More Online Webinar Meeting Services: AnyMeeting.com and Spreecast.com

I have previously used Skype, MeetingBurner and Google+ for small meetings with clients and webinars and now it seems like there are ever more competitors in this space.

And the services seem to become ever more affordable.

Two more services to add to your evaluation list:

• AnyMeeting.com offers meetings for up to 200 participants for free (ad supported)
• Spreecast.com seems to offer free webinar streaming for unlimited participants

Consultancy in the USA

Or "We don't need no stinking consultants... unless they are from a big consultancy company"

I periodically get requests to consult in the USA.

Great.

So how do I get a visa to do that?

• http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/types/types_2665.html#5

Whoa, I need my 'prospective employer' to file a petition with a bunch of government agencies. Because they will do that for a couple of days consultancy from an independent consultant.

Oh, and if they do, then any contract that I had with them would probably come under IR35 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IR35). Which for a small independent consultancy pretty much doesn't work.

From http://london.usembassy.gov/root/visa-wizard/pages/visawizard006a.html

"The performance of any skilled or unskilled labor - even if it is unpaid - is most always prohibited. This includes performing work in the U.S. as a trainer or consultant"

Note the - unpaid part there. So even if you turn up for 'meetings' because you want in on the Waiver scheme, and don't get 'paid' for work. You are not allowed in.

Apparently there used to be a " B-1 business visa" which allowed for this. But no longer.

A B-1 Business Visa does not allow "consultancy" work.

• http://london.usembassy.gov/niv/b1apply.html

The UK is part of the Visa Waiver Programme, which allows British Citizens to travel to the USA for less than 90 days - and it includes business, so long as the business activity isn't money related i.e. you could do meetings, but not paid work.

So where does consultancy fit? It doesn't. there are no Visa's that guarantee entry into the US for 2 or 3 days of short term paid consultancy to companies in the USA.

You have the risk that even if you get to the states, immigration don't let you in. You might mention 'work' instead of 'business' and then you are likely to get turned away.

It seems as though a "B1 in lieu of H1B" is required where someone from a foreign company, paid by the foreign company can work in the USA. If the consulate issue one, and if the immigration officers allow you entry via it.

Most consultants and trainers then, I suspect are essentially illegal migrant workers. Whoo hoo, way to go government immigration rules. Of course the UK has very similar rules and visas to the US, so US consultants should find it equally hard to gain entry into the UK.

Of course there are no restrictions on remote working.

Collating content for e-mail Newsletters

Some of my blogs are 'non-core'.
Like this one.
I set them up so I have a topic related channel and can write up what I need to, without polluting my 'core' brands.
At some point, this might become core, so I try to keep it very focussed and add value.

For my core blogs, I've started writing an e-mail newsletter. And I wanted to collate content for it, over a month, so that when it came to write the newsletter, I had all the content I needed at hand, to make writing the newsletter fast and easy.

There are a lot of services out there now which 'seem' to want to help you do that. Pinterest, Flipboard, etc. etc.

So I tried a few of the popular services that seem aimed at doing this:

• Flipboard didn't seem to want to let me collate individual items, it seems to want to pull in feeds. Well I already use NewsBlur for my RSS feeds. So I don't need that. Account Disabled within 15 minutes.
• Pinterest wants to help you collate individual items so that you have a pin board of 'stuff'. Sounds good. But as soon as you create an account, Pinterest throws up a 'follow 5 people' dialog. I don't really know what to do with the system at this point, so I randomly select 5 people, just so I can move on to see the site. But now I hav a Pinterest home page filled with random junk. Should be simple to fix - just unsubscribe from those 5 random people and... no can do. Account Disabled within 5 minutes.

Clearly, its just me. All I wanted was something to pin things to that I found on the web and share it and ...

So I fell back on the old stalwart. EverNote.

I created a notebook for each newsletter, then started adding items into the notebook.

I tend to copy and paste stuff, rather than use the browser EverNote plugins.

A useful feature I like on my Android devices is the twitter integration. With Twitter you generally have to 'favourite' tweets, but that is a little too public for my sensibilities. But on Android I can 'send to EverNote' and the tweet I want to follow up on, or curate, is added to my EverNote without anyone noticing.

Sometimes, it pays to keep it simple.

Trim your LinkedIn groups on a monthly basis

Linkedin groups are a massive source of frustration.

I was starting to lose all hope of finding any value in them.

But since I was investigating online training, I wanted to find some linkedin groups for that. As I wrote about previously.

Linkedin has a limit on the number of groups you can join - probably to save your sanity. So I had to unsubscribe a few groups.

Linkedin hide the 'leave this group' option. You need to be in the group, then use the 'more...\ Your Settings' link and there you will see the [Leave Group]' button.

My strategy for choosing groups to leave was:

If the number of members is small then, check the recent posts:

• If there were none of interest in the last month - leave the group
• If the questions, or answers annoyed me, leave the group
• If there were no posts in the last month - leave the group

I stayed in a few groups just because of this size of the membership base, and purely for future marketing reasons.

I will repeat the above 'trimming' process on a monthly basis. This will probably help keep me sane.

Working Remotely with Google Hangouts

I recently spent a day working remotely with a team in Romania through Google Hangouts.

We had a few connection issues along the way, I don't think any of that was from Google Hangouts, it was because of local wifi connection issues.

Google Hangouts makes it really easy to setup a group meeting, and remember this is all for free.

You can keep them private and only invite who you want.

The participants can all see each other, and you can share your screen easily. In fact, any participant can share their screen.

There is a chat window for sharing links.

Most impressive of all, was the remote desktop sharing. So I could operate their computer remotely.

I'm not sure I'm ready to use this for webinars yet. But certainly for face to face calls I'll use this as a default rather than Skype,

Online training resources

Are you an independent consultant? Do you conduct online training?

Actually, I don't mind either way, because I do.

So far I've been using Udemy.com. They make it free and easy to get your training to market and I've had no problem being paid on time by them.

As an independent. I wanted to start looking around for other routes to market.

Udemy have some forums on facebook, but this is for discussing Udemy stuff - I wanted to find other places where people discuss online training.

I asked around and was told about a few LinkedIn groups:

• Camtasia Users Group
• eLearning community group
• eLearning edge
• eLearning Global Network
• Instructional Designers
• Instructional Design and E-Learning professional's group
• LMS and e-learning group
• Rapid e-learning group
• The elearning guild

I haven't been subscribed to these long enough to know how much value they will add, but they look pretty good so far.

Some good resources came through as a result of signing up for these

• http://elearningfeeds.com/
• http://www.elearninglearning.com

Hope this helps, and if you know any good additional resources, please leave a comment below.

It seems as though I need to search for things like "LMS" "MOOC" and "e-learning" and not "online training" like I had been. Half the battle is often learning the specific language of the domain when you are a beginner.

Using Twitter for marketing

It seems as though rules of etiquette around twitter exist that I did not know.

I thought:

• If I wanted to read what someone tweeted then I would follow them
• If someone wanted to read what I tweeted then they would follow me.

It appears that this falls in to the naive category.

Apparently, based on what a twitter marketeer told me, and on what I've seen people who outsource their twitter management do:

• If someone follows you, you have 3 days to follow them, before they unfollow you.
• Similarly, if you follow someone, and they don't follow you back within 3 days then you should unfollow them.

Why? Because this increases your reach and influence.

Note, these people don't use twitter for marketing. These people operate as twitter marketeers, who teach other people how to use twitter for marketing. And I have read their twitter feeds, but since they adopt the - 20 tweets a day, regardless of relevant content - strategy, I don't think it works in terms of engagement.

Personally. This all feels wrong to me. And if something feels wrong to you, don't do it.

Although from a marketing point of view I understand the following.

• When I follow someone, they receive a message saying that I have followed them.
• They may check out my profile and timeline to check if they want to follow me.
• If they don't follow me then they don't see my timeline.

If I actually want to market to this person via twitter then they need to see my tweet. So I have some choices.

• I could unfollow - as the marketing strategists suggest. At which point I gain no insight into what they care about and couldn't structure tweets that meet their need.
• I could mention them in tweets directly. They will see these mentions in their twitter tool. They might choose to follow, or interact.
• I could unfollow, and then refollow later, in the hope that they will eventually follow. I don't know if this works, I've never noticed someone unfollow me and later follow me.
• Perhaps I should market to them off-twitter. Perhaps I should link in with them.

I need to do more research on this, but it seems that if you use twitter as a marketing tool you may well lose site of the engagement part because if you follow 6000 people (to pluck a large number out of the air). How can you engage with them or monitor the stream of tweets for information you find useful.

I suspect I'll adopt the following strategy:

• grow your follower base organically
• follow people I want to read, and people I want to market to
• try to create tweets that people re-tweet
• engage specific people directly through questions
• use linkedin and email for direct marketing approaches

I'll keep researching until I build a good model for this, but in marketing, and business, if it feels wrong and you can't justify it, then don't do it. Ever. Despite what the Gurus tell you, but keep researching, just in case they do have valuable information - and because you might change your mind.