Of Webinars and Postcards

Last week I wrote about my upcoming Webinar and some marketing plans. Here's how those two items have developed.

Webinar Update

The Webinar was held last Wednesday (Sept. 19). In case you didn't read my last posting, it was hosted by Crystal Ball, a global business unit of Oracle. The topic was my proprietary financial planning tool which incorporates one of their products. There were about 220+ advisors who signed up for the event and about 130 actually attended. According to the company, this is a very large number of attendees. Many of those who did not attend were from other countries and signed up to get the link to view the recording. If any of you would like to do the same, the presentation can be found at crystalball.com's site.

Conducting a Webinar was a very different experience for me. Normally when you give a presentation, you can see and hear the audience. With a Webinar, you cannot see or hear them and so you must rely on the moderator. The attendees type their questions and the moderator reads it to you. Sometimes the question needs clarification which is hard to do in this format. Anyway, it apparently went very well, according to the company.

Marketing Update

Last week I mentioned the postcards I had printed. As can be expected, I hit a few minor obstacles here. First, with my HP Laser printer, the cards jam and the ink doesn't adhere. It comes off easily, even the next day. My color printer, a Dell 3110cn, won't accommodate the cards at all. Perhaps I need a different tray. I had an older HP all-in-one printer but the fax quit working so I bought a new HP inkjet which will fax, scan, copy, and print. It works fine so I'll print the cards on it. I also went to a professional photographer and had a digital portrait made which I plan to include on the postcard. Now I need to develop a series of messages for the cards. I'll update you on this later.

I'm hoping to go semi-paperless as soon as I get comfortable with the scanner on this new machine.

Coming Attraction

If you're interested in reading more about my financial planning tool, look for my article in the October issue of Investment Advisor magazine.

As always, thanks for reading and I look forward to your comments.