I’ve been working on getting a coaching/consulting business for teachers and schools off the ground (basically I want to be Sparky but for education). I also want to do this with integrity, because there are a lot of click baiters, hucksters, and grifters out there in this field.
Anyway, I’m hoping to set up a free webinar to start making connections with teachers. I’ve developed a 50 minute online professional development session. I’d like to advertise and offer this as a webinar. I’m also trying to keep this streamlined and simple for everyone involved.
My initial thinking is…
Share a registration form via Google Forms
Add people to a Google Meet Calendar event as they register
Host the webinar via Google Meet
Manually follow up with attendees after the fact to network, generate leads, whatever
That said, any other ideas or suggestions to implement this in a streamlined and cost effective way? I’ve even considered just live streaming it on YouTube and having folks engage in chat, but that seems far less intimate.
There are many great tools that completely automate this process for a relatively affordable monthly fee.
If just getting started, I know every cost hurts, but if this is going to be your core go-to-market strategy, having it fully automated and scalable might be worth going with a commercial tool.
(It’s been a while since I researched them, there might be a one-time fee service or a plug-in for WordPress that is mostly free, etc., but I would go with a hosted service that handles bandwidth and everything in a single integrated solution.)
As a one-off tip, I don’t do webinars right now, but I do use an online scheduling/calendar tool.
The one I ended up paying for has a feature that I find crucial and not available in the free or DIY versions - it sends automated reminders using sms/text, not just email.
That really helps with avoiding no-shows and is worth the expense (for me) and much simpler that trying to automate my own sms/text service while also staying legal with all the no-spam texting rules .