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June 25, 2008
Evangelism and communities webinar
During a webinar that launches tomorrow, Rob Howard and I will chat about the building blocks of communities. It's geared primarily to those thinking about establishing online communities for their companies or brands.
Rob is the founder and CEO of Telligent, a company that makes community software. He's a smart guy. You'll like him.
Plus, he's giving away 100 copies of "Citizen Marketers" to webinar registrants (the books have since been snapped up). Even better, the webinar is free.
Update: Here's the archived webinar.
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No thanks.
I fell for the Webinar thing last with with John Jantsch teaming up with a Infusionsoft CEO, Clate Mask. Even had the free copies of a book bit. It was an hour long commercial for the five figure software. I kept waiting for a break from the commercial to hear some REAL info. Instead it was a barrage of testimonial after testimonial. Followed by several emails afterwards to make sure I heard about the "special offer" and to see if I wanted to buy the software.
I don't mind a sales pitch... as long as it comes along with a proportionate amount of valuable information. I thought you guys with your informative and interesting blogs would know better.
Lest anyone think I'm exaggerating here's how I heard about the webinar:
http://www.smallbiztrends.com/2008/06/two-freebies-webinar-and-duct-tape-marketing-book.html/
Well, I'm not John Jantsch, nor am I speaking with Infusionsoft. So I'm not sure how much more pre-judging is really possible.
Sounds great Ben, I'll have to check that out, just tweeted it.
When there are this many similarities between this potential experience and my previous bad experience, I make no apologies for pre-judgement. As people that try to understand consumer behavior, and use it to our advantage, dont' we understand that a potential customer isn't a bright eyed baby. They're jaded and skeptical relying only on the information we present to them and they're past experiences to make a action decision. Getting defensive doesn't give me any other information to influence my pre-conceived notions no matter how wrong they might actually be.
@Paul: Wouldn't you say you speak more for yourself ("jaded and skeptcial") than the typical potential customer? If not, I'd be interested in knowing the basis for your assertion that all potential customers are jaded and skeptical.
I'm not sure that I agree that customers are all jaded and skeptical. I think they're just better informed and therefore sensitive to things like blatant sales pitches in webinars. Blogs like this and forums are why customers are so much more aware of these issues.
We actually run sponsored webinars and ARE very aggressive in telling sponsors that a sales pitch only hurts them. Provide value and you'll get value. Sales pitches go nowhere. In fact, my company, 1to1 Media - a division of Peppers & Rogers Group, is doing a webinar on social media in July that's not even sponsored. We think the topic is so important to the future of customer relationships that we just wanted to get the information to our readers.
