In my last post I talked about that “One Killer Feature”, the one that could give me an edge on the established players, the one that they would not replicate. In my case it was pre-recorded video presentations. Some of you who may have read this series from the beginning may be thinking “Wait a minute, I thought Steve said his inspiration for the idea came from scripts that used pre-recorded presentations, what’s he trying to pull here?” Ah yes, but I also said there are no new ideas. Let me explain.

I did originally say I got inspired by the scripts that were wooing internet marketers with the pre-recorded video webinar concept, but I did not say I planned to compete with them or serve their market. Here’s the lay of the land as I see it.

On the one hand, you got the legit webinar platforms serving corporate america as well as education and even small business with a complicated platform centered around the live event experience that include tools for live interaction.

On the other hand you have these scripts whose use of video has nothing to do with making a better event, but rather fooling people into thinking they are actually watching a live event. I can say that most webinars available right now for those type of products, i.e. “Get Rich With My System” are using these scripts. The fact is, while you are sitting there “participating”, you are 100% alone; there is no one else on the other side of the screen, you are watching a video. Yes, I decided that video is better; if the content is good, it’s better than live. My problem with the scripts is with the fact that you are led to believe you are participating in a live event, when in fact you are the only live one there. Maybe that’s where the phrase “I got a live one” came from. The only interactivity you may have might be the option to ask a question that in fact is simply emailed to someone.

So I saw the webinar market being served from these two extremes. What I wanted to do was to take the best of both options and create a new, better option.

I prefer the target market of Go-to-webinar, Webex, Readytalk etc.; you know, legitimate businesses. I wanted to be able to provide a platform that utilized pre-recorded content, but included the live interaction with the presenter, just like what many presenters were already doing on these platforms, but on a platform designed for presenting that way. That alone, however, would not be enough, I needed to add more features.

Basing the content on pre-recorded video meant that I could create a platform that was completely different from the big boys. For example, since almost all presenters kept the mute on and did not utilize the live speaking attendee feature, I did not need to worry about that one. Since my content was to be pre-recorded, all of the presenter hand-offs, screen switches, etc, would be part of the video, so I did not need any of that functionality either. This also meant that I did not need to require attendees to download any client software to participate. This last item was huge, as there are still a lot of people out there who are leery about downloading anything to their computers.

Another major failing of the big platforms was that presenters could not “give” anything tangible to their attendees. I wanted presenters to be able to offer attendees the option to download a document, during the webinar; a white paper, spec sheet, brochure, whatever, so I added that to the feature list. Again, because of the difference in platforms, I was also able to do something else the big boys could not do: allow attendees to fill in a form during the webinar. Not just answer a poll, but actually fill in an informational form of some kind: email newsletter sign-up, information form, hell, even an order form for that matter with a “Buy Now” button, during the webinar. I also had to provide for that live interactivity, so true live chat functionality was added to the feature list. I liked the idea of displaying a list of attendees to everyone as it adds social proof that the content is valuable and important, so I added that to the list. I also thought it was always a little pathetic to hear a presenter beg his audience to “please go to my website after the webinar”, so I added automatic redirection the list so that shortly after a webinar ends, attendees are automatically redirected to the presenter’s website.

Wow, if I could put this together, this would be incredible. But, how would my presenter clients know? Okay, so I needed to add some features for them as well. How about some analytics? Not just how many people watched, but maybe how long they watched. If a presenter could see he was losing a lot of attendees at a particular point in the presentation, maybe they could fine tune it? That would be cool, added to list. I should also make sure they get the name and email of all the attendees so they can follow-up, in fact, we’ll send them the list of registrants whether they attended or not, still qualified prospects, right? Added to list.

Whew, that’s a lot of features. If I could put that together I would definitely have something. While I know I will come up with even more feature as we go along, I decide that this list is sufficient to build something and see if we can get any traction.

Next Post: Let’s Build Something

previous post in series: One Killer Feature

Features are like your big nose. It makes you unique. Possibly even desirable to someone who feels they smell good. Features are the reason we initially select one person over another and also why we select one solution over another.

I realize this series is probably getting very specific to what I am working on. My hope is that you can relate it to what you may be doing, otherwise prepare to be bored.

So in my last post I discussed Minimum Requirements, and how that does not give you a damn thing. The only way that even gets you in the game is if you have something completely new, which I don’t believe anyone does. So we are all trying to build better mousetraps. Everyone in the space I am approaching (Go-to-Webinar, Webex, ReadyTalk, etc.) has the piece of wood with the big spring on it. I start with a piece of wood and a big spring also, but they have some things I don’t have: users, history, name recognition, financial backing, employees, rock solid platforms… okay forget it, I changed my mind.

Okay, changed it back. I can still carve out a niche in this well guarded space if I can come up with some features that people would want that the others don’t offer. But, if I come up with some great feature, what’s to keep them from just adopting it to keep me from getting any traction? I need a feature or features that they cannot replicate, at least not without making too many changes to their model. So let’s back up a little. I’ve been thinking about competing on the platform level, probably a lost cause unless I can somehow change the rules. So forget about the platform for a minute… what problem are they solving? What is a user hoping to accomplish via webinars? Well I assume they like the idea of being able to engage a large audience from anywhere in the world to convey their message. They probably like the interactivity and the whole “event” level feel. Maybe there is a different way to attack this need, something the existing players could not adopt.

So there are thousands of people and organizations that, for their own reasons, have adopted webinars as a tool. Let’s walk through what is involved for them and see if we can spot some weaknesses in the status quo.

I guess the first thing users need is someone in their organization to “do” the webinars. I think a lot of them choose poorly here, but I am not going to solve that problem. Then, they are going to need something to present, a PowerPoint or something, hmm…, maybe some opportunities there. They are going to need an account on one of the services… maybe an opportunity there also. They are going to need to learn how to operate the software… a definite opportunity there. They are going to need to create a webinar event and promote it, check and check. At the scheduled time for the webinar, they are going to have to login to a control panel of some kind and start running their webinar, possibly with multiple presenters, multiple hand-offs, potential technical difficulties, dead air, animations that may not work, etc, all while making sure they cover all of their points and not end up looking like a stammering incompetent boob… Bingo.

So I decided the weakest point in the process is the actual live webinar presentation process. We have all been on webinars, you look at a box on the screen with different things showing up while someone is talking, often a stammering, incompetent boob who runs way past the scheduled time. It’s almost like watching a really bad video. Wait just a minute! Why isn’t it a video?

I started doing a little more research on the better produced webinars… guess what, most of these folks already figured it out. In many of the best webinars, the presenter fires up the software and points his window to a video. No wonder he sounded so smooth. He’s also messaging with everybody, answering their questions right along, running polls, (I wondered how he was able to do that and run a presentation, I could never multi-task that well). Does anybody know they are watching a video I wondered… the content is good, the presenter is right there interacting, the presentation is flawless, ending at the exact time they said it would… I concluded that I would RATHER be watching a video. This is a much better use of my time. Eureka! I had just figured out my One Killer Feature. The webinar content for our platform will all be pre-recorded video.

While many of the webinars on the main platforms are actually videos nowadays, it’s kinda like pulling a wagon with a school bus. I mean all of the technology development in these platforms was centered around running live presentations; the ability to show different parts of your desktop, the ability to hand-off to different presenters, etc. I think they may have made a mistake when they offered recorded replays. The recorded replay distilled all of that technological effort into a single video file. Watching the video file, from a content standpoint was actually the same. In fact some of the guys using video started that way, playing the video recording of their prior webinars on the screen of their current webinar. All the benefit, with none of the hassle. Some of the smart ones realized, wait a minute, I don’t have to replay that crappy video from my last webinar where I had that problem with my slides, I can record a presentation on my own computer, and edit it to perfection. So now you know the secret to the really smooth webinars. They play a perfectly edited video and skip 90% of the features of the platform.

I decided this would be the centerpiece of our platform, with all of the money the other guys have spent on their live technology, there is no way that would even consider switching up to video, in fact I assume they are annoyed at the practice happening on their own platforms.

Next Post: More Features Please

previous post in series: Minimum Requirements

Take our Facebook Ads module for example.

First we add to what we already know by scouring the web collecting every single method, tip, example, training product, video, pitfall, success and shortcut we can find, running down every rabbit hole and dead-end for weeks. I have personally watched hours of video miss-information, some even suggesting techniques that will not only fail, but probably get you kicked off of Facebook entirely. Then, my partners and I go through all of the collected information with our entrepreneur’s hats on (yes, we are all actually entrepreneurs first). We cull out the out-of-date and just plain bad information to distill the best information for business success.

We develop and add our own implementation strategy layers (lot’s of arguments here til we reach consensus). Then we test every strategy and step to make sure they work as intended and absolutely better than anything else out there.

Once the data passes these tests to every partners’ satisfaction, we assemble it into a step-by-step comprehensive plan that anyone can understand and lay it all down in a professional video track.

The result of these hundreds of hours of blood, sweat and tears? About an hour of video we believe to be the world’s best training on Facebook Ads for Business.

BTW, that’s ONE module, we have over 30 in our training system.

So for the guy who asked me how our training is different from him just watching YouTube videos on the topics, now you know.

It is very easy when you are in a space, to forget that there are a lot of people who have no idea what you are talking about. Sometimes the simplest explanations, are not simple enough for someone who has not grasped the basic concept. If you don’t understand what “Poaching” is, the fact that all that is required is an egg and hot water doesn’t help you much. For most of you who follow my stuff, you can probably click off here as this is going to be very elementary. But for those of you who still are having trouble grasping the very basic fundamentals of Facebook, I will try to fill in the gaps for you.

Facebook Defined: Facebook is a web-based social media platform that provides a digital means for people to connect and communicate with each other by forming “social networks”. A social network is essentially the digital equivalent of the ordinary real life relationships that we all have. Facebook uses the concept of “friends” to establish symmetrical relationships between 2 people. For example, if you are a Facebook user, you can send a Facebook “friend request” to someone you know who is also a Facebook user. If the friend confirms your request, the two of you are now “Facebook friends”. Pretty simple so far.

As a Facebook user, you can post comments on your Facebook “wall” concerning your daily life. Likewise, your “friends” can make comments on their own “walls” as well as your wall and vice-versa. Your Facebook “wall” is like a personal bulletin board and is generally what “friends” will see by default when they visit someone’s profile.This is what drives the voyeuristic aspect of Facebook. This is how moms see what they kids are doing for example. By going to their kid’s page and seeing what their kid posted on their wall as well as what their kid’s friends may have posted on their kid’s wall.

But it goes farther than that. By posting something on your wall, your Facebook friends are able to view it in their “news feed” without having to go to your profile. This is where i find a lot of people getting lost. The news feed and the wall are two different but connected things. When you log in to your Facebook account you are taken to your own “Home” page. On that home page you are looking at your “news feed”. If you clicked the link to look at your profile, which is your public face on Facebook, you would be looking at your “wall”.

The Facebook news feed is the heartbeat of Facebook and is composed of the aggregate wall posts (sometimes called “status updates”) made by you and your friends. As you view your news feed, you are kept informed of the day-to-day comments made by your network of Facebook friends in a sort of ticker tape fashion without the cumbersome task of serially browsing from wall to wall of each of your Facebook friends. Likewise, as your Facebook friends view their own news feed, they are kept informed of messages you have posted on your wall.

Let’s take it a step further now. Facebook is the clear leader in social media. Facebook now boasts over 500 million active users and the average Facebook user spends an hour a day on Facebook. The impact and potential of Facebook rests on its “viral” nature. As Facebook users accumulate more friends, they approach a point of activity and exposure whereby they start to receive friend requests from “friends of their friends”. As they accept these friend requests, their personal social network continues to grow even though they are not actively soliciting new friends. This phenomenon was so profound that Facebook imposed a limit of 5000 friends to protect their infrastructure from melt down.

At first, Facebook users mostly posted information concerning their personal lives. The majority of news feed posts were personal and perhaps even shallow. Posts such as “having coffee with so-and-so”, “my child is running a fever”, and other such posts were common. However, with the growth of Facebook, business interests were quick to catch on that Facebook is a viable communications platform for their advertising. Given the audience that can be accumulated, it is easy to see why commercial interests would soon pervade the Facebook news feed.

In order to protect its “social” intent, Facebook created a new idea of the “fan page” (recently renamed to just “Pages”) which are separate and distinct from your personal “Profile”. So, to be clear we now have “Profiles” which are people and “Pages” which are businesses, often people, even experts, use these terms interchangeably, but they are two different things.

Advertising on Facebook was a violation of the Terms of Service, but was running rampant and unabated on Profiles. By offering Pages, Facebook gave businesses a vehicle to advertise themselves to as many “fans” as they could attract – thus presumably preserving the “social” Facebook experience by diverting business related content to these Pages. To keep things unnecessarily complicated, Facebook recently changed the concept of a “Fan”, to just someone who “Likes” a page. Apparently it is less of a psychological commitment to simply “Like” something than to declare to your friends that you are a “fan” of something. While a lot of people still use the deprecated term “Fans”, the correct term now would be “Likes” or “Likers”. I know, it doesn’t flow as well.

With Facebook Pages, any organization with a message could benefit by taking advantage of a Facebook Page. After all, it’s free and easy to set up. Once you have a Page, you solicit Facebook friends to “Like” your page. Liking a Page is as simple as visiting the Facebook Page and clicking a button. Once you accumulate “likes”, you are able to post messages to the Page wall which will then become a part of your “Likers” personal news feeds.

Pages have met with varied degrees of success. Unless you are willing to invest in some bells and whistles design, your page will look like all other pages. The only difference is the label at the top identifying your organization. There is little compelling incentive for someone to “like” your page since the likely result is that they will receive commercial messages from you in their news feed. There are several recent schemes to attempt to overcome this, mostly consisting of nicely designed “teaser” pages that greet a visitor offering them something if they “Like” the page, and these are useful tools for the Page owner. But users are getting wise. Often before liking a page, they will first take a look at the page’s wall to see what kind of content they might expect to be dumped into their news feed. If it is all promotional content with no interesting information, they are not likely to “Like” the page.

So, if you have a Page for your business, how would you go about increasing your audience? Well, it is likely that it has attracted a few likes, even if only from your requests to your friends. While no case is typical, for purposes of illustration, let’s assume your page has 60 “Likes”. Now you can post a message on your page wall that will in turn become part of the personal news feed of those 60 people who like your page. Impressive since it’s free. Each of the people who see your message in their personal news feed, has the opportunity to pass it on to their friends by “Sharing” your post. So now your information has landed in the news feeds of their friends. So why would somebody “Share” your information? Because they felt it was “share worthy”, or maybe they are just a friend trying to help you out.

So think about this. You create a post of some kind, which can be text, a video, photo or whatever, that turns out to be “Share worthy”. The 60 people who like your page see it in their news feeds. Lets say half of them decide to share it with their friends, and for simplicity sakes let assume everyone has 60 friends (even though the actual average is more like 130 friends). Okay so now your post, with your page link attached just went out to another 1,800 people. If it was good enough for half of the original people to share, why wouldn’t half of those 1,800 people share it, so it bounces out to another 54,000 people, and so on. If anyone along the way likes what you posted enough, maybe they click on the link and go to your Page. If they like what they see, maybe they “Like” your page and the cycle continues. You get the idea.

If what I just said sounds easy, I apologize, because it is not. People are fickle, many will like your information and your page, but never share. Many will like what you have to say and come to your page often, but never “Like” it, therefore denying you that ongoing dialogue access we all desire. Many Page owners will turn to Facebook Ads as a way too “kick-start” their pages, but that is an advanced topic beyond my premise for this post.

So there you have it. Facebook, oversimplified in a nutshell. Hopefully I was able to clear some fog for you.

If you would like to learn more about how to Master Facebook, check out our training systems .

I welcome any comments, feedback or questions.

I received an email from Hubspot, an SEO company of sorts whose list I am on. I usually ignore any information from an SEO company, but Hubspot has sent along a few things in the past that I thought were interesting and this one peaked my attention. There is some kind of “inbound Marketing Summit” coming up next week in Massachusetts. In advance of this event the promoters (I guess) sent out a survey to Chris Brogan, David Meerman Scott and 17 other top Social Media and Marketing pros in the industry today. The survey asked these “experts” several questions for their thoughts about today and their predictions for 3 years out, 2013. Here are a few nuggets I found interesting:

The experts were asked “What Service or Website Drives the Most Business Value” today and to predict for 2013. Not surprisingly, 80% saw Google as the “king” today with Facebook as a fairly distant second. I have been telling anyone who listens to me that I think that Facebook will eventually eclipse Google, and indeed the experts predicted that Google will slide by 2013, but they also predict that Facebook would slide by a similar proportion! The experts predicted that “Other” will become a major force. “Other” as in something that may not even exist or at least is not on the radar today.

In response to the question “What Channel Drives the Most Business Value” the experts also gave some interesting assessments. Mobile Marketing and Social Media Marketing are expected to grow significantly, while Organic Search (SEO) and Email Marketing drop precipitously over the next 3 years. Interestingly, blogging stays about the same: not particularly significant.

There were a lot of different responses to “The Most Important Metrics to Track” across channels. For example “Comments”, seemed to be the most mentioned metric for blogs. “Interactions” for Facebook (I’m not sure how you even measure that). Re-Tweets was mentioned a lot for Twitter metrics. But for “Social Media Marketing”, “Inbound Marketing” and “Marketing Overall” I was pleased to see that good ole “Sales” was still the most relevant metric.

When asked their opinions on “Biggest Marketing Trends for 2011″, some responses were: Mobile Video, “Smart” Display Advertising, Geo-Location, Real-Time Search, Embedded Demographic Mobile Advertising, Curation and The Right Time Web. Based on this, seems to me like Mobile will be even hotter next year…duh.

I would love to hear your opinions on what this “Other” could be, let me know in the comments below.

To see the source go to

http://www.hubspot.com/webinars/view-insights-from-19-marketing-experts/

They will want your contact info, but some of their stuff is pretty good.

Q. What is the first step I should take to become an expert?

A. Proclaim it! If you want people to believe you are an expert, you better tell them you are first. If you present yourself as an expert, most people will assume that you are, unless or until you prove otherwise. Of course if you don’t really know much about what you are claiming to be an expert in, it probably won’t take much or long to prove you are not, and you can quickly go from expert to boob. A firm grasp of your industry’s buzzwords and name dropping will get you started and, for many experts I know, that can actually take you a fairly long way. However, I would spend some time back-filling your expert claim with real knowledge.

Q. How do I know if I am really an expert?

A. A lot of people consider an expert as someone who knows everything there is to know about a topic. While that would certainly qualify someone, few people actually know everything, and experts seem to pop up daily regardless. Most experts simply  know more about something than who they are speaking to. How much more? That will vary depending on who you are talking to and your ability to speak to their problem. For example, if my car won’t start and my roadside assistance service sends out a guy who tells me he is an expert, I will assume he is. If he is able to get my car started, it will confirm my assumption that he is the expert he claimed to be. The fact that anybody who knows anything about cars may have been able to easily fix my problem, is neither known to me, nor relevant as he is the one who did. On the other hand, if he was unable to fix my car, I would determine that he is clearly  a boob, even if it ultimately took 15 technicians and 2 months to diagnose the problem and fix my car. So my point is, that expertise, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Q. How do I establish myself as an expert to others?

A. First… Scrub your face. Not your actual face, but your public face. Your website, your profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Wherever you can be found online. What are you scrubbing? Anything that does not support your proposition that you are an expert. For example eliminate any recent past jobs that do not relate to your expertise from your resume. Eliminate, or minimize any services you may offer that do not relate to or support you as an expert. Delete any recent testimonials or recommendations that paint you as something other than the expert you want to be. You may notice that I said “recent”. The fact that you may have been a waiter twenty years ago, does not lessen the odds that you are an expert in your chosen field today. But, if you were a waiter last year, well you probably don’t want to mention that. But Steve, you say, what about gaps in my time line? Who cares? Unless you are applying for a position somewhere that has a bored HR department, I doubt anyone will notice.

Q. Okay, I am proclaiming my expertise and feel that I am enough of an expert to my target audience and I scrubbed my face, now what?

A. Get out there and start expertin’. Write an expert blog, start an expert podcast, answer LinkedIn questions like an expert and look for opportunities to speak to groups. Start small, like asking to speak at some Meetup groups first, they always need speakers. This way you can get used to not only speaking, which is the easy part, but also responding to questions which can be the hard part. Many a so-called-expert has been exposed by the Q & A. I wrote about this in a prior post.  Nobody will let you speak? Speak for yourself. Start your own darn Meetup group. Create your own webinar, or go all out and create your own workshop. (My next post will be “10 Secrets of Workshop Marketing”…maybe 9 secrets, I haven’t decided yet).

Q. How do I protect my expert status?

A. Never answer any questions.. just kidding…sorta. The dome of expertise is under constant assault. It’s not that most people want to bust your bubble, but if you are successful in establishing yourself as an expert, people are going to start asking you questions. These questions are not put forth to challenge you, but rather to pick your brain matter for expertise that the questioner can use. Fair enough, you asked for it when you put yourself out there. So here are some rules for answering questions. First, don’t try to fake it. Many times experts who don’t know an answer, assume the questioner doesn’t either and will try and blow some B.S. by them. But the questioner may know something about the topic and is just looking for your expert take. Use a phrase or term that the questioner knows is not applicable and you will see his face change as his brain moves you over to boob land. Better to say something like “You know, I haven’t thought much about that aspect, let me chew on it and get back to you”. I prefer this approach to the “I don’t Know” suggestion that so many people these days say is perfectly okay.  While not knowing may be a honest assessment, it does not promote expert status and my suggestion will prompt you to come up with an answer after you have done a little more homework. Look at that, you’re becoming more of an expert already.

That’s all for now, please comment!

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