Live vs Recorded or Prerecorded Webinars Plus Evergree aka Ever Webinar vs GotoMeeting
Summary of Show on Live vs Recorded Webinars and the systems to manage them
Although there are a lot of different webinar systems, two which stand out are the Evergreen Business System (edit now known as EverWebinar!) and GoToMeeting. For the Evergreen Business System, a one-off fee enables you create and automate webinars on a variety of different domains; and the GoToMeeting is a pay monthly, traditional ‘go to meeting’ which runs on somebody else’s system. In terms of which webinar system is best, Evergreen Business System is favoured because recording is a problem with the GoToMeeting system, and as webinars are so profitable anyway; the cost benefits of paying monthly are less significant. Furthermore, the Evergreen Business System provides a range of different options for your recorded webinars. When considering whether to record your webinar or do it live, the primary rule is to be completely honest, as there are a range of different ethical concerns which need to be considered when running live or recorded webinars. What is really important to think through is how professional you want the webinar to be, which can be jeopardised when doing live webinars. One effective approach is to pre-record the webinar then run it whilst being available for chat, which can actually increase sales. It is important however to always record what you do to ensure that you don’t miss any ‘gems’. Another method is to go live and present an existing PowerPoint presentation, although sometimes there is too much focus on ‘the live’, and mistakes such as lateness can have big consequences. Although technology is not advanced enough to seamlessly combine live and recorded webinars, one way of getting around this is to have a live chat after a recorded webinar.
Evergreen Business Systems Explainer Video
GoToMeeting Explainer Video
Transcripts of show on Live vs Recorded Webinars
Transcription of Webinar Show
BRETT:Hey Warren I’ve got kind of a tricky question about webinars, in particular myself and a couple of my clients they’ve been looking at how to run a webinar and there’s lots of different systems and monthly plans and services, and as I’m looking at them, there’s a couple of different philosophies that stand out. One is the Evergreen Business System which is a, you pay once, you get a package which loads up into your website and you can run a webinar system or create webinars and run them automatically into the future . The other is more like a traditional go to meeting, go to webinar type of scenario where you pay a monthly fee to somebody, sometimes you’ll have to pay extra depending on how many people are coming to the webinar and it’s running on somebody else’s system, somebody else’s website. I’ve got reservations about that although the name ‘GoToMeeting’ has a lot of pull in it, both good and bad connotations, they install software on your desktop and that can be ugly. Obviously I’m a little lost, and I’m in over my head a little bit with the webinar concept and so I’m wondering, what are your thoughts on what’s better, something like Evergreen Business Systems where you automate the webinars and perfect them before you go live and pay one price and you’re done with it, or something like a GoTo medium where you’re paying monthly and the good and bad that comes with that, what do you think?
WARREN: Ok, oh yeah this is a great question, and you know, first of all, most of the questions like this that I get end up being like whether you need a or b, or which product is best, the features win and the truth is, especially when you get into the economics of it anything you do that’s doing webinars can be so profitable for your business that the cost really is nothing. Hey if you done 100 webinars and you want to look at what may help your budget in the next quarter then yeah it’s maybe time to take a look at that, but starting off first of all, doing a GoTo Meeting, GoTo Webinar type of thing, recording is a problem; and if you’re doing a webinar that’s working, if you have good information, just like us talking here, I mean we’ve turned on a recorder and I’m answering the question here so I can share with other people. It makes sense to record it and have as much options to do with that as you can. So I like creating content and then sharing it with people even if when in creating the content you’re creating it live. Some people ask, should it be live vs. recorded? There’s one cardinal rule on that – don’t lie about it. You know there is a lot of things that look like especially Evergreen Business Systems, just looks like it’s a webinar that you’re signed up for and its out at a certain time and there’s even an option to fake having people on the call, all of that is up to you what you want to do on that, I’m not worried about that, I’m worried about whether or not if I go on the webinar and say: “Hi welcome to the webinar, we are live right now and you can chat with us”, and really I’m off having dinner while the webinar’s running – that would be lying, ‘the following is a live presentation’, and whether or not you mark that it’s recorded, there’s some psychology things about that, you can actually get away with something by lying about it, if they find out you’re lying about it they’ll hate you and when I tell you about the ethics part I’m just talking about the psychology part, and the other thing is there was a study with Infomercial when they started having to label, you know when you watch an infomercial and it says ‘the following is a paid programme’ you know like that, it turns out that actually increased the credibility of the programme, so you know you can play around with different things there. So what we’re really looking at is how professional you want to be in your presentation. Do you want to take the time to record as you know, ‘right now’ as bumbling as I am, this is me at my best; but you know if I did slip up or fall off my chair or whatever we could cut and do it again, so if you want to be live while the webinar is going, run the webinar and then be live in the chat and go ahead and talk to people, which means your full attention is on the people that are attending, which is where it should be anyway. So I’d like to do the recording first, then using a system like Evergreen is the best of all, although anyway it’s really about whether or not you’re engaged with the audience and answering any questions.
BRETT: One of the things that attracted me to that concept was you mention in the chat discussion you know, if you’re a one person show, you can’t necessarily talk and then respond to people in the chat room at the same time so if you can record what you’re going to say in your presentation you can then take that feedback and move on from there and respond live while you’re also talking ……
WARREN: I found in the last couple of years, since I got used to answering a lot people on Twitter, you know, wrote the first Twitter book and got a lot of people coming to me and say ‘oh how do I get a lot of followers on Twitter’ or whatever like that, and I’m answering the same questions over and over again, and you know, used to put that on an FAQ and forget about it and ‘go see my frequently asked questions’, and today what I’m finding is the technology allows us to automate some things that don’t add to the experience and spend our time on things that do add the experience and answering those things what I find is the sales to people who have asked a question in chat are at least double the sales of overall. So even if I have a recorded webinar, being there live and answering the questions is going to be well worth the time to do it, it does give me the flexibility of maybe not being there or have somebody else man it, again only in ways I find ethical and so that’s just the best thing; so now if I’m doing a live webinar I use Evergreen Business Systems, I set it up as a live, like a live date, I go ahead and pre-record it, I load it up, they have an option for doing actual live and recording a live one but most of the time I go ahead and pre-record it so I can pay attention to the people that are attending although there’s always that option to do it live and record it. In all cases though, make sure you record what you do because you never know when you’re to come up with just the right gem of where people say ‘that was great’, you want to be able to go ahead and share it with the next person that asks, just like you’re asking today I’m sure somebody else could ask about webinars, that’s true of any topic, there’s always a lot more people that want to know about your expertise than you’re going to get on any particular webinar so rule 1. Record it; which kind of to me says, GoTo Webinar and GoTo Meeting is a proprietary hole you get into, you have to use their system, there are ways to break out of that but why bother? Just go ahead and record it somewhere like what we’re doing now or as a PowerPoint with screen capture, make that part of the presentation. Another thing I’ve seen is to actually go on live, introduce the presentation and then say here’s a presentation I prepared and show that. You can try different ways to test, see what works best but I’ll tell you, I’ve seen enough bad live presentations where a person’s showing up late or the slides not working to make it why have so much focus on the live. As long as you’re telling the truth it’s fine. So I guess
BRETT: Changes on Murphy’s Law
WARREN: Yep. When choosing one make sure you choose one which works with your existing automation. In my case I’m a big fan of Infusion Soft Evergreen Business Systems tied into it really well and that’s why I’m mentioning that one here. They all work well, and the support from Evergreen Business Systems I know the guys there, they’re fantastic, it’s just a small company and they give you a lot more upgrades than you pay for and a lot more attention so good company, good idea.
BRETT: Alright that helps quite a bit, that helps quite a bit let me ask one final follow up question, is it possible to mix with Evergreen Business Systems so could I potentially do two minutes of live and intro, and hit the play button, and play my pre-recorded presentation so I could say ‘here in a second I’m going to start the presentation, it was actually pre-recorded yesterday, a week ago’ whatever the case is, and kind of do a mix and match of the two?
WARREN: Yeah the automated systems are sometimes set up so somebody can opt in and say they want to see it and you can allow them to see it right away, that you can schedule it at times you want to be available some things like that, or you can just use it like re-broadcast and there’s something to the letting somebody know ‘hey, I’ve got a webinar coming up that you’d be interested in’, no time do you say that it’s live and let them see it. That technology limits as we found out when producing these videos, it just limits the number of ways that we can go ahead and switch back and forth you know, it’d great if you could have one thing that was good, screen sharing and bringing on another person doing live versus recording and all of that but the technology as of this time has not quite got there, there are some tricks you could do, but I’d say avoid that. The way you’d do what you’re asking about would be to run a live webinar and then play the recording. Definitely that’s where you’d want to go with a system that is allowing for that. That’s actually a lot more common among things outside of GoTo Webinar and one’s that are meant for meeting presentation, and I think of one of other things that’s coming is go ahead and use recorded webinar and let people know that there will be a Google hangout at this time right after it or whatever, you’d be standing by with a Google hangout or a chat session or whatever to be able to help people further because one of things we’re doing whenever we’re trying to communicate is to engage people and build a relationship to where they trust you the next time they’ve got a question. There is very few situations where the purpose of the webinar is for me to present information to you and then goodbye we never talk again you know so… and some of these webinars I see look like that’s what they expected to happen; ‘here’s the latest trends going on’ and then when then they start to tack onto that ways to engage and create a relationship it seems forced like ‘you’ll want to download our white paper, call today, buy this; and the truth is you can go directly from anything into another discussion or follow-up email saying like ‘hey, we’re having another live discussion if you want to do that’ or if you like what you learn and you want to learn more, go do this, which is the up-sell and I’m finding that to be more and more in our testing, we’re seeing that work more than the good old if you ask them to buy more times they’re more likely to buy, still plenty to be done in the direct marketing to do that better but boy, how much fun is it that you can say somebody ‘I’m hanging out on Google if you’ve got any questions’ and know that the only people you’re inviting are people that have already seen your webinar, they’ve qualified, you know they’re interested, they’re your likely buyers and they’re people who really care about the topic, rather than saying ‘hey I’m having a hangout’ and just sending the people to that.
BRETT:Hey Warren I’ve got kind of a tricky question about webinars, in particular myself and a couple of my clients they’ve been looking at how to run a webinar and there’s lots of different systems and monthly plans and services, and as I’m looking at them, there’s a couple of different philosophies that stand out. One is the Evergreen Business System which is a, you pay once, you get a package which loads up into your website and you can run a webinar system or create webinars and run them automatically into the future . The other is more like a traditional go to meeting, go to webinar type of scenario where you pay a monthly fee to somebody, sometimes you’ll have to pay extra depending on how many people are coming to the webinar and it’s running on somebody else’s system, somebody else’s website. I’ve got reservations about that although the name ‘GoToMeeting’ has a lot of pull in it, both good and bad connotations, they install software on your desktop and that can be ugly. Obviously I’m a little lost, and I’m in over my head a little bit with the webinar concept and so I’m wondering, what are your thoughts on what’s better, something like Evergreen Business Systems where you automate the webinars and perfect them before you go live and pay one price and you’re done with it, or something like a GoTo medium where you’re paying monthly and the good and bad that comes with that, what do you think?
WARREN: Ok, oh yeah this is a great question, and you know, first of all, most of the questions like this that I get end up being like whether you need a or b, or which product is best, the features win and the truth is, especially when you get into the economics of it anything you do that’s doing webinars can be so profitable for your business that the cost really is nothing. Hey if you done 100 webinars and you want to look at what may help your budget in the next quarter then yeah it’s maybe time to take a look at that, but starting off first of all, doing a GoTo Meeting, GoTo Webinar type of thing, recording is a problem; and if you’re doing a webinar that’s working, if you have good information, just like us talking here, I mean we’ve turned on a recorder and I’m answering the question here so I can share with other people. It makes sense to record it and have as much options to do with that as you can. So I like creating content and then sharing it with people even if when in creating the content you’re creating it live. Some people ask, should it be live vs. recorded? There’s one cardinal rule on that – don’t lie about it. You know there is a lot of things that look like especially Evergreen Business Systems, just looks like it’s a webinar that you’re signed up for and its out at a certain time and there’s even an option to fake having people on the call, all of that is up to you what you want to do on that, I’m not worried about that, I’m worried about whether or not if I go on the webinar and say: “Hi welcome to the webinar, we are live right now and you can chat with us”, and really I’m off having dinner while the webinar’s running – that would be lying, ‘the following is a live presentation’, and whether or not you mark that it’s recorded, there’s some psychology things about that, you can actually get away with something by lying about it, if they find out you’re lying about it they’ll hate you and when I tell you about the ethics part I’m just talking about the psychology part, and the other thing is there was a study with Infomercial when they started having to label, you know when you watch an infomercial and it says ‘the following is a paid programme’ you know like that, it turns out that actually increased the credibility of the programme, so you know you can play around with different things there. So what we’re really looking at is how professional you want to be in your presentation. Do you want to take the time to record as you know, ‘right now’ as bumbling as I am, this is me at my best; but you know if I did slip up or fall off my chair or whatever we could cut and do it again, so if you want to be live while the webinar is going, run the webinar and then be live in the chat and go ahead and talk to people, which means your full attention is on the people that are attending, which is where it should be anyway. So I’d like to do the recording first, then using a system like Evergreen is the best of all, although anyway it’s really about whether or not you’re engaged with the audience and answering any questions.
BRETT: One of the things that attracted me to that concept was you mention in the chat discussion you know, if you’re a one person show, you can’t necessarily talk and then respond to people in the chat room at the same time so if you can record what you’re going to say in your presentation you can then take that feedback and move on from there and respond live while you’re also talking ……
WARREN: I found in the last couple of years, since I got used to answering a lot people on Twitter, you know, wrote the first Twitter book and got a lot of people coming to me and say ‘oh how do I get a lot of followers on Twitter’ or whatever like that, and I’m answering the same questions over and over again, and you know, used to put that on an FAQ and forget about it and ‘go see my frequently asked questions’, and today what I’m finding is the technology allows us to automate some things that don’t add to the experience and spend our time on things that do add the experience and answering those things what I find is the sales to people who have asked a question in chat are at least double the sales of overall. So even if I have a recorded webinar, being there live and answering the questions is going to be well worth the time to do it, it does give me the flexibility of maybe not being there or have somebody else man it, again only in ways I find ethical and so that’s just the best thing; so now if I’m doing a live webinar I use Evergreen Business Systems, I set it up as a live, like a live date, I go ahead and pre-record it, I load it up, they have an option for doing actual live and recording a live one but most of the time I go ahead and pre-record it so I can pay attention to the people that are attending although there’s always that option to do it live and record it. In all cases though, make sure you record what you do because you never know when you’re to come up with just the right gem of where people say ‘that was great’, you want to be able to go ahead and share it with the next person that asks, just like you’re asking today I’m sure somebody else could ask about webinars, that’s true of any topic, there’s always a lot more people that want to know about your expertise than you’re going to get on any particular webinar so rule 1. Record it; which kind of to me says, GoTo Webinar and GoTo Meeting is a proprietary hole you get into, you have to use their system, there are ways to break out of that but why bother? Just go ahead and record it somewhere like what we’re doing now or as a PowerPoint with screen capture, make that part of the presentation. Another thing I’ve seen is to actually go on live, introduce the presentation and then say here’s a presentation I prepared and show that. You can try different ways to test, see what works best but I’ll tell you, I’ve seen enough bad live presentations where a person’s showing up late or the slides not working to make it why have so much focus on the live. As long as you’re telling the truth it’s fine. So I guess
BRETT: Changes on Murphy’s Law
WARREN: Yep. When choosing one make sure you choose one which works with your existing automation. In my case I’m a big fan of Infusion Soft Evergreen Business Systems tied into it really well and that’s why I’m mentioning that one here. They all work well, and the support from Evergreen Business Systems I know the guys there, they’re fantastic, it’s just a small company and they give you a lot more upgrades than you pay for and a lot more attention so good company, good idea.
BRETT: Alright that helps quite a bit, that helps quite a bit let me ask one final follow up question, is it possible to mix with Evergreen Business Systems so could I potentially do two minutes of live and intro, and hit the play button, and play my pre-recorded presentation so I could say ‘here in a second I’m going to start the presentation, it was actually pre-recorded yesterday, a week ago’ whatever the case is, and kind of do a mix and match of the two?
WARREN: Yeah the automated systems are sometimes set up so somebody can opt in and say they want to see it and you can allow them to see it right away, that you can schedule it at times you want to be available some things like that, or you can just use it like re-broadcast and there’s something to the letting somebody know ‘hey, I’ve got a webinar coming up that you’d be interested in’, no time do you say that it’s live and let them see it. That technology limits as we found out when producing these videos, it just limits the number of ways that we can go ahead and switch back and forth you know, it’d great if you could have one thing that was good, screen sharing and bringing on another person doing live versus recording and all of that but the technology as of this time has not quite got there, there are some tricks you could do, but I’d say avoid that. The way you’d do what you’re asking about would be to run a live webinar and then play the recording. Definitely that’s where you’d want to go with a system that is allowing for that. That’s actually a lot more common among things outside of GoTo Webinar and one’s that are meant for meeting presentation, and I think of one of other things that’s coming is go ahead and use recorded webinar and let people know that there will be a Google hangout at this time right after it or whatever, you’d be standing by with a Google hangout or a chat session or whatever to be able to help people further because one of things we’re doing whenever we’re trying to communicate is to engage people and build a relationship to where they trust you the next time they’ve got a question. There is very few situations where the purpose of the webinar is for me to present information to you and then goodbye we never talk again you know so… and some of these webinars I see look like that’s what they expected to happen; ‘here’s the latest trends going on’ and then when then they start to tack onto that ways to engage and create a relationship it seems forced like ‘you’ll want to download our white paper, call today, buy this; and the truth is you can go directly from anything into another discussion or follow-up email saying like ‘hey, we’re having another live discussion if you want to do that’ or if you like what you learn and you want to learn more, go do this, which is the up-sell and I’m finding that to be more and more in our testing, we’re seeing that work more than the good old if you ask them to buy more times they’re more likely to buy, still plenty to be done in the direct marketing to do that better but boy, how much fun is it that you can say somebody ‘I’m hanging out on Google if you’ve got any questions’ and know that the only people you’re inviting are people that have already seen your webinar, they’ve qualified, you know they’re interested, they’re your likely buyers and they’re people who really care about the topic, rather than saying ‘hey I’m having a hangout’ and just sending the people to that.