SpeakerNet News Compilations

Audio and Video Clips on a Web Site

Noah St. John

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The original question:

"Do you have your media interviews or portions of your seminars on your Web site? What software did you use? Has it helped you get bookings? What would you do differently and what did you do right?"

-- Don Parker

I have built and maintained my own successful web site for over 4 years. As a speaker that specializes in drug and alcohol education for schools, colleges and companies, I've learned that the most important element of a winning web site is to give as much to your visitors as possible. If you just try to sell yourself ONLY, visitors are out the door as fast as you can say CLICK. The more you can offer in the way of articles, information and links, the more apt visitors are to stay, come back again, want more and tell others.

After one has created a site or REDONE their site for the benefit of their visitors, not just to sell themselves, then the next step is to submit to search engines and re-submit every few weeks and request reciprocal links from other sites that your visitors would find interesting. If other sites send you traffic and you send traffic to other sites, everyone wins, especially your visitors. When they win, the side-effect is they will bookmark you and come back for more, and possibly transform into clients.

I have received dozens of requests for bookings from my site over the years by giving as much useful information as I can to my visitors AND by answering e-mail promptly.

And finally, a site must be simple, easy to navigate and load FAST. If it's fancy (in order to be cutting-edge) but slow, your visitors are GONE!

-- Larry James

I do not have interviews or portions of my seminars. However, I do have lengthy descriptions of my seminars/workshops that have created a lot of attention.

I have 34 articles on my site that are either excerpts from my books or articles written from scratch. This high-content area is the most popular area on my web site. I also offer my articles as content for OTHER web sites. Currently there are over 160 other sites that either carry my articles content OR are mutually linked to my web site.

Once I put up several link pages, my unique hits more than quadrupled and continue to grow. In my spare time (what there is of it), I search for other web sites that might be interested in mutual linking or content.

My philosophy about web sites is they are great for creating attention to yourself and selling your product, not necessarily for getting bookings -- although an occasional booking does result. Since my three books are available in major book stores, people often will discover them on my web site and either order them through a link to Amazon.com, Borders.com, Barnes&Noble.com or Chapters.ca (Canada) or go to their local book store. I prefer it this way since I am a sole proprietor and do not wish to be in the mail order business.

-- Patti Hathaway

I have both media interview segments and seminar excerpts on my web site (about 80 minutes total). I believe it has helped me get bookings. People can not only read my articles, newsletter excerpts and see what I do, they can also listen to various segments. I've even had people say that I didn't need to send a packet of speaking information. I've taken over 2 years to re-do my Preview Video as a result of having RealAudio on my site (I'm now in the process of re-doing my video because it's 4 years old and really needs updating).

I would not have done anything differently in terms of the segments. I did initially hire someone to do the technology aspect and he completely screwed it up and I lost $300. I later hired Ron Rice who did a fabulous job (I later switched to have Ron also be my webmaster). I don't know what technology Ron uses to do the RealAudio and I'm a big believer in hiring out for experts (I don't have time to learn that stuff). Ron can be reached at: ron@netgain.cc. He is excellent.

What I did right: spread the RealAudio throughout my web site (not just in one location), thereby giving people many different opportunities to listen in; use a variety of different program segments; tape only "live" programs so you can hear audience reaction. I will probably add additional media segments as they become available.

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