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The webinar, not quite a seminar and a little less business-esque than the conference call.  A webinar is more like attending a lecture in college minus the boring professor, 8am class times and sweatpants.  Webinars act as online meetings with multiple functions ranging from information sharing to performing training sessions.  Webinars introduce a new way to convey information to the masses and gives those with daunting To-Do lists another excuse to take care of it later.

As a tool, the webinar is as adept as any tool Bob Villa has ever promoted and perhaps more useful to boot.  Below are some possible ways to utilize webinars to benefit your business’s e-commerce endeavors.

Information Session:  The information session webinar replaces the typical seminar held at your local Ski Resort in the middle of July each year.  Instead of attending a 3-day event, why not record each speech and power-point into a webinar and email blast it.  Saving time, money, resources and convenience, the seminar turned webinar is cool and cheap!

PR Event : The webinar is capable to convey information as well as generate publicity for your company.  A recent webinar I attended through Hubspot drove me to their twitter page and home page for further information.  Combining the webinar with other online tools can generate buzz about your website or twitter page.  We all know that the more followers you have=the more publicity=more website views=cha-ching.

Training Session – With firms spread geographically around the globe, training can be a large obstacle.  Using webinar tools, like “go to meeting”, managers can achieve training goals at a fraction of their cost.  Also the webinar sessions can be saved and posted to the internet for employees to reference or to be used as future training materials.

Some places to look into webinar usage are

WebEx
GoToWebinar/GoToMeeting
LiveMeeting
Elluminate
Secure Meeting

All these can be utilized by your business and should be used with a focus on creativity and originality.  As with anything on the web, you need to stand out to succeed.  A webinar that is not intriguing, captivating or informative is like watching the congressional proceedings on public access Television; no one will want to watch.