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September 23, 2016 By Mathea Leave a Comment

8 Ways to Easily Turn Your Ideas into Weekly Webcasts That Draw Attention

Webcasts are very popular right now with the advent of the easy to use video-centric software that is available today. Webcasts can be live or on demand. You can do webcasts using software like Facebook Live, YouTube, Periscope.com and more. All you have to do is have an idea, a camcorder/smartphone, and then perform that idea. Here are some tips on how to make your webcasts the best they can be on those platforms. Easily make your webcasts entertaining and engaging for your audience.

1. Keep Them Short – No one wants to watch a two-hour live webcast, even weekly. More than 30 minutes may be too long. Get to the point, make the time you spend with your audience valuable to them, while focusing on the message and keeping it short and sweet. You still have a shop to run and customers to work with. A 10-15 minute weekly update and information session is more than enough. Keep them action packed and entertaining.

2. Show the Insider’s View – If you have a live event coming up, it’s great to show them some of the preparation and behind-the-scenes stuff you have to do. Whether it’s getting the lighting right or working on the sound, this is valuable information for your audience. They will love getting to know what your set up looks like or how your back room looks before a season launch!

3. Have a Point – Before creating any type of video, you need to have a point. Know what message, lesson, call to action etc. you’re going to give prior to starting your live event. People don’t want to waste their time; give them a reason to tune in every day. Write your notes on a 3×5 index card and have your key points ready. It’s ok to look at your notes, just keep the session moving and don’t hem and haw.

4. Look into the Camera – When you do your live events, there will be times that you don’t look at the camera. That’s okay; if you’re talking to someone else, you’ll want to look at that person. But, when you’re addressing your audience, look at them. And look into the lens, not the video display that shows you are in the picture.

5. Ensure Lighting and Sound Are Good – It’s hard to enjoy watching any live event when the sound and lighting are bad. Ensure that you have some sort of sound and lighting to make the event more enjoyable to watch. It’s easy to buy a lighting kit to set up and leave up that can make your lighting great – or choose a window with a sunny day if you don’t want to set up.

6. Invite a Live Audience – A really exciting way to do a live event is to also invite people to watch you perform the event in person. The energy the people will bring will make the event even more fun for people to watch. Doing them at a consistent day/time every week makes sure that if your customers want to be a part of the show they can be there.

7. Offer an Incentive – If you’re going to do a weekly event there should be something in it for the viewer. You can give away prizes; you can have an ongoing drawing where you randomly choose a winner who watched last week who must be watching this week to get the prize. Ensure you read the terms of service so that you do this by law. Or you can give a quick and free guide to the week’s topic and have people opt in to your email list – win/win.

8. Teach Them Something Useful – It can be valuable to tune in to your live event just because what you teach each week is something they can put to use right now. Don’t be stingy with information. Even if you are selling information, give it away on your weekly events. You are selling a product – tell people how to use it. You will become the go to expert and often it helps you get better wholesale accounts and free samples to show your audience. Just love what you do and show it.

Anything you normally do in your business can be fodder for a weekly webcast. You can show your audience a “day in the life,” a sneak peek behind the scenes and more. If you have a blog post about it, it can become a webcast idea. Have fun most of all, because it’s something you are going to do every week and you need to be upbeat and interesting while you are doing it.

September 22, 2016 By Mathea Leave a Comment

Ten Webcast Ideas for Your Niche Store

If you want to start performing a webcast every week, you’ll need to come up with ideas that keep your audience engaged. It’s not as hard as you think to come up with ideas. You can repeat these ideas on a regular basis so that your audience is always dialed in and interested. Sometimes having a content plan or editorial calendar makes it easy to distribute the work and have your set up be easier. Plus you can let your customers/fans know what is coming soon!

1. Behind the Scenes – Everyone likes to know what you’re doing when you’re not doing your business. If you’re a food blogger, you could do a behind the scenes of how long it takes you to set up a shot, or about the mistakes you’ve made, or how you come up with an idea or shop for food. If you want to show off a bit of boxes coming in or show how to steam your clothes before you put them out in the shop, have at it!

2. A Day in the Life – If you’re a life coach you might want to show your audiences how you live and do a webcast from a vacation point, or while you’re on the road instead of from your well-decorated office. Show up in jammies, a swim suit, or other attire based on where you happen to be at the moment. Show off where you are. For your fashion shop, you might want to have an employee go through what they do in a typical day – organizing, unpacking, setting up for a webcast, helping customers, etc.

3. How I Do That – Most people love to know how to do things, and even if you’re afraid that they’ll then do it all themselves rather than shop from you, don’t worry. That won’t happen. Show them how you do things, and they’ll trust you even more to do it for them if that’s your service. But, more people will watch because it’s valuable and useful to learn how to do things. Ask them what they want to learn about and try to remember what it felt like when you learned the same things. Also, look to your vendors and see what they are teaching on youtube or Facebook Live videos.

4. Interviews – People also love learning about other people who are in the niche themselves. Whether they’re movers or shakers or newbies starting out, interviewing them for your webcast will be interesting for your viewers and for you. Interview other shop owners or vendors at the shows and have a break from a week of webcasts by publishing that on a scheduled week. Or when you have a vendor come by for a show and tell, do a quick interview with them. (tell them what you are doing before hand and they might have some great ideas for you)

5. Q & A Session – You likely get asked a lot of questions, so you can have a whole hour of Q & A where you answer questions off the cuff. You can collect the questions in advance or you can let them ask during the event if you have someone to help capture the questions for you. This one never gets old and it makes you very personable.

6. Live Events – If you have a cool life event happening that you think your audience will be interested in, why not stream it live for your audience? A graduation, an award, a speaking engagement… are all good fodder for a webcast. With fashion blogs and shops it is always good to do a live Q&A or a live fashion show for each season – or monthly!

7. Rants – Did something happen in your niche that you really need to discuss and rant about? If you have the right audience in the right niche, this may be one of your most watched webcasts, especially on replay. Talk about something that really gets you going – do you find one of the latest trends to be silly or is there something that you just love that you can’t wait to chat about? Either one or more will do.

8. Case Study – Did you or your solution help someone with something important? You can bring them on to discuss their situation and case. Go over it as you would a written case study so you don’t miss an aspect that made them successful. Maybe you do a lot of prom dresses and you can go through a case study talking about different body types and how to choose a dress for your style.

9. Get a Co-Host – You can ask different people to co-host based on your topic for the week. Usually it’s good to bring in an expert on the topic to help you present the facts for that webinar. It makes the webcast more fun to have more people, and the discussion will be interesting to the audience members.

10. Hot Seat Day – If you’re a coach, web designer, someone who helps writers, or other teaching/helping niche, you can put someone on the hot seat and analyze and advise them live during the webcast. This is a great way to show what you know, but you need to choose your subjects carefully because not everyone can handle this type of event. Or do this with a fashion styling day – show how you would style someone for an event – it shows your expertise and engages the audience.

Hopefully these ideas work for you. You can do so many different things with a webcast. The fact that you can share slides, share what’s around you and look at your audience live is a very powerful thing that can make a huge difference. You just need your phone or video camera (I use this one: Canon Vixia) to start and a good tripod to hold it while you talk. You can also use a webcam and your computer in your office.

September 21, 2016 By Mathea Leave a Comment

10 Reasons Why Webcasts Can Be A Huge Success And Make You Popular with Fashion Audiences

It may seem crazy, but not only should you love webcasts and do them as often as you can – audiences love them too. Even if they don’t watch live, they love watching them afterwards on sites like YouTube, Facebook Live, Periscope and others. Imagine growing your audience for your store (and your website) just by doing a virtual fashion talk every week. It’s a great way to connect with your audience, show off (for free) new items you got in that week or what’s happening in fashion that you can help your buyers with.

Here are the main reasons why they are so popular for your fashion forward customers.

1. They Feel Connected with the Host (That’s You or Your Channel) – When people become your fan, they want to see you in every way that they can, be it on a webcast or in person. And it doesn’t have to be just you – have your staff participate and be part of the fun. Take advantage of that and be where your fans want you to be, so that you can build better relationships and make more sales. Have some “live” audience sessions where you do a fashion show and broadcast it on Facebook live!

2. It’s Easier to Understand Difficult Topics – Many people learn better with visuals, and video can help with that. If you’re teaching a difficult concept, being able to show examples, really talk to your audience, and answer questions on the spot makes the topic a lot easier to understand. Imagine a webcast on how to wear the new “skinny scarf” 20 ways and show off your inventory while you have them captive.

3. They Find It Interesting – Audiences overwhelmingly find webcasts more interesting than blog posts, articles, and other forms of content. They are more likely to interact with a webcast, make comments, and participate than they are a blog post. They love to watch just to be part of the community, especially younger audiences and that makes it a great way to draw them in. Of course, they will want to buy online as well, so having an optimized website will make it easy to add sales to your store.

4. They Feel Included – When you invite people to weekly webcasts, they feel included in your inner circle. Whether your webcasts are public or for members only doesn’t matter. Your audience will feel included and part of your VIP circle. They get to know you and what you are like, and you can even find yourself with “inside jokes” with your audience.

5. It Feels Like a Real Event – It feels real because it is. If you’re hosting live webcasts, they’re real events that people can and will get excited about. Your audience will be happy, and that happiness will rub off on you and make you happy to perform the webcast each week. You can let your staff do them as well – just come up with a script or plan for the week and let them go, that way it becomes about the store and not just you.

6. They Can Build Relationships – When your audience is watching you live, in their mind you’re building a relationship with them. They’re looking into your eyes; they feel as if you’re talking only to them. They like to get to know people before they spend money, and webcasts are the best way to do that. When they walk in the store, it will feel like they already know all the people and that makes them welcome and more likely to buy.

7. It Feels Separate from the Sales Cycle – While webinars and webcasts today are certainly part of the sales cycle, to the audience it feels separate from the sales cycle. As long as your webcasts are informative, they’re not going to feel sold to or talked down to. They’re going to enjoy it. And you are not selling all the time, most of the time these are informational webinars to show what’s going on in the world you live in. If you just went to market, tell them all about what you saw – build anticipation for what you are going to bring into the store.

8. They Like to Follow Thought Leaders – If you’re an expert in your niche (and your audience certainly thinks you are), then any time you do a webinar your people are going to want to participate and learn from you. You can also see which shows are watched more and learn what your audience is looking for so you can give them more of that.

9. Audiences Love Demos – When you teach your audience to do something, even things you think are easy and boring, they just love it. Host a webinar teaching your audience to do one small thing that you do on a regular basis, and it’ll be a well-attended webinar – especially if you let them ask questions. Teaching is fun and will draw people to you because you will be more personable and not salesy.

10. They Like a Sure Thing – It’s like an email newsletter or a magazine; people like being able to count on something. If it’s a weekly live event, they’re going to be excited to view it and tell others about it too. If they know for sure that this event will continue happening, they’re going to be even more likely to tell others. Especially if you give your best information – remember you are selling a physical product so give them the information on how to use it and they will flock to you.

Hosting weekly webinars will pay off in a big way if you keep doing it and keep going. Ensure that your subject matter fits with your target audience and you’ll be surprised at how successful they’ll become. It make take a while for them to become high quality because you are not the greatest when you start, but starting is what you need to do. You can’t do episode 10 until you have done episodes 1 – 9. Brainstorm some ideas and get started.