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Hosting Your First Webinar? 3 Tips for Success | Syed Balkhi, Business.com
A webinar is a presentation where a host shares information with an audience. The information can be anything, so long as it educates your audience by giving them new and exciting information, or provides value to them via information that may be much harder to understand without the host. According to a study by the Content Marketing Institute, 61 percent of B2B content marketers use webinars as an effective tool for marketing their business.
Here are three tips to help you nail your first presentation.
Consider Content Over Your Pitch
Imagine if you were invested in an upcoming webinar, only to find out that it was a big sales pitch. Two things would likely happen. First, you’d probably be disappointed in the host, and second, you would be less likely to go back and watch the next webinar from that creator.
Harvard Business Review cited in their findings that webinars are at their most efficient when they teach a newly emerging technology. The reason for this is simple — people are looking for trustworthy information from a reputable source. Immediately jumping to the pitch can destroy your chances at appearing credible.
There’s nothing wrong with working on your sales pitch and perfecting it. However, your primary concern should be educating and engaging with your audience.
Use Time to Your Advantage
A general rule of thumb is you want to avoid the first and last day of the work week for your target audience. This is usually a time of getting new projects started or closing up existing projects and loose ends.
Webinar Ninja did discover a “sweet spot” as it pertains to time though. Typically, you can expand your reach by hosting your webinar between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on “good” days for your audience, and in their time zone. They found that during this time, their webinar presentations had a 47 percent attendance rate. When mid-low 20s is the average attendance rate, it’s safe to say there is a proper time to host your first webinar.
Use All of Your Marketing Channels for Promotion
You’re going to want to bring out the big guns, create social media ad campaigns via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or whatever other outlets you frequent. Make sure you market your target audience, explain the benefits of the webinar and the cost (if applicable).
At the same time, every customer who comes to your website should know that your webinar is coming. You can create custom optin popups for customers and encourage them to sign up for your mailing list for more information on the webinar as the date of the presentation approaches.
Finally, you’re going to want to send out reminder emails to your lead lists leading up to the webinar. A good rule is to send a two-week reminder, one-week reminder, one-day reminder, and two day-of reminders.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that it takes nerves of steel to do your first live webinar — but it’s so worth it. The experience and personal interaction you get with your customer base are unmatched. You’ll be able to reach a wider audience, provide valuable information about emerging technologies and ideas, as well as your brand and how you can help.
If you’re using insights to track your traffic and sales post-webinar, you’ll be able to see if your event had a marked impact on your business.
Pros and Cons of Working From Home | Robin Madell, Money.usnews.com
Just like working in an office, remote work comes with pros and cons. To explore both the benefits of working from home as well as the drawbacks, I conducted informal interviews with more than 100 people with remote working jobs. Below are some of the top themes that emerged about remote workers’ favorite aspects of telecommuting and the challenges that come with a work-from-home lifestyle.
The pros and cons of working from home are:
- Pro: You have flexibility to take care of appointments and errands.
- Con: There is no physical separation between work and leisure time.
- Pro: There are fewer interruptions from meetings and chitchat.
- Con: It is easy to misread cues via electronic communications.
- Pro: There is no commute time or expense.
- Con: You have to make the effort to get a change of scenery.
Pro: You have flexibility to take care of appointments and errands.
When you work from home, while you still have to meet your deadlines and be available when you say you will be, you generally have wider bandwidth to tend to other responsibilities without jeopardizing your job.
Con: There is no physical separation between work and leisure time.
“It’s a constant balancing act to make sure you’re taking enough time for your family and yourself,” says Carrie Hill, co-founder of Ignitor Digital Marketing, who has been working from home for the last six years. “The pitfall is that there’s always a computer on and available, so setting boundaries and sticking to those boundaries is pretty important.”
Pro: There are fewer interruptions from meetings and chitchat.
It’s easier to get into a flow state of deep work when you’re in your home office without colleagues dropping by and sitting down impromptu to talk about their weekends. Limiting unnecessary interruptions from your colleagues and boss is a big plus of working from home and is one reason why many remote workers are more productive than office-based workers.
Con: It is easy to misread cues via electronic communications
“Just like in relationships, it can be easy to misconstrue tonality of someone’s messages. We’re often blind without body language and facial expressions to rely on, and we assume the worst. Therefore, there needs to be extra effort made in maintaining positive communications,” says Michael Sunderland, managing director of Full Stack Talent.
Pro: These is no commute time or expense.
You can save a lot of money and avoid wasting hours that others spend simply getting to and from work when your office is right down the hall. Avoiding traffic battles and long-distance schleps tops the list of benefits for some of those who work from home.
Con: You have to make the effort to get a change of scenery.
What can be a blessing can also become a curse in the form of cabin fever. Some freelancers and others who work from home lamented that the place they work during the day is the exact same place they’ll be sitting later that evening and that getting involved in their work often translates to spending a huge portion of the day indoors. Many stressed the importance of scheduling lunches and other meetings to keep them in the mix and avoid the rut of never leaving the house.
Remote work has clear benefits, but no situation is perfect. Understanding the reasons to work from home – as well as the reasons not to – can go a long way in learning how to work from home successfully.
Working from home is a completely different experience than working in an office and there are many things you need to think about when becoming self-employed. It can be easy to overlook some of them with the buzz of taking the leap.
But if you read this guide to eight things you need to know before becoming self-employed, you’ll feel much more prepared.
1. You’ll Need Space To Work
Working from home may need a bit of reorganization of your space.
It helps to have a dedicated work space, even in your house. This will help you make the distinction between work life and home life. So when you are sat at your desk, you’re at work.
It will also help you keep all your work supplies and paperwork in one place and prevent you from losing things.
2. You Are the Team
If you have been working for an organization, you were probably part of a team. But if you’re going to become self-employed, you’ll be on your own.
That means there won’t be an IT department to call if you are having tech issues. There won’t be anyone to do your filing or tidy up after you, and there won’t be someone to pick up the slack if you are snowed under.
3. No One Will Sort Out Your Taxes
You may have had all of your taxes taken care of if you worked for a larger company. But if you are self-employed, your taxes are your responsibility.
But don’t be too daunted! There is plenty of advice available online about your tax responsibilities that will help you estimate what you owe.
4. Self-Employment Needs Financial Planning
If you are used to a regular paycheck each month, becoming self-employed can be a bit of a shock to the system.
It’s unlikely your income will be that consistent, especially in the first few months. So you need to plan for this and budget accordingly.
Work out the minimum you need to make, and what your essential expenses will be, and always have a back-up plan. Make sure you won’t be overstretched when you first start out, there will be enough to worry about!
5. Saving Is a Must
Because your income and your tax are your responsibility, it is important that you put money aside for your tax bill.
Whether you factor it into your regular budgeting or set up a specific savings account, it is essential you save some money.
6. Insurance Is Your Responsibility
Things like health insurance, dental plans, life insurance, and earnings protection will be down to you to sort out.
If you are the main breadwinner in your family, then insurance is even more important, as anything that prevents you from working can be really serious.
7. Keep Your Contacts
While it might feel like a relief to walk away from your old job, you should still try and leave on good terms. Becoming self-employed can be a risky venture, so you will need as many contacts as possible.
You never know when your old business contacts or old colleagues may come in useful in the future, whether as clients or just to ask advice. So keep hold of that contact list.
8. You Still Need a Schedule
It can be easy to get distracted when you work at home. When you don’t have a manager or a team to coordinate your schedule with, it is easy for your working day to lose some structure.
Even if you are not arranging meetings you should still create a daily schedule and stick to it.
So those are eight things you should know before you switch to self-employment.
You will need to be organized, manage your finances and your taxes, and take care of your own benefits. But hopefully it will reap rewards and you won’t look back.
5 Tech Careers You Can Do From Home | T2conline.com
Are you currently in the tech field or hoping to make a transition into the field in the near future? Maybe you feel as though the daily grind and commute to work is just taking too much time out of your schedule, and making it hard to keep the household running smoothly where the kids are concerned. If so, it may be time to look into careers you can do from home, in particular tech careers.
Here’s a look at five that may just be exactly what you are looking for.
PCB Designer
Because technology is becoming more of a requirement in businesses across all industries, there are constantly new plans and projects being pieced together and then implemented. This is where an IT project manager comes into play. They will build the project, set up the team, identify issues, track all the steps and milestones, and ensure that everything moves smoothly.
Web Designer
As a web designer, you’ll be responsible for building websites from scratch and re-designing existing ones. This means your coding skills need to be on point.
IT Project Manager
Because technology is becoming more of a requirement in businesses across all industries, there are constantly new plans and projects being pieced together and then implemented. This is where an IT project manager comes into play. They will build the project, set up the team, identify issues, track all the steps and milestones, and ensure that everything moves smoothly.
System Administrator
For many businesses out there, a system administrator is a crucial part of their team, as this administrator is who ensures their computer system runs efficiently and properly at all times. You will work to configure and upkeep the servers and computers, which thanks to technology can all be done remotely nowadays.
Software Engineer
In this position, you will work to create and then develop software for systems and computers. Most likely you will be working as part of a remote team, which can also be a benefit for those who like to be part of a group and collective atmosphere.
Each of these careers can prove to be an excellent choice for anyone looking to pursue an at-home tech career which provides all the flexibility you’re after.
With the busy holiday season approaching, you’re going to need to hire new hourly employees to keep up with demand.
Starting a business can be a scary undertaking since there are no guarantees of success.
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