Archive for the ‘Lynette Chandler’ Category

One of Alice’s older blog posts over at InternetBasedMoms Experts blog caught my eye recently. It was titled “How Outsourcing Can Affect Your Retirement“.

Retirement? I love what I do and the thought of retirement only crosses my mind only once in a blue moon. Yet, I know it is unrealistic for me to expect I’ll be working forever. Doesn’t mean I won’t try but that’s another story. There will come a point when I am unable to work. That’s why all through 2008, I started documenting everything I do – putting ‘systems’ in place.

In doing so, I’ve also discovered a problem. You see, I love to write in my Word Processor. I like the thought of nicely formatted documents, neatly printed and binded which I can pull out to refer to regularly. You bet, I still do a lot of things on paper. Particularly reference documents. But paper system has one fatal flaw. Great for businesses with a physical office. Not so great when you’re working virtually like many of us do.

This realization hit me hard when I had to instruct my assistant who lives 50 miles from me. That is not a short distance but far enough I cannot have her in my office everyday or even once a week. It needs to be online.

I tried to create PDF versions of the documentation, but that only generated more work. Making the PDF and uploading is not the problem. Keeping track of all the PDF’s and referring to them was beginning to be a major organization issue. My instructions also sometimes come in video format. I could of course create a page to list all the links out but if I was going to do that why not just create the whole system online? It’ll…

• Save me from keeping copies up to date
• Save me from doing work twice – enter information once and everything is there to share

I tried many ways and almost built a WordPress powered staff-only site just to manage all this which is not a bad idea. That may be the next one I’ll try if this one doesn’t pan out. However, my desire to not have yet another script to manage or upgrade stopped me. Right now, I believe a wiki will work best for me because:

• Wikis are editable if I give users the ability to. If an assistant changes a password they can just enter it there and I or anyone else on the team can pick it up without constantly emailing each other.
• It is easy to create and link to different Wiki pages
• Wikis are pretty easy to use
• Staff can add, update or contribute information to the wiki. I can get them to help me create the systems by documenting the work they do work for me. When they leave to pursue bigger and better things, I already have documentation in place to pass on to new recruits.
• Also… doing this means, I’m not the only one who’s generating this internal knowledge base.

If you’re interested to try out wikis to manage and share your systems internally, here are some places you can get started.

• Pbwiki
• WetPaint
• Wikispaces
• Google Sites – this is what I use since I’m already using GoogleApps which makes sharing and permissions a snap.
  

You can also run them on your web host – I prefer not to do this because I’ll have (yet) another web site and script to manage.

• DokuWiki
• WikkaWiki
• PmWiki

The holidays are upon us once again and for many of us, that means company holiday party time. But for some of us, a holiday party is as foreign and unattainable as a chat by the water cooler. That’s because we are at home entrepreneurs. We may have a team of people we work with but probably never met or took time to get to know each other better outside of work.

But it doesn’t have to be that way this year. Not for your company. With widespread high speed Internet access around the world, you can get together and indulge a little in holiday festivities. While a regular company party can be plagued with embarrassing moments and too much alcohol, a virtual party isn’t and it’s a great time to just come together to build the relationship with people who help your business grow. There are many software and services you can use to hold a virtual company holiday party. Some are free while others are available at very affordable, small company friendly rates.

One of the most popular conferencing systems that doesn’t cost anything is Skype. You can do voice, text chat with up to 5 other people. It also works on a variety of computer systems which means you aren’t limited when someone in the team is using a different system. The only down side is, you can only hold a video chat with one other person. Other popular and free systems include Yahoo! Messenger, UserPlane.

If you’re not adverse to spending a few dollars for your virtual company party, you could opt for web conferencing services. These offer more features such as the ability to surf the web together, and share your desktop in a secure environment just think. Sharing pictures and videos without uploading or sending files. Simply play your videos and open the pictures like normal and everyone sees it too.

Web conferencing systems also allow you to talk to larger groups on video, voice and text. Another nice thing, many services allow you to record your online event. Depending on the service, you can purchase these services on a per minute, per hour or per day basis.

If you’re thinking of throwing a virtual company party this holiday, start researching now. Because every service is so different, you need to test out a few systems to find out which works best for what you have envisioned your party to be. While you’re at it, why not hold one for your customers? Celebrate them and let them you appreciate their business. They’ll be sure to remember you when they need your products later in the year.

About the author:

Lynette Chandler is a technology loving marketer. She plans to make the most use of her web conference room this holiday season. You can find out what she’s using by visiting Meeting On Now!

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While attending a seminar series which was also streamed live online, I noticed the number of online participants versus the number of phone in participants was on average double if not more. One day, the seminar was held only on the phone. Participant rates dropped to an all time low. The next week we got back on both telephone and live streaming online, total number of participants rose. A simplistic observation but it is clear, given the choice people like to join a seminar session online.

Conference calls can be expensive.

Many teleconference services charge by the number of people and duration of the call. So if you have 15 people on a call together for 60 minutes at a rate of 4.5¢ per minute per participant, you’ll be paying $40.50 per session. May not sound like a lot but remember, if any of those variables change, your cost changes too.

Go global.

No matter where they are, if someone has an Internet connection, they can ‘tune in’ without the hefty cost. I’ve lived inside and outside the U.S. and believe me, no matter how great the information is, it is rare for someone to dial into a teleseminar with a U.S. number because the cost is too much and this sentiment is shared by others. For a great many people in the world, long distance is very expensive. No doubt, they are lower today than they were 5 even 10 years ago but it’s still not as affordable as dialing out of the U.S.

When’s the last time you dialed International?

Simple as a telephone is, many people do not know how to dial International. A lot of times they also have to go out of the home to purchase a calling card from a store. These are all barriers to attending your teleseminar call. If you’re already selling online, your customers undoubtedly have access to a computer with Internet connection. By streaming your audio (or video), you eliminate those barriers.

Who are they going to call?

Even within North America where long distance is very affordable, people still choose to spend their money wisely. In any given week, there are several teleseminars going on. If people choose to call in to several seminars, it could add up to a small fortune at the end of the month.

This doesn’t mean teleseminars do not work. They work very well indeed and have a great track record. But the world we know is changing; so are people’s preferences. And the technology available today makes streaming content and web conferencing easy and affordable. So if you could reach a few more people by streaming it online or adding a web conference component to your teleseminar, why wouldn’t you?

Lynette Chandler helps entrepreneurs recognize and apply the power of technology and its trends to their marketing. Improve your business with web conferencing today at Meeting On Now.

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Because teleseminars cost money for participants to attend, one way to help bring more people into a call is to create a streaming audio of your teleseminar over the Internet. Unfortunately, most methods of streaming audio over the Internet are expensive and difficult to setup.

The good news is, there’s a creative way you can now broadcast a streaming audio of your teleseminar affordably, and securely. How?

Get a web conference room. Web conference rooms vary a lot from company to company. To stream your teleseminar you’d want to look for a few specifics:

Streaming audio quality. While every technology is not perfect — even telephones have a lot of annoying beeps and static — many web conferencing services today have little problem with streaming audio. Often, issues with audio come from user inexperience or computer settings but this can easily be remedied with a little bit of help documentation and education.

Next, get a room that’ll give you flexible or good number of number of seats. You’ll want this because it’s often difficult to anticipate number of participants.

Flat rate web conferencing. This will be a challenge to find because most web conference rooms sell by number of seats or per minute or both but there are companies who sell a monthly flat rate.

Don’t get distracted with the rest of the services like video if you’re only looking for streaming audio. Video and other related tools have the tendency to bog down the system because of the huge amounts of bandwidth required to transmit. The point is, it shouldn’t be a major factor in your consideration unless you plan to transition to web conferencing and reduce the use of the telephone bridge.

Once you’ve narrowed down the web conferencing service provider of choice, you’ll need a key piece of equipment that’ll pipe your telephone audio into the computer and vice versa. One of the best we’ve seen is the Dynametric TMP 636 or TMP 636S. Simply, hook it up and you’re ready to broadcast streaming audio of your teleseminar online.

Why go through all that trouble when you can find a web conferencing service who has built in telephone and streaming audio capabilities? That’s a good question but you’ll have to be the judge. Consider the cost for these integrated phone and streaming audio solutions. They will naturally cost more but beyond dollar amount, are there any limitations? Compare them with the cost of your existing teleconference call line, your (preferably fixed rate) web conferencing plan and the one time telephone patch.

One last pointer, consider how often you conduct teleseminars and the number of people attending as these are the biggest variables affecting cost. As a rule of thumb, if you don’t conduct that many teleseminars or you have less people calling in, it’ll work out better to have an integrated solution.

Lynette Chandler helps entrepreneurs recognize and apply the power of technology and its trends to their marketing. Leverage web conferencing in your business now at Meeting On Now.

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