Webcast Checklist
Webcasts (aka webinars, micronars, ’nars, etc) are a great way to grow your email list. Here’s how I set up my monthly webcasts:
General Setup (one-time)
This is the stuff you do once:
- Put monthly recurring webcast event in calendar
- I do every third Wednesday of the month at 1pm ET
- Block out three hours
- One hour before for prep
- One hour for the event itself
- One hour after for follow-up activities
- Set reminders for 2 weeks, 1 week, 2 days, and 1 day ahead
- Create a Crowdcast account (affiliate link - thx!)
- Create a Drip account
- Create a Zapier account
- Set up a zap that listens for the
New Event Registrations
trigger in Crowdcast and will run theCreate or Update Subscribers
action in Drip
- Set up a zap that listens for the
1-2 Weeks Before Event
- Come up with a title, description, and photo for the event
- Create a new event on Crowdcast
- Paste in the title and description on the Basic Info panel
- Upload a cover photo on the Cover panel
- Bonus points: add a Facebook pixel on the Advanced panel
- Drive traffic to Crowdcast event page
- Email your list (and invite them to share with their networks)
- Social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)
- Groups (Slack, FB Groups)
- PPC (FB Ads, Google AdWords)
- Start drafting an outline for the talk
1-2 Days Before Event
- Check Crowdcast page (and elsewhere) for questions
- Flesh out the talk outline (incorporate questions if you found any)
- Put together a slide deck for the talk
- Include detailed speaker notes in the slides
Day Of Event
- (T-minus 90 minutes) Print out slides (with speaker notes!) on paper
- (T-minus 60 minutes) Get your desk/computer/mic organized
- (T-minus 30 minutes) Log into Crowdcast green room and make sure everything looks good
- (Liftoff) Go live! Welcome people (on webcam)
- Ask people to let you know in chat that they can see/hear you
- Switch to slides (no webcam)
- Present slides for 15-45 minutes
- Switch back to webcam
- Answer questions until they are exhausted (or 90 minute limit is reached)
- Make sure to click on the Answer Question button in Crowdcast
- Make sure to read the questions aloud (for future audio-only version or transcript)
Post Event
- Download the registrant list as CSV from Crowdcast
- Download the video recording from Crowdcast
- Create PDF of your slides with speakers notes
- FYI - it’s a print option in Keynote, not an export option
- Upload PDF of slides (I use Dropshare + S3 for this)
- Create a campaign in Drip named “Webcast: [CROWDCAST TITLE]”
- Create a rule in Drip to subscribe any newly tagged subscribers to the webcast campaign
Automation > Rules > New Basic Rule
- Create a bulk action to subscribe people tagged with the webcast title to the webcast campagin
Subscribers > Import/Bulk Ops > New Bulk Operation
- Create an email on the webcast campaign that links to the slides
- Optionally create a couple follow up emails specific to the event
- Create an “I’m moving you to my main list” email
- Create a rule in Drip to move people who finish the webcast campaign to the main list
- Make sure you MOVE them, not just subscribe to main list
- Do not send a double opt-in confirmation email
- Change “Perform immediately” to a 1 day delay
Yer Done
At this point, any new registrants to the webcast (Crowdcast requires registration even just to view the recording) will get:
- Added to Drip
- Tagged appropriately
- Subscribed to a short and highly specific webcast campaign
- Moved into your main list for nurture and sales
You should not need to touch anything related to this webcast ever again - it’ll just sit there attracting subscribers to your list on its own.
Fun Optional Stuff
- Submit video recording to rev.com for transcription
- $60 for an hour long recording
- My last webcast came out to almost 12k words (!)
- Get it edited (I use Sarah Greesonbach)
- Use as a huge article or series
- Use as an ebook
- Use as a book chapter
- Create mp3 file of just the audio
- Clean it up a bit
- Trim front and end
- Add intro and outro
- Maybe add music
- Publish as a podcast episode (or episodes)
- Use as a lead magnet
- Send to email list as a bonus
- Clean it up a bit