Friday, March 28, 2014

The Information Marketing Primer For Helping and Healing Solo-Professionals - Part 5 - Free Audio

By this point in the series, I hope you recognize the importance of creating an Information Marketing business as an addition to your practice or as a means to generate income should you decide to cut back on your direct service hours.

Up to this point, we have covered: identifying your target audience for your information products, the importance of having an Internet presence and writing your first information product - your Free or Special Report. 

As I said in the last installment, you may have a definite preference in terms of writing or speaking, so I am going to offer a second alternative for delivering your free report content - in audio format as a teleclass. But, remember, it's important to offer your customers the options of audio and written formats as they do have strong preferences of how they prefer to consume their content. 

A teleclass is just what it sounds like...a class you offer over the telephone. You will need to have a free telephone bridge (conference) line to record this. To find one, type in "free telephone conference lines" and you will find many of these kinds of lines available. I regularly use Free Conference Pro and No-Cost Conference, but as I said, there are many good ones (that are free) to choose from.  

There are, of course, also paid conference line companies as well. Once you get into some serious information marketing and are recording teleseminars you will charge for, then you will probably want to get a paid conference line service as they do have live help available to assist you if something goes wrong. There is often a significant difference in the quality of the recording with the paid services. In this category, I have used Black & White Communications. 

Ask at least one friend to join you on this call (most conference lines need more than one participant to open the conference). This will also give you the added bonus of moral support. Once you register with the bridge (or conference) line company, they will give you your call-in conference number and a participant pass code; there is usually always a moderator code provided too which, of course, you will be using as the moderator. Your friend can use just the Participant code.  

The bridge line company will also give you a series of codes for recording, muting and unmuting, etc. Make sure to mute your friend when you are ready to begin...these lines pick up a lot of background noise. Make sure that your environment is quiet too as the sounds in your environment will be picked up on the recording. Do not forget to use the code for recording (you will also have to enter it when you wish to stop recording). You don't want to get to the end of speaking and realize you were never recording in the first place! (No matter how many times I have done this, I always keep the sheet with all the codes for the conference call right in front of me as I get ready to record - it's a good reminder).

Once you are finished recording, the bridge line company will provide you with a link to the recording of the call. Most of the time, you get those immediately after signing off of the call. Turn this recording over to your webmaster to upload for you. The link to this recording will go into the email that will be sent to your prospect once they have signed up for your free report and you have captured their name and email address. 

An important note...DO NOT just read your written report into a phone...it will come across just this way. The best way to do this call is to write out your opening and closing and use bullet point for everything in-between. Try to have only 3 to 5 main points. Sound natural and unless you are speaking of something very grave, try to put a smile into your voice. You have to emote and project more than you think. Don't worry, everyone sounds timid on their first try. You'll improve as time goes on. 

Once again, here is the formula for creating content, but this time it will be spoken. 

  • State the problem or the source of pain for your targeted reader
  • Add some real-life examples of this problem or pain - make it more real in their minds. 
  • Explain why this is happening or what the causes are or what is the theory behind this problem 
  • Explain why what your readers have been doing to date hasn't been working 
  • Provide your solution without going into the "How"
  • Then give them the next step 

You can make this teleclass an hour or less. If you go longer, remember that you can only fit 80 minutes of audio on a CD, so if you should you decide to make hard copies of the teleclass, aim for an hour and fifteen minutes maximum. (I'll get into that in more detail when we get to the installment on Teleseminars)