and as you can see I am pretty darn happy and relieved. He got a Scion XD.

Does this sound familiar to you? My assistant or I have been making calls attempting to get speaking engagements and am not getting any call backs? You know you are an expert at what you offer and yet you are seeing changes in your business, bookings, prospects and your bank account. Could it be that you have been speaking for years and never had to treat your speaking practice as a business?  It might be a time for a tune up.

Are you investing in your continuing education and or updating your marketing materials? If you can relate to what I am sharing with you perhaps you would like some solutions.  Send me an e-mail susan@speakerservices.com for a complimentary session on the phone and lets see if we can customize a dynamite package for you based on your budget.

My colleague Dr. Letitia Wright, D.C. shared the following in a message to her LinkedIn contacts.  The Gurus Are Back. Have you noticed more emails from the “Gurus” lately? You know, the people who used to have these huge meetings with anywhere from 250 -1,000 people? They would tell you how to have the good life (whatever you consider the good life to be) and then charge you money to help you do it? They sell information packages with strategies that no longer work or ones they have never actually used to make their success.

Many of the Gurus filed bankruptcy (just like regular people) and disappeared for a while. Now they are back selling something slightly different. Some are in jail or on trial for murder, fraud and a lot of other things. A few have committed suicide over the last few years. Yes the economy hit them hard too because they depend on the rest of us to give them money. When we did not have it, they did not either.  I will add that it makes me furious as they ruin the trust level of our potential clients who have every right to be mistrustful.

I always share with my potential clients that it is a good idea to work with a heart-based business and not run after the shiny objects that offer flamboyant promises.

Susan Levin

Speaker Services

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Complimentary teleclass 10/26

Marketing & Promo Materials that Get you Booked

Susan Levin and Jean-Noel Bassior register http://www.speakerservices.com/teleclasses/detail/238

________________

Meet Susan Levin, owner and founder of Speaker Services at the following events in Los Angeles or Orange County.

10-21-23   Maurice DiMinos, Presentations that Sell Bootcamp I will have a vendor table so make sure to say hello if you are there.

10/29  Market Yourself as a Speaker, Susan Levin learn more

11/7  Speak Your Way to More Clients, Ursula Mentjes & Susan Levin, Capistrano Beach learn more

11/9   Wealthy Bag Lady, Fill Your Purse Event, Get All the Clients & Sponsors You Want, Linda Hollander & Susan Levin, $35,  learn more

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TIPS & RESOURCES

Discussion in a LinkedIn group re getting booked in colleges or high schools

Nicole B. Simpson CFP

You can take an independent alternative by contacting each college individually. Find out who is on the planning board or planning committee and submit your information there. They make the executive financial decisions.

High School

You must first review what the states core curriculum requirements are and see where your program best fits. Once you have determined that, you can do one of two things-you can approach each high school or you can go straight to the Board of Education. I have found the individual high schools work best. If you can get one school to walk to you to the board (who will ultimately have to pay), then you can go to the other schools in that district having already been approved by the board.

They both take a lot of time to do so be prepared to invest the time. Most people give up because the results are sooooo slow but once you are in, you are good, unless you blow it.

LOL-I recently did the legwork for myself. Realistically, it took me about 1 hour to accumulate an average of 6-7 real contact people. However, once it is done, you have the list. I went from state to state and my goal was ten schools in each of the states. I made it my business. Now I have a list to tackle. My topic was time sensitive (9/11) and they generally do not operate as soon as they get back to school but I already confirmed myself as a keynote for Rutgers for 2012 so it made it totally worthwhile. The schools have the budget to pay so it is truly worth it in the end. Another route you can take is to find out what schools have presenter conferences.

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New Sponsorship Opportunities

Vickie Sullivan vickiesullivan.com

In this jumpstart to next years elections, we hear a lot of bad stuff about ObamaCare.  Here is a silver lining: drug store chains are getting into the health insurance business.

That is right,  Walgreens plans to sell health insurance products later this year. Why do we care?  Because they are using sponsorship deals to promote their health and wellness positioning.

This industry leader is looking for both local and national opportunities, as new deals range from national sports teams to community events.  Idea:  any expert in this area with strong ties to their community (or a broad-based national brand) has a shot getting their speaking fee paid to those public health events.

Moral of the case study:  organizations use sponsorships to introduce new products to their customers.  Help them and you can get your share of the ever-growing sponsorship pie

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Sharings from our Speakers

Nan Vaughn wrote: Good news I got a free gig from SS for the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, and after the presentation last week in Palm Springs, they contracted me to do four 50 min. telecoaching sessions as a follow up.  I did not have to submit a proposal or even negotiate and I am getting $2500! Also, they are interested in me for several other training/facilitating opportunities woohoo!

Speaker and Author Carrie Flintom shared

- Partial list of speaking gigs

- Simi Valley Hospital foundation

- WOW – Wonderful Online Women organization

- Womens Wellness Weekend

- University of Dominguez Hills

- Orange County Association of Educational  Office Professionals

- California State Employees Association Womens Committee Conference

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Tweets of Interest

- Check this video out — Your Marketing Plan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP58srL4bm4&feature=share via @you tube

- Jane Honeck Author & Speaker Has a double sided 1 sheet on her speaker listing. Thanks to our team for putting it together see http://www.speakerservices.com/speakers/detail/379

- Happiness is not what makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy. David Steindl-Rast, A Listening Heart

- Download @HubSpot‘s free eBook: 99 Tools to Help You Generate Leads with Social Media

-Google+ Launches Real-Time Search and Hashtag Support http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/27206/Google-Launches-Real-Time-Search-and-Hashtag-Support.aspx via @HubSpot

- How Sponsors Define Value http://bit.ly/nmWQMZ In LA Speaking & Sponsorship Fill Your Purse event $35

- 60 Ways Personalization is Changing Marketing http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/13829/60-Ways-Personalization-is-Changing-Marketing.aspx

Marketing & Training Services since 1992

Speaker Services: http://www.speakerservices.com

BUSINESSES FOLKS, EXPERTS, ENTREPRENEURS,

AUTHORS & SPEAKERS

Are you talking up your business?

Putting butts in the seats for  your events?

Getting media coverage?

Turning your expertise into profits?

Join us for a complimentary interactive preview teleclass  call with the speakers for the Atlanta Talk Up Your Business Workshop, Master the Message, Master the Marketing on August 11 at 4pm PT or 7pm ET.

Register at http://bit.ly/pWYwyA & the number to call will be sent to you.

Planning on attending?  September 30 and October 1 in Atlanta

Take advantage of the registration fee of $147 by August 30.

See program http://t.co/cu0bNfE

On August 11 I will be interviewing our guest speakers about their areas of expertise.

Even if you can’t make it sign in and I will send you the mp3.

MEET THE SPEAKERS:

Jack Barnard...the emcee for this stellar event and the first presenter — is a master presentation coach and media trainer, a true maverick in the business. He will be teaching us the importance of nailing your core message, and how that impacts your presentations of any length, your branding, media interaction and your promotional strategy.

Susan Levin…the owner of Speaker Services, the co-producer of this event. She is a marketing consultant for speakers and authors and will offer advice and marketing strategies to dramatically increase your income and success in the world of speaking.  Susan show you how to speak your way to more business.

Daphne Bousquet… works with speakers, coaches, and service professionals, who want to increase their client base, boost their visibility and add as much as 6 figures to their bottom line with their own workshops and seminars.

Rick Frishman…is a best selling author, publisher and speaker.  He works with and trains authors, entrepreneurs, and business owners to get more visibility for themselves and their businesses by leveraging the magic of publicity.

This event is produced by Speaker Services and is reasonably priced at $147 for 2 days.  That is the early registration investment fee which is good until August 30.

Here are a few of the items I will be asking about.

-  Find out how to fill your workshops

-  Expand your short talk into any length presentation, for any audience, for any purpose

-  Tap into powerful strategies for lead generation

-  Build an entire product line of information products around your expertise

-  Turn your expertise into profits

- Why you need video demo

-  Familiarize yourself with speaker marketing materials

-  Learn why media exposure is a critical element to your success

- Discover why publicity is 100 times better than advertising

What people are saying about Speaker Services Events

Every time I come the Speakers’  Summit I learn more and meet people to who help myself and my business  grow towards the success I dream of.
- Jentana Dabbs

Thank you for a highly motivating and powerful event, and for being such a gracious host. The Speakers’ Summit definitely opened my eyes to improvement opportunities and ways to share my gifts in the world more powerfully and easily. Thank you again, and I look forward also to growing our connection and network!
- Barry Selby

It was an extraordinary experience.  I didn’t have any expectations going in and I didn’t know what I would come away with.  It is through these past couple of days that I have discovered that I must find a way to express what I have experienced.  It is time for me to go to the next level.  I’m not a coach that fits into any of the usual categories but I do have something to say and share.  These past couple of days have shown me that there is a forum for me to get my message out there.
- Carol Pilkington

You do know Speaking is a business and you know you need to know the nuts and bolts of marketing yourself as a speaker?

Here’s an opportunity for you to get the marketing blueprint and the overview of the industry in a step by step process over a six month period in a virtual group setting that will catapult your speaker marketing business at a most affordable investment and keep you accountable.

I find that many folks sorta know what they need to do but sorta don’t get around to implementing.  This group is designed for just for that.

Perhaps you have some of the marketing materials but not all or you need a make-over or a review or you are simply starting from the beginning.  That’s fine.

What you do know I hope is that you are an expert in your field and you have tons of content to share however you don’t have a marketing plan in place to monetize your business.

Okay here is the information for the group which is forming right now.

Marketing Works Mastermind/Study Virtual Group – Level 1
facilitated by Susan Levin

Begins August 4, 2011, noon to 1:30pm PT or 3pm-4:30 ET

6 month program includes:

Mastermind/Study Group

6 – 90 minute sessions once a month with Susan Levin

Meets first Thursday of the month beginning on July 7 2011 on the telephone at noon PT – 3pm ET

- 6 Months in the SPEAKERS’ COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIP CLUB audio/mp3 library- 2 expert interviews a month plus 4 years of mp3’s in the audio/mp3 library

Bonuses:
5 mp3′s and 4 PDF’s

- MP3-The Business of Speaking, Susan Levin
- PDF

- The Business of Speaking 16 page Special Report

- MP3- Connect, Get Hired by Meeting Planners, Kare Anderson

- MP3  Creating One-Sheets, Karen Saunders

- PDF  All About One Sheets – 24 page report

- PDF  Powerful Verbs That Add Persuasion to Your Writing

- MP3  Online Video Marketing Strategies,  Susan Levin and Reno Lovison

- PDF  Social Media Marketing Report

– 33 page report
- MP3 Self Publish or Main Stream Publish?  Jean-Noel Bassior

and more

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Mastermind/Study Group Sessions:

1  What will you speak about-what are you passionate about, what’s your niche, lead generation
2  What planners look for – various elements for your web or blog sites
3  One Sheets gathering all the materials
4   Your introduction
5   About Social Media & Speaking
6   Info Products

Total Value of this six month program is $2,000

Your investment $697

Pay in full
____   1 payment $697
____   3 monthly recurring payments $234
____   6  monthly recurring payments of $116

To register for a workshop or for more information: http://bit.ly/jXEUmT

_________

View a few videos with Susan speaking about Speaker Marketing

_________

Susan Levin is a great mentor with great experience to share and a great heart to match!
- Melissa Evans, Speaker/Author
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Susan is the reason that I have a career! I have been honored to mentor with her through Speaker Services. She has provided me with the best training anyone could get. I value her friendship and expertise.
- January Jones, Speaker/Author

Got questions?  Call me 310-822-4922 PT

One of the biggest questions I get asked is:  How do I find paid speaking engagements?

SPEAKING IS A BUSINESS and there are many moving parts to the business and there is no short answer to the question.

If you are committed and passionate about your area of expertise and want to earn money as a speaker I will teach you.

Teleclass Series, 4 Thursdays, April 14, 21, 28, May 5, 2011 or One day Workshop in Los Angeles, Saturday, April 16, 2011 I am passionate about sharing my knowledge. My hourly rate is $250 an hour and I am offering you the information for only $197.

Okay here’s the information see for yourself if it resonates with you.

Getting speaking gigs can be a mysterious and frustrating process, particularly if you don’t have much experience. Decision-makers today are busier than ever and difficult to find. Gatekeepers screen calls, spam filters trap emails and voice mail blocks access.

Here is what I will be covering how to:

- Identify your target market

- Discover the problem that you solve for your clients and the best way to communicate it to the decision maker

There’s no point in being a fine marketer until you have expertise to offer. And your expertise has gotta be in a specific niche. A niche where folks with cash in their jeans recognize your value and are willing to invest in what you alone know. Here’s how to select your niche: identify the topic or issue in which you’re willing to do endless and ongoing research for a market with the means to pay you. – Burt Dubin

- Prepare a speaker/author presentation package which includes a one sheet overview that shares the benefits of hiring you and gets you booked

- Design an effective speaker website that gives a meeting planner everything they need to decide that you are the perfect speaker for their event

- Understand how decision makers decide who gets onstage

- Tips and strategies to show you how to attract and reach prospects

- Develop a voice mail message that gets your call returned

- Generate questions that will sustain the interest of the decision maker and move them to action to hire you - , organizations colleges and meetings and key contact people that work with your specific area of expertise.

- Learn to respond an effective response for a call for speaking proposals

- Top ways to make money public speaking

- Set fees and write contracts

- Explore directories that are published with lists of all the paying markets within a niche

-  Implement social media marketing concepts and establish relationships that boosts your visibility

- Understand how publicity and media can lead to speaking engagements Critical Elements of producing a speakers’ video demo

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REGISTER FOR 4 PART TELECLASS SERIES beginning 4/14-5/5 http://t.co/e2Zjti6

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REGISTER FOR 1 DAY WORKSHOP IN LA 4/16

http://t.co/e2Zjti6 _

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ABOUT SUSAN LEVIN Susan Levin is the owner of Speaker Services. Her company markets, trains and connects professionals with audiences through the online directory www.speakerservices.com. She is a speaker, workshop leader and a marketing strategist.  Her expertise includes: speaker marketing materials, lead generation, building and boosting an online and social media presence, creating speaker products and creating multiple streams of income.

Susan has worked with hundreds of business folks, entrepreneurs, experts, speakers, authors and coaches since 1992. Her advice and marketing strategies are guaranteed to dramatically increase your income and success in speaking and marketing.

What Clients are Saying:

Susan Levin is an expert in the field of Speaking and Training and has truly helped me launch my speaking career. In addition, she has connected me with phenomenal speaking opportunities and wants to see all of her clients and business associates succeed. I highly recommend Susan and her company,  Speaker Services!                                                                                                                        – Ursula Mentjes,  Author, Speaker

Susan Levin is the Holy Grail for speakers, whether they are just beginning or already making good money. She offers training in everything you need to know: putting your presentation together, writing a book, getting speaking leads and especially how to market yourself in the most current ways, including video and social media. She’s made a huge difference in my speaking career and in the fees I make from speaking, and I can’t recommend her highly enough. – Barbara Niven , Actress, Speaker and Presentation Coach

See short video marketing tip on how PR can land you speaking engagements

by Donna Gunter

Teleclasses, also referred to as teleseminars, teleconferences, and webinars (with the added component of seeing a presentation) provide a platform for online service business owners to connect virtually with prospects around the world via a teleconference bridge line and share information with them. Many service professionals use paid or free teleseminars to grow their lists, establish their expertise, and deliver training and coaching programs.  It’s an ideal platform for information delivery, as both the presenter nor attendee can listen from the comfort of their home, office or car, without any of the headaches of having to be present for a live, in-person event.

Once you have created a compelling description and list of learning points for your teleseminar, how do you promote your teleclass and find participants?  Here are 15 ways for you to promote your upcoming teleclass:

1.  On your web site. Regardless of your reason for offering a teleclass, you need to create a search-engine optimized page on your own web site that contains an opt-in box where interested participants can opt into your list and get the call-in info for your teleclass.  This is the landing page to which all of your promotional efforts should link.  You may want to use a hover ad promoting your teleclass that pops up when visitors land on your site, or use a graphic popup, like AdImpact.com

2.  Your ezine and blog. Be sure to post an invitation to your teleclass within your email newsletter as well as on your blog.  When I’m offering a teleclass, I make the post about the teleclass my featured post on my blog so that it shows up above all other posts while I’m taking registrations for the teleclass.

3.  Events on social networking sites. Both Linkedin and Facebook permit you to create an event (your teleseminar) and invite your contacts and friends to the event.  On Facebook, you’ll want to remind those friends who have RSVp’d “yes, I’ll attend” to go to your teleseminar opt-in page to register. You may also belong to some niche-specific, target-market-specific, or business-to-business social networking sites which will allow you to create an event and invite your followers to your event.

4.  Press releases. You can submit this online via a fee-based service like PRWeb.com.  Don’t bother with the free online press release services, as your release doesn’t go anyplace other than on the site to which it has been submitted, with the exception of PRLog.com, which has been shown to give releases high search engine ranking.  Send your release out to your local media list, as well.

5.  Affiliate Marketing. Create a special email, blog posting, or Twitter campaign that your affiliates can send out to their lists to promote your event. Remind them to use their affiliate link for your program so that they get proper credit for any registrations. Even if you’re holding a free teleclass, your affiliate program should let you to create a special affiliate link to your teleclass registration page for your affiliates and track those registrations and credit the affiliate for any purchases made from your upsell promotion on the teleclass.

6.  Article Marketing. If you’re planning a free preview teleclass where you will offer an upsell to a paid program, begin writing articles and submitting articles on your teleseminar at least 30 days prior to your event.  I use GetMoreClientsArticles.com to help me distribute my articles.  In your resource box, you can offer your free teleclass as your client attraction device, and send readers to your opt-in page as your call to action.

7.  Email signature. If you correspond frequently via email or participate in online discussion forums or lists, create an email signature either in your email program or as part of your discussion forum profile that specifically promotes this teleclass and sends recipients to your opt-in page.

8.  Viral report. Write a special PDF report or white paper about the topic of your teleseminar and give it away free of charge to your list and social networking friends with an opt-in box.  Offer your list members and followers the opportunity to give it away, as well.  If you use a viral report brander like ViralPDF, your list members can personalize it with their name, web site, and affiliate link.  Be sure that the report links back to your teleseminar opt-in page.

9.  Discussion lists and forums. Some lists and forums permit members to overtly promote their products and services on the forums, while others have separate forums and lists specifically for those purposes.  Be sure you know the rules of the list before sending a promotional post.  And, if no overt promotion is permitted, post other comments to the list/forum and use your email signature to help you promote your teleclass as described in #7 above.

10.  Strategic alliance partners. Ask colleagues with whom you have a relationship and who publish ezines and blogs to pass along your teleclass information to their readers.  Or, you can use DirectoryofEzines.com to help you identify ezines that reach your target market and request that they let their readers know about your upcoming teleclass. If you offer a free event and promise to deliver valuable content, you may have an easier time getting ezine and blog editors to help you promote.  Or, offer them the opportunity to become an affiliate and outline your commission structure to help motivate them to help you promote your program.

11. Speaking. If you regularly speak to groups and organizations, mention your teleclass to them at your next speaking gig.  Or, ask colleagues if they will sponsor you as a special guest to their list to offer your teleseminar.  Research radio talk shows on BlogTalkRadio.com or podcasts on iTunes.com and contact the host to interview you about the topic of your teleclass.

12.  Purchased advertising. You can do this by buying classified ads in ezines that cater to your target market, as discovered in #10 above.  Or, you can create a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign on Google ,Yahoo, or MSN.   Most of these programs let you set a daily/weekly/monthly budget that you can begin and end as you choose. If you time your teleclass during the time when people are actively searching for information on your topic (like “home owner tax tips” in April before the IRS tax deadline), the greater the likelihood that your PPC ad will yield results for you.

13.  Audio and video marketing. Create videos about the topic of your teleclass using your webcam, video camera or screencast software and post to the major video sites via TubeMogul or TrafficGeyser.  You can also create a Powerpoint presentation about your teleclass and upload it to Slideshare.com.  Lastly, you can create a viral video or movie about your teleclass topic and ask your colleagues and strategic alliance partners to pass that to their lists, as well.

14.  Teleclass promotion sites. There are a number of places where you can post your teleclass either free or for a fee.  Paid listing sites include:
24/7 Coaching(must be a paid member)
PlanetTeleclass.com
FullCalendar.com(post in the San Francisco area because they seem to have the media most open to posting teleclass info)
Solo-E.com(you have to pay to be an expert here to post your teleclass)

Free listing sites include:
Seminar Announcer
Craigs List Can only post in one city without being penalized and removed from the listings.
Conference Call University You do have to place a link to their site on your event page.
Find Free Seminars
All Conferences

Also search Yahoo Groups and Google Groups for any teleclass announcement lists.

15.  Track your results. You need to know what promotional efforts are bringing you the best results.  Create a specific URL (like through BudURL.com, for example) where you can track the click-throughs on any promotion.  Or, use a tracking service like Hypertracker.com to track your results.

Add teleclasses to your marketing mix.  Watch your business gain credibility and see how quickly your list grows!

Donna Gunter, author of Get More Clients Online: How to Get 95% of Your Clients from Internet Marketing, and founder of OnlineBizU.com, is an Online Business Coach and Internet Marketing Strategist who helps independent service professionals create prosperous online businesses that make more profit in less time by teaching them how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise, and get found online.

You can learn more about Donna’s products and services at OnlineBizU.com

Susan’s note: Need a reliable bridge line for your teleseminars?  Console Call is the service I use.  It is a paid service and worth every penny  http://tinyurl.com/ydnqfyf . Cut yourself free from the stress of poor quality and service 

provided by those other conference calling companies

On Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009 I am offering a complimentary Q & A teleclass on Speaker Marketing.  Got questions?  I have the answers. You can register here http://www.speakerservices.com/teleclasses/detail/156 .

Send your questions ahead of time please to susan@speakerservices.com. Can’t make it?  Register anyhow and we’ll send you the mp3.

The Speakers’ Summit ’10 our annual event is ready for you.  I mentioned it several times this past week and the registrations are rolling in.  It is important to invest in your business by going to conferences to further your education.   And I have a great deal for you and we offer tons of content.

Grab your seat for $297.  Take a look at the program and see for yourself.
http://www.speakerservices.com/speakerssummit10/program.html

SPEAKERS/PANELISTS include: Jack Barnard,  Brent Scarpo, Sabrina Gibson, Adam Urbanski, Ursula Mentjes, Susan Levin, Mitch Mortimer, Barbara Niven, Nancy Solari, Naz Keynejad, Michael McFarlane, Mark Mikelat, Deborah Deras, Keith Ivey and more.

The theme is Position, Prospect, Prosper- The Road Ahead.  March 12-14 in Los Angeles.  We’ll be delving into Corporate Sponsorship, Getting Booked at High Schools and Colleges, Online Video Strategies, Social Media and Prospecting for Gigs plus Adam Urbanski will share how speakers can make  $250,000 to $1,000,000 a year with coaching programs.

 Jack Barnard speaking at the Summit ’09

You can listen to a 30 minute conversation with Adam and me where we are talking about what he is going to share with us at the Summit.  Click here to listen and you can also sign up for free for the 1/25 Get Booked in High Schools and Colleges teleclass and 2/8, Online Video Strategies & Corporate Sponsorship on the same page.

I am taking appointments the rest of the month for marketing clients so give a call if I can assist you with your speaker marketing plan for 2010.

Merry Holidays to you all.  Wishing you loads of joy and prosperity and good health.

Susan Levin
Speaker Services

susan@speakerservices.com
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SPEAKERS’ COMMUNITY TELECLASSES  2010

Every Word Has Power, Yvonne Oswald
Thursday, January 14, 4-5pm PT or  7-8pm ET  Can’t make it  We’ll send you the mp3  Learn more  

Publicity Tactics: Get Publicity with Mainstream & Social Media Networks with Dan Janal
Thursday, January 28,  4-5pm PT or  7-8pm ET  Learn more

Teleclasses are FREE for Speakers’ Community Members. Not a member? Join Now http://www.speakerscommunity.com to access the calls with my special FREE 2- month Speakers’ Community trial.  Past members can re-join at regular monthly rate.

Give yourself a gift and join the Community.  You can’t beat price of the expertise that is offered twice a month.  Don’t have time to listen live then download the mp3′s and listen at your convenience.  You can download the past two years of mp3′s!

_________

What have I been twittering about @speakerservices

Speakers Summit ’10 http://ping.fm/huzwM is an affiliate program share $ http://bit.ly/8F9lhl

RT @adamurbanski How I Turned $194 Into Two Seven Figure Businesses http://bit.ly/6PUJFH [video] Will be speaking at the Speakers Summit ’10

RT @DeniseWakeman 16 articles about how to use online video in your business: http://is.gd/5u0j2

Take advantage of Online Video Advertising Opportunities they are Limitless: http://bit.ly/6L6MWp  Really gets ya thinking.

Blog Post Gayl Murphy-Spotlight on the Media: Interview Tactics! How To Survive the Media Without Getting Clobbered! http://bit.ly/6jVqWY

_________

And in the blog
- Spotlight on the Media

- 20 Simple Ways To Get Massive Traffic To Your Website

- Twitter Marketing: 6 Steps to Creating a Viral Marketing Campaign with Twitter Hashtags

Post by Donna Gunter, The Internet Marketing Automation Coach™ www.onlinebiz.com

I’ve been listening to a number of list building and lead generation teleclasses lately, and many of them have been offered in the form of a telesummit.  A telesummit is a virtual online conference that offers a line-up of varied speakers over a period of time, like a few days or over several weeks. The telesummit is usually organized by a theme, like outsourcing or lead generation, or for a particular target market, like the online telesummit for virtual assistants for which I was recently a guest speaker.

Participation in many of these telesummits requires you to pay a registration fee, but the model I’ve been seeing a great deal recently is the “free for live” model in which registrants can participate in the “live” version of the program, but if they’re not able to be on the call live, the only way that they can access the content is to pay a registration fee for the audio file and PDF transcripts.

What I love about telesummits is that they are perfect for a downturned economy. There’s no airline reservation to make, no hotel to book, no clothes to pack, no shuttle fees to pay, no bad hotel food to endure….it’s simply conducted from the convenience of your home, the home of your speakers, and the home of your participants. You offer high value with low cost — a great combination!

In my opinion, this type of event is a genius way to turbocharge your business. Here are 5 secrets to turbocharging your online business with a telesummit:

1. Grows your list fast. Many telesummit hosts report that holding a telesummit has helped them grow their list from 2,000 to 10,000 or 15,000 or greater in a span of only a few weeks when the participants are required to give their name and email address to get the telesummit call-in information. Best of all, the additions to the host’s email list are perfect leads for their target market. How did this happen? Because the host carefully chose their speakers who market products and services to a similar target market and created a telesummit around an issue or theme important to their target market. And, in an ideal world, the speaker has a large list and agrees to help market the telesummit to that list.

2. Establishes you as the preeminent expert. When you hold an event featuring well-known speakers, you suddenly become the authority, or the expert in the field. After all, how else could you have attracted these experts if you were not an expert yourself?

3. Helps you open the door for valuable joint ventures (JVs) and strategic alliances. Once you’ve invited someone to be a guest on your telesummit, you have provided a great service to them by introducing them to others who may not have previously heard of them. And, if you offered some healthy affiliate commissions for telesummit upgrades, they love you because you’ve helped them make money without a lot of effort. Assuming that your event was a success and there were no major hiccups in the process, this success has paved the way for future joint ventures and strategic alliances with this person. This certainly beats cold-calling someone to try and speak to them to sell them on a JV proposal, doesn’t it?

4. Increases your credibility. Another key factor in hosting a telesummit is that the notoriety of your speakers rubs off on you as the host. One of the quickest ways to go from “no name” to “big name” in your industry is to invite the industry experts to speak at your telesummit. The fact that you now have a connection with the movers and shakers in your industry gives you a leg up boosting your own credibility and expertise in the industry.

5. Makes some cash in the process. In addition to the advantages listed previously, there are a number of ways to make a little money in this free telesummit model. First, you offer every participant the ability to “upgrade” to get all the recordings and transcripts of the telesummit. Creating a price increase deadline (before summit vs after summit pricing) may encourage more participants to buy. Secondly, once the telesummit is complete, you can go back to your speakers and offer to interview them a second time exclusively for members of their list. The upsell in this second interview is the complete telesummit recordings and transcripts, on which you pay them a healthy commission on all packages sold.

Examine your business model and see how well a telesummit fits into the mix. You’ll need to begin planning 8-10 weeks in advance, but once you see the results, you may want to make your telesummit an annual event.

Today’s post comes from Donna Gunter, The Online Biz Resource Queen™

I love being a guest on other people’s teleseminars. What I love best is the fact that all I have to do is show up and talk when someone else is sponsoring them. I’m responsible for none of the marketing and promotion and registration involved with sponsoring a teleseminar. Best of all is that I don’t have to schlep all over town to do these guest speaking gigs. I’m presenting my expertise to my target market from the comfort of my own home office.

How can you add a signature teleseminar to your marketing mix? Here’s my 10-step process for creating and profiting from your own signature teleseminar:

1. Create 3 info-packed 50 minute teleseminars. Have at your disposal at least 3 information-packed signature teleseminars that you can present at a moment’s notice. So many of the teleseminars and webinars that I have attended recently are nothing but thinly disguised sales pitches for a very expensive live event, product, or mentoring/coaching program. I don’t object to being sold to — after all, I’m a business owner and I realize that others can’t simply give away their time at no charge solely for the joy of doing a presentation. However, what I do resent is wasting my time listening to 45 minutes of sales pitch and 5 minutes of questionably valuable information. Ensure your listeners great value each and every time that you present a teleclass, and provide information that they use today in their businesses.

2. Craft your description and learning bullet points. Write a one paragraph overview of your teleclass and include 3-7 bullet points outlining what the participants will learn as a result of participating in your teleseminar. Your host will love you, as you’ve just provided the bulk of the text she’ll need to market your teleseminar.

3. Write your bio and have your headshot available. Teleseminar hosts like to begin with a short introduction of the guest and often post the guest bio to their web sites or send it out as a part of the teleseminar promotion to their lists. In this version of your bio, craft a succinct description of who you are and what you do that includes any certifications you may hold, authorship of books, and your unique selling proposition. Then provide a very short overview of your background and your current company. The goal is to have a short, compelling bio (around 150 words) that takes the host about 20 seconds to read to introduce you. Include a small version of your headshot and logo to help your host add graphical interest to the teleseminar promotions.

4. Determine your call to action/sales pitch. Prior to the call, determine your most desired action from the participants. Is it to buy a particular product? Sign up for a complimentary consultation? Send for your free gift and be added to your newsletter list? Ideally, you should offer participants the ability to buy into your business at 3 levels: free, low-cost, more expensive. You’ll then have a wider appeal to the audience to capture them at wherever they are in terms of price point. Include your call to action in the promotional emails as appropriate, in your handout, and within your PowerPoint slides. In order to create a sense of urgency, you should set a deadline that falls 24-48 hours after your presentation that serves as the cutoff point for your special pricing offer. If participants are encouraged to register even if they can’t participate on the live call (i.e. all registrants can access a recording of the call), create a special offer available only to those on the live class to increase live participation numbers.

5. Create a landing page on your web site for participants. If your call to action involves special pricing on your product or service, create a landing page on your web site that greets the participants by name, i.e. Welcome XYZ Conference Participants. Customize your page several more times to refer to the participants by name, and be sure to include the deadline for the special pricing offer in the text of the page as well as in the PS of your sales page. I simply take my traditional sales page and customize it for the group for which I’ll be speaking and update the deadlines for special pricing. In order to make this most effective, you have to remember to remove the sales page on your designated deadline and replace it with a page that indicates the visitor has returned after the deadline but can still purchase your product or service at its regular price.

6. Design a PPT and handouts. Even if I’m doing a teleseminar with no visual component, I still put together a PowerPoint file of my presentation. I provide that to the host if I’m doing a webinar or presenting in an audio conference room. For teleseminars, I turn my PowerPoint file into a PDF that serves as a handout for the participants. I add a first page that contains my contact information as well as resources mentioned during the call and my call to action. Talk to your host to determine if she will be distributing the handout via email or on her web site prior to the call or if you need to have it available for download from your web site.

7. Determine your guesting requirements. When I’m a guest presenter, at a minimum I request a recording of the teleseminar that I can use in whatever way I want in my business. I may place it on my site as a free download, send it out as a podcast, make it a members-only benefit, or sell it or include it as a part of another product available on my site. If the host is providing a transcript of the session, request a copy of that as well to use in your business. Lastly, inquire if the host is sending out a followup email to participants after the teleseminar. If so, ask to have your contact info and special offer sent to them again.

8. Research venues offering teleclasses and request to be a guest. Most of the invitations I’ve received to be a teleseminar guest have resulted from articles I’ve written in professional and trade publications, from someone visiting the speaking page of my web site, or from having been heard speaking to another group. However, don’t wait for people to contact you. Start to research companies sponsoring teleclasses or workshops for your target market and ask to be a guest. In your request, be sure and provide detailed info about the topic on which you’ll be speaking, as well as a copy of your handout. You want to make it as easy as possible for the host to pick you as the next teleseminar guest.

9. Repackage your teleseminar for different markets. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you speak to a different target market. With a few changes in your materials, you can usually change the focus of your presentation and make it appear customized for the target market to whom you’ll be speaking. Many times just changing the title and inserting the name of your target market is all you have to do to create a seemingly customized presentation.

10. Ask for a testimonial to add to your web site. Once you’ve completed your presentation, don’t forget to ask for a testimonial from your host that you can place on your web site. In order to be valuable to you, the testimonial should include info about how much value you provided in the presentation, sample of positive feedback from participants, or how your presentation enabled some type of change or ability to take action from the participants.
Spend a few hours designing your signature teleseminar and begin to offer to present it to various groups. You’ll see your both your list and sales numbers grow from this easy-to-implement marketing strategy.

Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps baby boomers create profitable online retirement businesses by demystifying the steps needed to successfully market a  baby boomer business online. Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to increase your visibility and get found online by claiming your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, at == > http://www.OnlineBizU.com .

Learn more about Donna’s Membership Club http://tinyurl.com/6jwrq5

Post by Kathleen Gage The Street Smarts, Speaker and Author

Many people have the dream of making money on the Internet, yet few manage to eek out more than a few dollars doing so. As someone who has made a substantial portion of my revenue from product sales both on and offline, I can tell you there is more to generating revenues than one might imagine.

It never ceases to amaze me the misconceptions people have. They fall for the mistaken belief that all they have to do is have a website, post a few products, get site visitors and the rest takes care of itself. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I have witnessed some of the most common reasons people will NOT succeed on the Internet, let alone in their business. Sure, they may get by, but most people want to do more than just get by.

There are always a few people not yet making money who moan and groan about how they want the “real secrets.” There is no “real secret” to what I do. I share the information; they can either believe it or not.

When I ask what they are doing to lay a solid foundation, often the answer is nothing. They simply want to jump right into the big money, massive name recognition and good times.

This is like signing up for a gym membership, attending one training session and responding with, “Now I’m ready to compete in the Mr. Universe competition.” Not only will someone with that attitude not succeed, they will likely keep looking for the “secrets.” Here’s the secret – you have to put time, effort and money into your success.

One of the greatest secrets to success is to be willing to learn from those who are succeeding. Sadly, fewer and fewer people are willing to learn from those who have come before them, choosing rather to buy into the myth of getting rich quick.

Recently I have had several discussions from people who are obtaining conflicting information about how to succeed at Internet sales. Much of the information they are accessing comes from people who have never made a dime online but are selling information claiming they can teach others how to succeed.

Just yesterday I was asked for specific information on one aspect of online visibility. When I responded with what has worked for me, this person said, “Well, according to ABC source, that is not true.” My response was, “Well, take a look at my Internet position and their position and then draw your conclusion.”

Another mistake is people want something for nothing. Yet many of them also want people to pay them for their products and services. The only question I have is, “What gives you the right to ask people to pay you when you are not willing to pay the experts for their knowledge?”

I will be the first to admit that I also take full advantage of lots of free information. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, I provide lots of great information to interested folks, often at no charge. In many of my free sessions, I discuss in great detail exactly what my clients, my business associates, and I have done to build our businesses and become profitable. I am frequently told my free information is more content driven than other information they have paid for.  But free information only goes so far.

However, I also pay for a lot of my information in the form of coaching, seminars, books, and other information products. There is no way anyone making a real living from the Internet got to where we are at without some type of financial investment in our professional development.

On more than one occasion I have told someone they need to invest in their business and I get a response like, “I can’t afford it right now.” I can appreciate this, but there comes a time you have to be willing to make a financial investment. With enough time and effort you can find just about anything you want for free. The question you have to ask yourself is, “What is my time worth?”

If you have the dream of making money on the Internet, I encourage you to look at how you plan to achieve your outcomes and whom you are gaining information from. Be willing to learn, lay a foundation, invest and persist, and you may be one of the ones who can say, “Dreams do come true.”

Kathleen Gage is a bestselling author, keynote speaker and corporate trainer who works with organizations who want to increase their market position, sales and level of achievement. Visit her new service/product Making Big Money with Teleseminars 

I will be interviewing Kathleen on February 23 in a teleclass about How to Make a 6 Figure Income with Teleclasses.  Complimentary for Speakers’ Community -Not a member join now or register here

Today’s post is by Lisa Sasevich she is the The Queen of Sales Conversion

Lisa is best known for teaching coaches, trainers, healers, leaders and experts how to enjoy massive back-of-the-room paydays every time they speak. She is also passionate about providing service professionals with high impact, low cost marketing strategies for increasing conversion in seminars, workshops and any other presentation style sales opportunity.

Speaking comes in many forms and it’s not always to a live audience face-to-face. One of the ways I made 2008 my best financial year ever was through adding teleseminars to my speaking agenda. I was also blessed to learn from some industry experts how to use teleseminars to touch a lot of lives and make big bucks doing it.

So here are 3 ways that I made my valuable information pay by using tele-seminars in 2008…and that you can model going forward in 2009!

1) Do a one-time Free call to preview something you are offering

Whether it’s brand new or newly updated, it’s important to keep the word out about your offerings. A quick, easy and inexpensive way to generate interest and sales is to offer a Free call on the topic that your book, info product or tele-course covers. During the free call provide a lot of valuable information they can use right away and then offer them a limited time special on your product. Be sure to show them exactly where and how to purchase it online.

Rather than including the call-in number in the promotion of the free call, set it up so that people have to Opt-In (give their first name and email address) to get the call information.

By doing wide promotion of a free call and using an Opt-In system, you end up with a “bucket” of folks who have raised their hand and said, “I’m interested in that topic!”

The beauty of using the Opt-In and collecting the “bucket” or list of interested parties is that you now have a targeted list that you can market to over and over, plus you have their email so you can send them the audio replay of the live call too. (Be sure to record the call. I use www.audioacrobat.com for recording tele-classes and client calls. It’s great!)

This is important because only about 25% of people who Opt-In for a free call will attend live. You have an opportunity for the other 75% to hear your message if you’ve used an Opt-in and sent out the audio playback.

You’ll double or even triple your sales beyond what you did after the free call by providing this playback as well as a series of reminder emails that lead up to your special promotion ending. (I use www.invisiblecart.com to manage collecting my bucket of leads with an opt in, send them auto responders and let them purchase my offering.)

2) Use A Free or Paid Teleseminar Series to Create a Product

This is one of the quickest, least expensive and most effective ways I know for experts to get their message out while making money and creating a product they will be able to sell for years to come. It’s simple…

Announce a free or paid teleseminar series to your list (if you have one). If you don’t, invite all of your current and past clients and ask them to spread the word. You can invite prospective clients too!

- Run a 5-week teleseries and record it.
- Voila! You now have an information product you can package and sell over and over for years to come. You can turn your recordings into CDs, have the call transcribed, provide transcripts and create or include worksheets and handouts that support participants in applying the material.

Note: Some of the best handouts are items you use every day to make your business successful. This might include sample emails you use for promotional purposes, sample contracts that a person might need to get started, sample ads that have worked for you in the past.

3) Take an existing information product that you have and deliver it with a tele-series

This is what Suzanne and I did with our Get Started Speaking Program and it’s a beautiful model for both you and your clients. Here’s how it works…

- We did a small, local live event previewing our Get Started Speaking course. This is how we discovered how truly powerful the information we provide together is!
- We had a sound tech record and edit it.
- We packaged all the worksheets, got artwork and made it into a beautiful product.
- Rather than just selling the product online, we decided to offer it along with a 5-week telecourse.

We are shipping participants the Get Started Speaking product and providing them with instructions on which CDs and Worksheets they need to complete before teleclass #1, #2 and so on.

The time on the 5 week Live teleclass with us can be spent answering questions and doing live hot seats about the material that was covered in the worksheets and CDs. The participant gets the best of both worlds. They have a physical product they can keep in their success library and use over and over again for years, they get live individual coaching on the scheduled calls, they benefit from hearing the Q&A and Hot Seats of other participants and best of all, they actually open the box and work through the course because they know they have a live call to prepare for next week.

No more unopened products collecting dust on top of a file cabinet somewhere! You’re work actually gets put to use and makes a difference!

And isn’t that ultimately what we all want? To touch as many lives as possible while making a profit?

If you have info products in the form of books, CDs, DVDs, recorded classes, webinars, trainings, etc…I invite you to consider how you could use this model to revive something amazing. Of course, if it’s been out for a while, make sure to do the necessary updates.

I just did that with The Invisible Close. It’s been out for nearly 3 years so I just updated it with new order form samples, a new bonus chapter on converting sales from your website and beautiful new formatting. It looks so nice that I’m even shipping it now!

Sales conversion specialist Lisa Sasevich has x-ray vision for seeing the sales opportunities that exist in every company, and the creativity to convert them into gold! If you’re looking for simple, quick and easy ways to boost sales without spending a dime, get your FREE Sales Nuggets now at www.theinvisibleclose.com.

Known by many as “The Queen of Sales Conversion,” Lisa Sasevich has x-ray vision for seeing the sales opportunity in any situation and the creativity to turn it into gold.

You can learn more about Lisa’s work at www.TheInvisibleClose.com.

The following is written by Caryn Terradas

“Technology gives us the facilities that lessen the barriers of time and distance.” Emily G. Balch

The industry isn’t the same as it used to be. The good old days meant that as a speaker all you needed was a phone and a rolodex. Those days are gone. You can’t just keep up. You have to stay one step ahead. There are some great technological advances, that if embraced can actually save time, energy and money. Let’s examine three basic, cost effective options.

Webinars

The term webinar is short for web-based seminar and is a presentation, lecture, workshop or seminar that is transmitted over the Web. The webinar is the most interactive and allows the most participation between the audience and presenter.

It allows much more flexibility to the instructor because it makes it easier to touch more audiences in a single day. A webinar presenter can give multiple presentations while a live speaker is limited to one or two. The audience is only restricted by technology versus location.

The audience can ask questions without disrupting the presentation. The speaker can take the pulse of the audience by posting a text question and actually change the outcome of the presentation by appropriately reading and responding to the participants. Plus it is hard to beat giving a program in your bunny slippers from the comfort of your own home.

There are great benefits for the meeting planner as well. Because everything is virtual, there are no travel, airfare, hotel or meal expenses to pay for the instructor. A lot of speakers offer these types of programs for reduced rates for the convenience of delivery from the comfort of their living room. The participation rates can increase because none of the attendants have to worry about travel expenses either.

The meeting planner doesn’t have to secure a venue. The savings in meals and room rental alone can have a tremendous impact. The webinar service itself is also reasonable. Most come with a cafeteria style menu where you can select, and pay for, what suits your needs. Because everything can be downloaded by the individual participants, this method of education is completely green. The meeting planner doesn’t have to spend time, money or resources printing handouts. (Loriann White would be so proud!) Plus, if you miss it, that’s ok. These sessions are archived online for fast and easy retrieval.

Teleseminars

Teleseminars are telephone based presentations. They are extremely similar to webinars but lack the interaction that so many customers desire. My company had a recent request from a large industry association to host a series of teleseminars. This is new for this particular association and the participation numbers are high for a teleseminar so I asked the planner about the change. She let me know that attendance at their recent annual conference was down due to budget restrictions on travel. By offering a teleseminar series, they can bring the necessary education to all of their members regardless of location for a fraction of the price of booking speakers for a multiple day conference.

Podcasts

Podcasts are normally a series of audio files that are available on line. There is usually no interaction between the facilitator and the audience. However, all technology has its place. There is an extremely successful health and wellness speaker that has grown his empire over the last year fifteen minutes at a time. He gets up every day, seven days a week, and loads a fifteen minute podcast on ITunes. He has done this for a year and now has a following of over 16,000 people all over the world. Pretty cool, huh?

The main thing to remember with any technology is that is works for you if you know how to work with it. There are pros and cons to any form of education. The best thing about these technologies is the registration information you acquire when hosting a function that can be used for marketing afterward. Plus, I have never seen a webinar have too many cocktails and hit on anyone’s boss.

Caryn is co-owner of Speak Easy.  She works with professional speakers and trainers and takes care of all the things you can’t or don’t have time to do. This allows you to have more time to do what you love…speak! www.speakeasy.com

post by Vickie Sullivan, contributing editor RainToday

Between avoiding high travel expenses and having fun working in your jammies, teleseminars and webinars work for audiences and presenters alike.  But, as comfortable as remote events may be, many presenters make the dangerous mistake of treating them like in-person speaking events. They don’t take into account that webinars and teleseminars have a different dynamic, a different relationship between the speaker and the listener.

Below are two of the biggest distinctions between a remote event and an in-person speech, and two strategies to make your next remote gig the best one yet.

Distinction #1: Lack of Feedback

Like many performers, speakers respond to the energy of the attendees. Professional presenters constantly read their audience’s body-language and instantly adapt to that reaction. When a speaker knows the attendees are responding well, they relax and “play” with the participants. It’s those interactions that create classic spontaneous “moments” no one forgets. They also can spot the “problem children” and know how to draw them back in.

Webinars and teleseminars lack that unprompted give and take. When speakers don’t have that visual feedback, they can’t adapt to the audience in real time. They are presenting in a vacuum, having no idea how their ideas are coming off or if they need to change course.

Result: Their energy naturally goes down. Going through the material—rather than being with the audience—becomes the goal.

Distinction #2: Lack of Focus

Audiences listen in a different environment for in-person events and for e-events. In a speech, the participants are more captive. They are gathered in a room, away from their normal environment, not surrounded by the distractions of their office. Most of the time, they are there voluntarily (except for the poor trainers who have to teach the “hostages,” those participants forced to attend by their supervisors). And yes, while it’s possible to check email via our blackberry, the physical presence of other people is more compelling. The audience pays more attention because they don’t want to “miss anything.”

Webinars provide the opposite setting. Attendees are often alone, safely tucked into their most comfortable environment, a place rife with tempting distractions and no way to get caught.

Now be honest: How many of us have checked our email while listening to a webinar? Surfed other sites? Read the Google RSS feeds? It’s much easier to multi-task when it’s right in front of us.

Result: All of the distractions of a private setting make peoples’ attention spans shorter than they already are.

Strategy #1: Start Smart

So how can we counteract these differences? By adapting the way we present from the very beginning. In live speeches, many presenters start by introducing themselves and explaining their background. This introduction is important because it creates the context for their remarks. Researchers explain the methodology; business people focus on their experience and track record.

Audiences in remote events need the context, but not necessarily at the beginning. Many have already read your bio, so there’s no need to start with an in-depth recap of your experience. If you start with that information, many attendees tune out. Their thinking: “I’ve already read this. Wonder what’s in my email in box?” And getting them back is a lot of effort for the presenter.

What’s needed is what insiders call a “bomb:” Something that will immediately provoke attention. It doesn’t have to be obnoxious or overly controversial—just an insight that can immediately change their perspective. It lets the audience know they are in for a wild ride and to pay attention or they’ll miss something good. Then, you can relate your experience back to that remark. Keep the bio short and move on quickly.

You can also relate to your experience throughout the session, as long as the key point stays in the spotlight: “I’d say that the majority of my clients want [enter key benefit here] and find that [enter key point here],” or, “I get hundreds of emails a month about [enter biggest challenge here], and the most common question I get is ….”

Strategy #2: Don’t Data Dump

Without visual feedback in remote events, presenters have a hard time interacting with the audience. Many speakers therefore depend too much on their material and overload the audience.

The thinking:  If the content is compelling, the audience will stay engaged and won’t shop for shoes on the Internet. (I plead no contest.) The result: The audience gets overwhelmed and tunes out. They “half-listen” and the multi-tasking begins. Bottom line: Drinking from a fire hose is not intriguing.

There are two great ways to connect with the audience during e-events: stories and question and answer sessions.

Many professional speakers use stories to make their points come to life. For remote events, add short vignettes or examples for every key point. Having lots of them works well. It’s better to have less content that the audience remembers than more content that they forget. Stories engage, and shorter attention spans need that engagement.

Question and answer sessions serve the bigger need: the attendee’s agenda. Everyone listening to the call or watching online is there for a reason. They need more information to make a decision, or more ideas to implement.

You don’t just want one Q&A session. You want to break frequently for questions. This gives you the chance to clarify your points. It is critical to clear up any mysteries as soon as possible because confused participants stop listening until their question is answered. So don’t save the Q&A for the end. Break the program up into segments that include questions before moving on.

* * *

Remote events are everywhere and for good reason. They are effective branding and education tools that get our point of view into the marketplace. Different formats need different presentation strategies. By addressing the lack of visual feedback and shorter attention spans of audiences with strong openings, more stories, and Q&A interactions, presenters can use these programs to boldly go to markets we have not gone to before.

The following post is from my colleague Diane DiResta from her blog

Has this happened to you? I attended a teleseminar the other day. The guest speaker was touted as a real expert in his field. Based on his background this was true.

The teleseminar was given in two parts with each part being one hour.

Although I took notes, I can’t tell you much of what I learned in two hours.

The reason was because I tuned out. When the interviewer asked him a question he would respond like this: “Well, um ah yeah the the answer to that well is you know the way I think of that is…” SPIT IT OUT!

A teleseminar is still a presentation.

It was so frustrating to listen to someone who couldn’t answer with a clear, to-the- point message. The two hour content could have been delivered in one hour. It would have helped to have a handout. Although I remember a few tips, it could have been delivered just as easily with a few written bullet points.

So here is the lesson: As I say in my book, Knockout Presentations, your success depends on the quality of your presentation. This applies to everybody but celebrities. Why?

Because people want to been seen with a famous speaker or want to learn from the top experts. So unless you’re a celebrity invest in your presentation skills.

Luckily this teleseminar was free.

Posted by Business Presentations

Imagine that you have spent the better part of two weeks working on an important speech you plan to give to your firm. You think you have done everything right. Read on as Laurie Brown offers simple tips to keep the audience from falling asleep (post from Rain Today )

You have created a PowerPoint presentation with tons of information and Flash animation. You have created handouts of the slides for your audience, so they can follow along. Although you haven’t had time to rehearse the presentation, you are not worried, because you have the entire speech typed out. You plan to read it while you blow their socks off with the dynamic PowerPoint slides.

Everything should be perfect, right? Wrong!

If you were to look at your audience (which you cannot, because you are reading your script) you would see them either riveted to the screen, or to the handout in front of them… but not at you. The audience members who are eye-weary from all the information you have packed into the slides are closing their eyes just to rest them.

What went wrong?

Experienced speakers know that to engage their audience, they must build rapport. Reading from a script makes this difficult, if not impossible, because connecting with an audience requires direct eye contact. No matter how well-written your speech is, if you read your presentation to an audience, you will lose them.

Reading to your audience can also make you seem less authoritative. The audience wonders, “If you know so much about the topic, why can’t you just talk about it? Why are you reading?”

Here are 5 tips for getting and keeping your audience’s attention:

Make Eye Contact

Free yourself from the written page and demonstrate your expertise by using one of these ideas:

Memorization

If you want to memorize your speech, it is helpful to rehearse it out loud just before you go to sleep and right when you get up.

Outline

If you use the outline method to create your script, you can simply go back and clean it up and use that for the presentation. If you don’t have an outline prepared, you can create one using the major points of your presentation.

Key Word Method

This technique calls for you to select key words from your script that represent a paragraph or two of information. These key words should jog your memory so that you can speak extemporaneously. You can use a single page of key words, or place them on 3×5 cards (always number the cards). If you are a visually oriented person, you can find an image that represents the key word and create a pictogram.

Teleprompter

Nothing helps you maintain good eye contact without memorization like the teleprompter When speaking to an audience, you want to make everyone in the audience feel that the message is being directed to them personally. If you find that actually looking into the eyes of your audience is difficult and distracting, look at the tops of their heads, which will create the illusion that you are speaking directly to them.

In order to include the whole audience, use a “Z” pattern. Start by looking at the front left section of the audience. After finishing your thought, turn your gaze to the front right section. Again, finish your thought and direct your gaze to the center section. Then look at the rear left section and, after completing your thought, look to the rear right section.

Know Your Audience

The more you know about your audience’s wants, needs, and level of understanding, the better able you are to craft a speech they will feel compelled to listen to. Too often, speakers give the same presentation to different groups. “Generic” speeches tend to lose most of the audience. A speech needs to be relevant and specific.

You need to make sure that you are using words and ideas that are easily grasped by your audience. This doesn’t mean you have to “dumb down” your speech, but it does mean checking to make sure that you are not using jargon or acronyms that are only known by a few.

Your audience is always thinking, “What’s in this for me?” Keep this question in mind when you craft your speech.

Throw Away Your PowerPoint

I think that there is no other element of a presentation that can bore an audience more quickly than PowerPoint slides. Okay, I know you are starting to curse at me now. Get rid of PowerPoint? Well, maybe I need to restate that. You can keep PowerPoint–if you use it properly and effectively… and not as an eye sight test.

Follow these simple rules:

Choose an easy font to read, such as Arial or Times Roman.

Font size should be at least 28 pt (bulleted items should be at least 22 pt).

Use colors carefully (reds and oranges are hard to focus on).

Don’t crowd too many words on the screen (3 lines of type is more than enough).

Keep the slides simple, clean, and easy to read.

View the PowerPoint presentation on the screen after you have created the slides and prior to your presentation. Check for ease of readability. The slides really do look different on the screen.

Don’t read the slides verbatim. Quite frankly, most of your audience will be able to read the slide, so why repeat it?
I think the most powerful PowerPoints are those that use only pictures, a key word or phrase, or graphics. There is no reason to simply use a slide to repeat what you have said. Instead, use a visual aid to reinforce your point. It is true that a picture is worth a thousand words.

You should direct your audience’s attention to the screen and back to you. Simply turn your gaze to the screen for a moment or two and then look back at your audience. These subtle cues allow your audience’s attention to move from the screen then back to you.

Give Hand-Outs After Your Presentation.

If you are making a presentation that has a lot of important and/or technical information, you can provide a hand-out, but only after the presentation. If people have your slides while you are speaking, they tend to read ahead or stay glued to the hand-out and not to you. If you give them the hand-out after your presentation, it will reinforce all of your material without stealing attention from you.

Rehearse

I know people hate to rehearse. It is hard not to feel silly when practicing your speech. However, there is nothing that helps a speaker more than the familiarity and ease you get from saying the words out loud. (Yes, it does make a difference to say the words out loud.) I practice when I am in my car driving alone or while on the treadmill at home. The shower can also be a great place to practice.

Try these ideas with your next presentation. Even if you only use one or two of these tips, you will have taken a huge step toward being a speaker who compels audiences to stay awake and listen. No one will be snoring in the back row.

Laurie Brown is an international speaker, trainer and consultant who works to help people improve their sales, service and presentation skills. She is the author of The Teleprompter Manual for Executives, Politicians, Broadcasters and Speakers. Contact Laurie through The Difference.net, or (877) 999-3433, or at lauriebrown@thedifference.net

Susan note:

On August 28 I will be interviewing Kathy Bote in a teleclass on Getting the Audience Involved. You may attend and or order the mp3. http://www.speakerservices.com/teleclasses/detail/105

Short overview- Want to give a presentation they’ll never forget?
Need to energize your audience AND get lasting results?
Simply want to be an amazingly dynamic speaker with life-changing impact?
To make a difference today, you have to get the audience involved! Learn how to creatively involve your audience and UP fun and retention by 80 percent or more!

At the Speakers’ Bootcamp we teach the communion approach to speaking. Speaking from the heart. At the Bootcamp you will be branded, media coached and learn how to use a dynamic template for organizing your talks. The Bootcamp is very interactive and hands on and transformational. You will never hear anyone snoring in the back row!

The following photo is from the July/August Bootcamp. Next Bootcamp November 5-9.

At the Speakers’ Summit08 I talked about Creating Info Products -take a look at this short video I created.

I will be using the video for selling the mp3 of the talk on the description page and I will make it available for folks who want to hire me for the presentation to their groups and I might put it in my e-zine as well as in the Speakers’ Summit08 description of my talk and I am sure that I will find other uses for it as well.

Here is a short list of info products that you could create which was part of my handout at the Summit.

TURN YOUR EXPERTISE INTO PROFITS

➢ Books
Published or Self-Published

➢ Mini-Books
Smaller versions of your book with cut-down content used as premiums

➢ E-Book- Compile related product information or instructions into an ebook. You could publish it in text, pdf, html format

➢ E-Book Of Reviews – Publish an ebook of stuff that’s related to your target audience that you could review like products, web sites, movies, etc

➢ Dictionary Of Terms-Publish a web directory or ebook dictionary of terms relating to your specific business industry or subject.

➢ Audio/MP3 Books

➢ Transcripts- Create an ebook of text transcripts of a related live event. It can be a seminar, speech, class, interview, etc.

➢ Article Compilation

➢ Blog Compilation

➢ Teleseminars – Expert Call Ins Set up a date and time when your customers can call up and talk directly with experts that are related to your industry

➢ Online Video-Allow customers to download or view a related how-to video or informative seminar right over the internet.

➢ Webinars over the internet

➢ Audio/MP3 Programs
Allow customers to download and listen to a recording of an expert that is being interviewed right over the internet

➢ Video Trainings- DVD’s/MP4’s

➢ Multi-Media Products
Combine Printed materials, video and CD’s

➢ Home-Study Courses
Multi-media product format designed to be a complete system in a box.

Today my colleague and friend Patsy Bellah talks about why teleseminars are probably the single most prolific source for new products. One teleseminar can produce at least 20 streams of income or marketing strategies (and counting).

1. Charge for the teleseminar

2. Edit the audio and that becomes a product.

3, 4, 5. Extract portions of the audio to turn it into more than one audio product, an RSS Feed, an audio on your blog, Tips for a new website, etc.

6. Get the teleseminar transcribed and the audio and transcript become a packaged product.

7, 8, & 9. Using the transcript from the teleseminar, extract portions for multiple articles.

10. The transcript of just one hour-long teleseminar is perfect for a Special Report.

11, 12, & 13. Use portions of the transcript for magazine or Ezine articles. One hour-long teleseminar will probably produce about three articles.

14. Using the transcript from one hour-long teleseminar is perfect for a chapter in your book, ebook or home study course. One hour-long teleseminar will usually produce about 20-30 pages.

15, 16, 17, & 18. . Combine several teleseminar transcripts and they become a book, eBook, eCourse or home study course.

19. RSS Feed.

20. Blog entries.

There are more and I’m sure I’ll be increasing this list for days. I had to stop at 20 because this article was becoming too long.

A transcript of an hour-long teleseminar, which you can get for less than $100, plays an important role in either helping to market or create at least 14 of the above listed items. What is an information product? All of us already have knowledge about many different things. Sometimes we feel that because we know something so well, everyone else must already know it.

That isn’t true. Information that you can give to other people is important to them and there is somebody who would love to have your knowledge, even though you think that everybody already knows all about that subject.

There may be other people with the same knowledge, and you may hear someone say, “Oh, I know all about that.” That can sometimes be discouraging and intimidating. But don’t let that daunt you. There will still be plenty of people who would like to have your knowledge. You just have to get it out of your mind and onto paper.

Record your knowledge and get it transcribed, and prosper from it.

What is transcription? Transcription is taking an audio recording and typing out the words so that they are a written document, usually a Word document. In it’s literal sense, transcription of an audio is word-for-word of what is said, leaving in all the grammatical errors, ums, ahs, etc. Working closely with a transcription service, they can help you edit out most of these unwanted phrases.

Thus you have created another product to complement your audio product.

Patsy Bellah is the owner of Great Transcriptions where the spoken word becomes the written word. Check us out at http://www.greattranscriptions.com For more information about recording your information products, read “How To Get Your Info-Product to Market With Lightning Speed!” for only $29.95 at http://www.lightningfastinfoproducts.com We can help you with recording your Teleseminars. We can host your teleseminars, consult as to bridge lines, help with recording, provide a transcription of the teleseminar, create and submit articles from the transcription.

Today is my first post at our new blog home on the Speakers Community server.

Sam Levy, the NETMAN, made the move for me. We are still working on a few fixes however I think it is good enough to show off. Sam has been my webmaster for many years and is a delight to work with and very patient with me. Do look him up at http://www.thenetcave.com

Here’s some of the ways he can help you. The NET MAN provides Business Integration Consulting for the Internet as well as database driven sites, shopping carts and E-Zines. Business Websites That Work! Consulting – Management – Production – Hosting – Marketing – Development.

I mentioned the Speakers’ Community and that is a membership site that Sam is building for me and it should be ready to launch I think at the end of October.
There is a link underneath the banner that says Speakers’ Community clcik on that which will explain my vision for this ambitious project.

Today we are talking about Online Media Rooms and their importance. We were discussing online media rooms on our last teleclass call with Jill Lublin and Nita Vallens. Listen to the audio replay. Jill will go into more detail about this topic at the MediaSpeak Symposium in October.

To reinforce the information Jill shared with us I asked Marcia Yudkin for permission to reprint her article on Online Media Rooms. Marcia is a brilliant marketer and I have been la fan of hers for years.

She is one of myRecommended Resource She offers creative solutions for marketing and PR and has many special reports, CD’s, E-books and books on her website for purchase that will be helpful for your marketing and PR concerns.

Take a look at her offerings and she is always adding new iitems. http://tinyurl.com/3xyfu9
Take it away Marcia

Online Press Rooms Save the Media Time and Frustration
by Marcia Yudkin

When web site usability guru Jakob Nielsen tested how well major corporate sites met the needs of reporters last year, he gave them a “D” grade. Journalists who tested sites for him located basic information such as the companies’ financials, management team, commitment to social responsibility and a phone number for a PR contact only 60 percent of the time.

An excellent way to meet reporters’, editors’ and producers’ needs is online press room, collecting what they need to know about your organization in one place. Some sites offer this as a subchoice under “About Us,” while others have a major link called “Press Room,” “For the Press” or “For the Media.” By providing press-friendly materials on demand 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, you increase the odds of someone writing about you, using photos you’ve supplied and doing so with accuracy.

Your online press room should contain, at a minimum:
- An organizational profile
- Names and bios of principals and executives of your organization
- A PR contact with name, email address and telephone number
- Press releases, presented with the most recent first

Optional extras for your press room include:
- Online versions of recent annual reports or white papers
- Downloadable photos of products or key personnel
- Statements about relevant controversial issues currently in the news
- Suggested angles for feature stories including your organization
- Sample questions for talk show hosts
- Links to pertinent studies, statistics and news stories
- Links to previous coverage you’ve enjoyed
- Prewritten use-as-is stories or tips
- Audio or video clips, especially for music performers

The more lively the style in which all of the above comes across, the more likely you are to get journalists passing through to stay awhile and start thinking about how they can use what you’ve provided. Corporate-speak may please internal bosses, but it gets in the way here and may even provide fodder for the many sites that make fun of pretentious marketing blather.

Keep in mind that on the web, media from all over the world and from outside of your industry can access your press room, so avoid acronyms and insert the kinds of background explanations that would be found in a quality news story. Dates are especially important to present unambiguously. Jakob Nielsen reported a case where a European reporter dismissed a company’s news as old because it was dated 10-3-2000, which to him meant March 10 rather than the intended October 3.

Nielsen also pointed out that the journalists, whom his team observed in their actual work environment, often were using old software or hardware which crashed when trying to access PDF files or Flash sites. Remember that despite the apparent convenience of downloadable files, some media folks may for many reasons still prefer to receive a physical copy of your photos or your product – or a traditional all-in-one-folder, expensive-to-mail PR kit.

An online press room meets some needs, but not all, so be prepared to fulfill old-fashioned requests as well.

If you find this information helpful or you have a comment we would like to hear from you.

A few days ago I talked about Alex Carroll the Radio PR Guy. He has a database of radio talk show hosts and producers who book speakers/authors for their shows. Today I am sharing a tip from him on how to create a pitch or media hook plus examples of radio show listings from his database.

Also included in this post is one of my favorite recommeded resources audioacrobat.
Have you considered doing your own radio show or podcasting? Or do you simply want to have an audio prescence of your website or blog? How about recording a teleclass and creating a product from it? You can do all of the above plus more if you have audioacrobat.

AudioAcrobat is a powerful and easy online radio and audio/video content development tool and a recording, streaming and hosting service. All of your audio messages are automatically converted into a single of html code that can be uploaded to any website. Dave Barrett, the owner offers training every week. See the schedule for the week of July 9 & 10. below. Try it out for 30 days for free. Click here to try it out.

You can see how I uploaded an MP4 of our speaker and authot Julie Thong to audioacrobat click here and to listen to audio see Lisa Marie Platske . Listen to a replay of a teleclass of a Q & A teleclass that I did with Jack Barnard on The Speakers’ Bootcamp or take a look at the Speakers’ Summit Hot Seat Video’s we produced . If you would like to develop a one camera streaming video for your website or blog etc you might want to attend the BizSpeak and Video Workshop September 15 &16 in Los Angeles and also see the streaming samples that I uploaded to audioacrobat .

BTW: On July 23, I am offering a free teleclass with Nita Vallens, talk show host for KPFK, Inner Vision and Jill Lublin, Guerilla Marketing. We’ll be talking about online media rooms and what producers/hosts say they look for in a compelling guest. Sign up Both of these ladies are speaking at the MediaSpeak Symposium in October.

At the MediaSpeak Symposium you will learn how to pitch to the media and actually have an opportunity to pitch live to radio, TV and print folks.

Back to Alex’s tip:

The first step towards being a guest on big radio shows is coming up with a great “media hook,” or “show pitch.”

Here’s a fill-in-the-blank formula that you can use to create a show pitch that is guaranteed to grab a producer’s attention virtually every time …

* Pitch Formula: “___ things you must do immediately when ______________”

And here’s a couple of examples of how you might apply it:

Show Pitch: “5 things you must do immediately when you find out the company you work for is about to be bought out”

Show Pitch: “3 things you must do immediately when someone starts yelling at you … or threatening you”

This is a very versatile show pitch formula and can be used for almost anything. The word “must” makes it especially compelling, and the word “immediately” makes it urgent. Here’s some more examples: “7 things you must do immediately when the Fed starts lowering interest rates,” or “when your flight gets cancelled,” or “when the principal calls and your kid’s in trouble,” or “when you notice an odd growth on your skin,” or “when you wake up from a bad nightmare,” or whatever. It’s pretty much limitless.

If you are ready to pitch to talk shows I suggest you purchase the database listing which includes 1,264 radio shows, faxes, e-mails, websites, categories, show descriptions, time slots, number of listeners, frequencies, markets, time zones, news directors, public affairs directors, program directors, and more … for each show.

And it is the only database available of just the big shows. Here’s the link to order the talk show database.

Sample of radio talk show producers on Alex’s list.
Rank, Host, Producer, Phone, Address

#1, Sean Hannity, James Grisham, 212-613-3800
WABC, 2 Penn Plaza, 17th Fl., New York, NY 10121

#2, Michael Savage, David Ruben, 541-664-8827
Talk Radio Ntwk., 724 E. Pine St., Central Point, OR 97502

#3, Howard Stern, Gary Del’Abate, 212-584-5100
Sirius, 1211 6th Ave., New York, NY, 10020

#4, Dr. Laura, Fax pitches to 818-461-5140, 818-377-5300
Premiere, 15260 Ventura Bl-500, Sherman Oaks, CA, 91403

#5, George Noory, Lisa Lyon, 541-955-0100
Premiere, 777 NE 7th St., Grants Pass, OR, 97526

#6, Bill O’Reilly, Ron Mitchell, 212-301-3000
Fox News, 1211 6th Ave., New York, NY 10036

#7, Glenn Beck, Stu Burguiere, 610-617-2033
WPHT, 10 Monument Rd., Bala Cynwyd, PA, 19004

#8, Laura Ingraham, Mike Kincaid, 541-664-8827
TRN, 724 E. Pine St., Central Point, OR, 97502

#9, Jim Bohannon, John Stolnis, 202-457-7997
Westwood One, 2020 ‘M’ NW, Washington DC, 20036

#10, Mike Gallagher, Jason Hiatt, 972-831-1920
Salem, 6400 N. Beltline Rd, Ste 210, Irving, TX 75063

Here are the upcoming comimentary AudioAcrobat training choices:

Monday – July 9, 2007

Basic Training…75 minutes

2:00 PM Eastern Time (EST)
1:00 PM Central Time (CST)
12:00 Noon Mountain Time (MST)
11:00 AM Pacific Time (PST)

———————————-

Podcasting and Video…75 minutes

Please have an audio recording for this class

7:00 PM Eastern Time (EST)
6:00 PM Central Time (CST)
5:00 PM Mountain Time (MST)
4:00 PM Pacific Time (PST)

***************************

Tuesday – July 10, 2007

Podcasting and Video…75 minutes

Please have an audio recording for this class

2:00 PM Eastern Time (EST)
1:00 PM Central Time (CST)
12:00 Noon Mountain Time (MST)
11:00 AM Pacific Time (PST)

————————

Basic Training…75 minutes

7:00 PM Eastern Time (EST)
6:00 PM Central Time (CST)
5:00 PM Mountain Time (MST)
4:00 PM Pacific Time (PST)

***************************

Conference Call Number: (605) 990-0001

Remember you can try it out for 30 days for free.