Monday, April 25, 2011

Webinar Tools (Even A Free Option)

5 Webinar Tools For Marketing Your Expertise
5 Webinar Tools For Marketing Your Expertise
33
Share
Apr 22, 2011 -
Speaking to groups is a great way to share your expertise and market your services. But it doesn’t scale, as the saying goes, unless you record the presentation. Plus, you can only do so many talks per year and still run your company.
You may have heard that producing a webinar is an effective method to reach lots of people. However, you are not sure you want to spend on one of the top three players: GoToMeeting, Webex or Adobe Connect.
Here are six free and low-cost webinar platforms that I’ve tried and are worth considering:
AnyMeeting
AnyMeeting is one of the most compelling webinar platforms online today. Not only are they completely free, but they also offer advanced features that compete with the big players. Some of those features include: up to 200 attendees, screensharing and recording, hosting of your webinar on their servers, and the ability to download it, custom branding, collect information from participants, the list could go on. The only downside is it is advertiser-supported, which means your audience will see a sponsor message. It seems a small price to pay, considering all the features.
Price: Free
GatherPlace
This webinar tool is easy-to-use and affordable. I used them for a webinar series last year and was pleased with the service and the customer support (they helped me solve audio issues with my computer). Additionally, they are Windows and Mac compatible, and you can record the event and then download the file for later use.
Price: Offers a free 14-day trial, then pricing begins at $29/mo for 5 attendees.
Fuze
Fuze is one of my favorites because of their pricing model: they offer a free 30-day trial and after, you can purchase by the day for $9.95, for up to 15 attendees. They also have mobile editions for iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and Android, and they offer many different ways to call in—via Skype, landline or if you provide the numbers of the attendees, Fuze will dial all your attendees for you and get them on the call.
Price: Free 30-day trial, $9.95 for the day
Yugma
Yugma is a powerful webinar tool with terrific incremental pricing that can work well for small meetings and webinars. They have a free version, but in order to record you need the P version which is based on the number of people you are going to have in a webinar.
Price: $24.95/yr for 2 people, plus host
Skype
Skype is a well-known brand, but mostly for its online voice-over phone offering. If you view Skype that way, then you’ll want to take a closer look—they continue to create and reinvent to stay ahead of their customers. You can conduct a video conference and share your screen now and it works smoothly, so there is no learning curve. The only downside is that there isn’t a way to record it yet. But if you only want to share a screen, on short notice even, this is ideal.
Price: Varies
Last year, I did this mega list at Small Business Trends, if you want to see even more webinar providers.

No comments:

Post a Comment