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Table of Contents
Why Webcast?
page 3
Factors to Consider in Live Webcasting an Event
page 5
Empowering Your Business with Webcasting
page 6
Setup a Webcast Painlessly
page 7
Reaching a Global Audience with a Live Webcast
page 9
Webcasting or Webinar: Is There A Difference?
page 11
Webcasting: What’s All the Hype
page 12
Why Webcast?
One of the most powerful and efficient ways to advertise products and/or services on the Internet is via a webcast. This tremendously useful innovation comes by way of the Web, and it offers you the ability to market your specific products and services to your potential audiences with a few clicks of the mouse. Since almost everyone you will be interested in selling your products and services to are likely to be online, webcasts provide a number of key advantages that few other marketing methods can provide. What are these advantages? Here are a few of the more significant ones.
Webcasts are immediate
Since webcasting is akin to using live television to reach a large number of people at the same time, they have the benefit of immediate information dispersal. Anyone and everyone who has an Internet connection can simply type in your site’s URL into the browser, and see you presenting your product or service instantly. This also allows you to deliver your message to your audience with virtually no delay whatsoever.
Webcasting allows for interaction
Unlike other marketing methods in which the flow of information only goes one way–that is from you to your audience– webcasts provide an ideal platform for interaction. Imagine being able to answer your customers’ queries with regard to your products and/or services instantly, and you will definitely appreciate how valuable the interactive nature of
webcasting is to your business.
Webcasts are flexible with regard to content and delivery methods
Another reason for the rising popularity of webcasts is their extreme flexibility. They can take the form of pre-recorded clips for one thing, so viewers have the opportunity to access them any time, and from anywhere, as long as they have an Internet connection. In fact, your audiences may even pose questions to you via any number of means, including polls, phone calls, surveys, or via email.
Webcasts provide more access to information
What webcasts have above all other marketing methods is the sheer range of content that they are able to offer. While most terrestrial and digital providers aren't as open to providing airtime to niche content on television, there is virtually no such restriction on the Internet.
Webcasts can be of any length
Webcasts also have the benefit of flexibility with regard to length. You can set up your webcast to be as long or as short as you need, with none of the restrictions that TV programs or DVDs are subject to.
Webcasts are more cost effective marketing methods
Of course cost is another important consideration, and again webcasting offers a significant advantage. All things being equal, sharing content via webcasting is a lot cheaper than using commercial television networks.
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Webcasts make it easier for you to generate revenue
Since your audience is already on the Internet, it is much easier to get them to pay for products and/or services. There are many companies that utilize the ‘pay as you view’ model, and your users are more likely to use something that they are already familiar with.
Webcasting is a more secure option than other marketing methods
Finally, webcasting has the advantage of much tighter security. Most such platforms have a secure registration and password mechanism in place, and this helps ensure restriction of content to authorized users only, while helping you obtain valuable marketing information from your viewers safely.
Factors to Consider in Live Webcasting an Event
If you are considering having a live online event, there are several factors for you to consider. Your first step will be to think through all the reasons why you want to have a live event. Is it an absolute necessity? Depending on what your particular circumstances are, going live may or may not be your best option. For instance, if you are merely seeking interactive features such as chat, polling and other responses, it is not necessary to go live. Many of the interactive features can be accomplished with an on demand broadcast. However, if your purpose is to cover a groundbreaking event, broadcast an important message, or otherwise have an urgent need to host your event live, you will next need to carefully consider your target audience. Make sure that they will be available on the date of your event in order to ensure that you actually have an audience!
Once you establish that you are going to have your event hosted live and that you have a good chance of having your target audience attend, you will need to determine which format you prefer according to what suits your purposes best. Some of the more popular available formats include Windows Media, Flash, RealMedia and Quicktime. You will need to do research according to who your target audience in order to determine which will best suit your needs: for
instance, will your audience be attending via home computers, or smart phones, or iPads? This factor may be something to seriously consider, since some formats are better suited to different platforms than others.
Choosing an encoder is also an important factor. You have several options, including hardware, software and others. Weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each according to your particular needs and resources. If you have a slower computer, the software may be more beneficial to you, depending on your CPU, RAM, your hard drive RMP, as well as how much video memory you have available for use. These two, however, will give you high quality video as well as flexibility when you go live.
If you are hosting a professional live event for a corporation or company, or even a nonprofit organization, it is critical that you have a good camera. An off-the-shelf webcam is not going to deliver quality video for you, and may work to your detriment as the effects will be felt on the user end. Invest in a HD video camera or high end encoding capture card.
Another aspect of going live to consider is your bitrate. You can get excellent video quality at 750 Kbps, so there may not be a need, depending (again) on your audience, to go for HD or for higher bitrate. The most that 3G networks attain is about 700 Kpbs. If you want to go 1.5 Mbps or higher for bitrate you should have a good reason, otherwise you may be wasting upload bandwidth.
Once you have all the foregoing figured out in advance, taking into consideration your target audience, your needs and resources, you should definitely do a test run to make sure that that you can sustain the necessary bandwidth that is required for the duration of your event. This involves contacting your venue in advance.
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Empowering Your Business with Webcasting
Posting business video on the internet in order to expand your influence to a global audience, thereby allowing people to be present at your events or to experience a more personal means of communication with your brand, has become an exceedingly popular tool to empower your business.
Webcasting offers you a way to conduct the relay of information, training, investor relations, and other events to a broad audience, which means potential new clients and increased revenue. It is a powerful way to communicate your business brand’s active presence, and if done right, could have a global reach.
Not only is it possible to use a webcasts for the sole sake of presenting central information to a wider audience, but multiple webcasts can be conducted on the same platform, enabling conference events from several distant localities. Possibilities for live streaming not only on personal computers and laptops, but on cell phones and mobile devices, opens up your potential to a wide array of possibilities.
A lot of planning is involved in producing a quality, streamlined webcasting experience, and it is important to choose a vendor who can handle both your intended connections without interruptions or distractions, but also has the savvy to webcast on platforms that can be seen on both Apple and Microsoft platforms, as well as other alternatives, and that is also user-friendly and easy to install. If you host a live event, you will also want to ensure that you are able to archive the webcast on your website for future viewing and downloading.
You will also want to be sure your vendor is on the cutting edge of webcasting innovation in order to create a high quality production according to your needs. There are options for call-ins, comments, response and feedback, polling, chatting, Q&A and a whole host of other interactive capabilities that can add tremendous value to your webcast according to your specific needs.
Through online webcasting, you can empower your business base as well as its outreach, improve brand identification, reach out to present clients or investors, conduct business meetings or training seminars and even launch viral social networking advertising campaigns that make it well worth your investment.
Setup a Webcast Painlessly
Given the rapid way online technology changes, there is no longer any doubt that using video in business for the promotion of your brand, service, organization or message is a tremendously valuable means of advertisement.
One of the best ways to reach a lot of people, potentially drawing in new clients or customers, is through a webcast. A webcast is a video production that can be streamed or archived on the world wide web. It may be prerecorded or streamed to viewers on a global scale. Unlike a webinar, a webcast is a one-way means of communication, and therefore is often less targeted to specific users, but meant for a wide range of potential viewers.
Setting up a webcast doesn't have to hurt. There are several steps you can take in order to make it a painless process. Most people have fast internet connections, so this usually should not be a problem. But if you are hosting a live streaming event, you want to make sure your connection has the capacity to handle it, as well as enough bandwidth to deliver your content live to numerous viewers around the world. Any deficiency in this area could reflect poorly on your brand, generate mistrust, and tarnish your message.
For this reason, your production values need to be of the highest quality. A video camera that records in HD (high definition) is preferable, if possible, and you may want more than one cameraman in order to capture large, live events. The idea behind a webcast is that you are enabling distant viewers who cannot otherwise attend to feel like they are actually present. Planning for your webcast should include lots of preparation in order to achieve the illusion of
presence through video, including superior script writing, seamless direction and flow, non-intrusive editing (for prerecorded events), and an emphasis on message that is direct and to the point. People watching webcasts online are not likely to continue watching poor quality productions; they are just a click away from tuning in on something else. So it is important to keep them entertained with enough variety and superior content if you want to deliver your message effectively and without distractions.
Of course, if your webcast is much narrower in purpose, such as a mere communique to followers or subscribers, you may be able to record it at home with a high quality webcam. You will still want to pay attention to production values, be succinct, practice and follow a basic, scripted outline, and deliver a polished presentation. Make sure your speakers are on message, know their material, and can concisely and energetically convey it. People will likely not listen to someone who rambles and repeats himself endlessly, nor someone who speaks in a monotone or is reading to the virtual audience. Part of planning is putting together effective, powerful content. People are drawn in to stories, so using narrative, if possible, as you deliver your message is one of the best ways to keep interest while simultaneously
promoting your organization, company, brand, service or message.
Advertising your event may or may not suit your purposes. If you plan to stream live, you may want to register users ahead of time and remind them via email as the event approaches. Using social media can also significantly promote your event through word-of-mouth. For live events, specifying a date and time is important, as is sticking with it. You may also want to edit and archive a live streaming event so that people can download it and watch at their own leisure. Prerecorded events can still have a launch date, and once you have it available to watch, either embedded in your website or to be downloaded, you may want to make an announcement to subscribers, or on your website, and
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again, through the powerful potential of word of mouth that is available via social networking sites. If it suits your purposes and you are trying to reach as many people as possible, you might also consider posting your completed webcast on a video site such as YouTube (or similar sites)in order to gain more exposure.
Most of the work is in the preparation. If you are doing a prerecorded webcast, don't rely on editing. Try to make it work as though you will not need to edit. Badly edited webcasts can not only distract viewers from the message of the video, but also reflect poorly on your affiliations. Ninety percent of the work invested in a live webcast should be in the planning stage, bearing down on details for direction and delivery, and doing test runs before the actual event occurs.
Reaching a Global Audience with a Live Webcast
The use of online video is a popular and effective way of communication, and one that continues to grow rapidly. This fact is not only evidenced by the advent of YouTube’s enormous popularity and influence, but also by the increasingly growing number of business professionals who use online video webcasting for everything from conferences and lectures to important meetings, sessions, interviews and sales. Through an online webcast, corporations and other organizations have the option to expand their circumference of influence by making the event available to a much larger, potentially even a worldwide, audience.
There are several advantages to using a webcast to communicate your service, product, brand or message to a wider audience. On the plus side, it's most obvious use is to span distances so that people can virtually attend an event
without the expenses of travel, work time loss, and other various accommodations. A webcast, if well done, also extends a brand or message to potentially new clients, customers, or other interested parties, thereby radically increasing a company or organization's sphere of influence.
The key, however, to potentially reaching a global audience is for the webcast to be done well. In practical terms, this means that it should be planned with utmost care and precision, produced with high quality values, and delivered through the most efficient and practical means from the user end point-of-view.
A well-planned event is crucial to a successful webcast, and more effort should be devoted to this stage than anything else. You want the event to go smoothly and for viewers to have a seamless experience, so much so that they feel like they are there. The added value of an online webcast is precisely the illusion of presence, which fosters not only further interaction, but also builds a basic bridge of trust between the organizer of the event and the virtual “attendees”. It is vital to spend an enormous amount of time in thinking about scripting, direction, flow and message.
Prerecorded events should be meticulously written and executed, and edited well, that is in a non-distracting manner. A live webcast is more exciting, but also offers the possibility of things not going as planned (which is precisely what made early live television broadcasts popular – viewers wanted things to go wrong!) For your purposes, however, it is vital if you are producing a live webcasting event to build up to it through a series of test sessions in order to catch mistakes and refine your method. Also, with a live streaming webcast, it is absolutely critical that your venue has an excellent internet connection and that you have servers that can handle more traffic than your maximum expectations. On that note, your expectations should be rather high because for a live event, you will have pursued a rigorous marketing campaign to draw in viewers – depending on your purpose, either through paid advertizing, email, or social networking. To hold the attention and interest of your viewers, it is very important to emphasize high quality production values, including (if possible) multiple cameras to add variety and energy to the presentation, superior video and audio, a well-lit venue, engaging and energized speakers who translate well to video, and direction that captures the energy and flow of the event without distracting from it. Poor production values will backfire, bore the viewer, and damage your brand. A scripted event can still feel and be spontaneous enough to keep interest, but a rambling, disorderly, badly-lit or monotonous event has the potential to bore, annoy and alienate potential clients or customers.
The objective should be a seamless, well-paced, energetic and informative, tight production. One way to accomplish this is to hire professionals – such as cameramen, grippers, directors and writers – who know what they are doing. Keeping
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the viewer entertained while also providing information is not an easy task for amateurs, though it is possible. However, it does take a lot of planning, work and patience.
Your webcast should also be easy for the user to access, connected to or imbedded within your website, and compatible with both Microsoft and Apple products, including mobile devices. You could put together a high quality event, but if users have difficulty accessing it, many will not bother to go to the effort. Making the event easily accessible from the technology end is therefore crucial to its success. If you stream a live event, you may want to make it available as a download later if that suits your purposes, which will also increase exposure and influence.
Webcasting or Webinar: Is There A Difference?
Webinars and webcasts have truly come into their own as effective marketing and communications tools. Both have become essential components of the online business experience, although there are still many people who are unaware of their differences. In fact, the two terms are often used interchangeably, although there are significant differences between them.
"Web conferencing" is often used as a sort of catchall term that refers to all web-based platforms for collaboration between two or more people. This definition may cover webcasts and even webinars, depending on the context.
However, the term “web conferencing” is more appropriately used in reference to the interactive collaboration between people in the same work groups, as in the care of online brainstorming sessions between coworkers who are planning a business strategy or new product design. Most web conferences generally have only a small number of participants, with 15 being about the maximum. Web conferences also usually allow–and even require–everyone to ideas and/or information.
Now here is where the lines are drawn. In a "webcast", information is shared to a large audience via the Internet. In some cases, this may consist of nothing more than an audio stream, or it may include visual content such as PowerPoint slides, video and even live software demonstrations. Nowadays, more and more companies webcast the audio content from their investor calls every quarter in order to review financial results and to include a commentary from
management. This practice has increasingly become more common in the United States.
A "webinar" is almost the same as a webcast, although the idea is expanded by the introduction of a more interactive event. In most cases, webinars provide almost all the benefits of a live seminar. Participants can ask questions of the presenter for instance, and the speaker can obtain feedback from the audience immediately.
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Webcasting: What’s All the Hype
Webcasting is one of the hottest buzzwords on the Internet today. It has proven to be an essential tool in today's online business environment, and has it significantly changed the way that people communicate. If you haven’t taken
advantage of all the benefits that webcasts can provide, you are definitely missing out. Here are a few things that webcasting can do for you.
Extend the reach of your message
Webcasting allows you to reach a wider audience than you would have through other means. This can be an invaluable asset for marketing and communications.
Deliver your message simultaneously to many viewers/listeners
The challenge for many businesses is to reach a large number of people at the same time. With webcasting, this task becomes a lot easier to manage.
Free you from geographic boundaries and time constraints
A webcast can be seen by anyone you provide access to, no matter what country or time zone he or she may be in.
Enable you to position your brand more competitively
With webcasting, you will be able to position your brand to a global audience. This gives you a significant advantage over brands that advertise only via traditional means.
Allows you to make presentations as long as you want
Webcasts can be as long as you want. This allows you to include as much information as you need to, in as much detail as necessary.
Gives you a much cheaper alternative to television ads
Webcasts are a lot less expensive than TV ads. Given their wider reach, they simply make more sense from a cost standpoint.
Allows you to archive and repurpose content
This gives you the opportunity to use content for whatever purposes you see fit later on.
Provides a richer experience
Thanks to live video and the greater degree of interactivity, your audiences will find webcasts a more rewarding experience than traditional marketing methods.
Using Multicasting on the Internet
Internet multicasting is a potentially powerful tool that involves sending individual streaming messages via video or audio, as well as text, to a selective group of people. It differs from unicasting one) and broadcasting (one-to-all – broadcasts are blocked by routers, but can be received by anyone who knows the protocol for reception), in that a single user can select the specific people in the group who will receive the packet of content; the end user has to request to be involved in the multicast.
This can be achieved with great efficiency, lining a select group of people with large or small participants globally. The multicasting process is more efficient than other forms of broadcasting since the path for reception is initiated on the user end. When the user requests to be a part of the multicast, routers open up from the user end in a progression towards the source, avoiding the involvement of routers that would otherwise block the multicast. In other words, only the routers that are necessary for conveying the packet are used in creating the multicast path to the user who requests it. Routers that do not have hosts who have requested the multicast, it is excluded from the tree of routers connected to the source. This provides greater efficiency and quality on the user end, as well as expediting bandwidth.
The protocol use for multitasking is called RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol) and it operates simultaneously with multicasting in order to send streaming audio, video, and other information over multicast networks. RTP determines how to convey information to the participants of the multicasting groups as well as monitor content quality as it is being delivered.
The IP Multicast protocol is a standard distribution protocol for delivering content to multiple participants. While the individual members of the participating group can easily change, depending on whether or not a host decides to join, stay with, or leave a particular group, and can also become a source by resending packets to another particular multicast group, as long as routers are "multicast enabled."
IP Multicast uses class D addressing. This is a unique form of an IP address that is specifically designed for multicasting.