Monday Buzz: What’s a Webinar, and What Isn’t?

The webinar is a valuable educational, communication, and promotional tool, but has the term “webinar” become an awkward one-size-fits-all title for any session your association holds online?

Jeff Cobb, cofounder of consulting firm Tagoras, offers a simple rule for webinars in this blog post  (opens in a new tab): If you’re going to charge for it, don’t call it a webinar.

The rationale? The public’s concept of a webinar is predicated on openness and easy access.

“Call it an online short course. Or a virtual workshop. Or, best of all, don’t talk about the format at all other than to say that it is online,” Cobb writes, highlighting the Association for Talent Development’s refusal to mention “webinar” in its offerings  (opens in a new tab). And the American Marketing Association  (opens in a new tab) calls what other organizations would label webinars “webcasts.”

Cobb’s recommendations come alongside a shift in webinar consumption. Mathew Sweezey, a marketing specialist at Pardot, a business-to-business marketing company, recently conducted an informal survey that discovered that only 16 percent of B2B consumers prefer to watch a webinar live. In a blog post at ClickZ  (opens in a new tab), he lays out his findings, which echo those of other organizations that have seen attendance at live events declining. Sweezey gives suggestions on how to attract the majority of people who don’t watch your webinar as it’s happening.

With video content continuing to grow, why not keep in mind the audience who can’t attend live?

Graphic of the Day

Skyword  (opens in a new tab) marketing content specialist Ted Karczewski breaks down the six steps  (opens in a new tab) to using data to propel your content in an article on the Content Marketing Institute’s website.

Other Good Reads

Has Google won the battle over enterprise file storage and work applications? Or is the search-engine giant too late to make an impact when countless competitors have already stepped into the ring? CMSWire contributor Virginia Backaitis weighs in  (opens in a new tab).

Associations looking to bolster their strategic planning can take heart. Meredith Low Consulting has a new white paper on that very topic. You can download the full paper here  (opens in a new tab).

If you’re still not paying interns, consider the “nightmare that awaits,” according to Inc. magazine’s Suzanne Lucas. She explains how saving money in the short term  (opens in a new tab) can have disastrous consequences later on.

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