Transcript for "Creating a Speaker Experience That Doesn't Feel Like a Webinar": Hi, everyone. Happy Monday. My name my name is Alana, senior product marketing manager here at Goldcast. Thanks so much for joining us again. I am especially excited today because I get to hang out with two of my favorite teammates, Shivika and Reagan. I don't know if you know, but there are... I've been with Goldcast for almost two years now. There's a lot of reasons why I love working at Goldcast, but the people is definitely the biggest reason. And these two, they light up my day whenever I get to work with them on something or just simply have a quick chat. And I also have to mention my webinar series producer, Tori, who is not here with us today, but she literally held my hand through something a few months ago. I was, like, freaking out. So I have a lot of love for this great team, and I think that's that's a a big part of what we're talking about today too. I think public speaking doesn't come naturally to a lot of people, including myself, but having people around you who support you, have your back, and also kind of push you outside of your comfort zone a little bit, that makes a difference. So today, we're gonna keep this casual. We're gonna share practical tips. We're gonna show you some of the things we do behind the scenes. And, of course, we're also gonna swap a few stories that, that didn't go according to plan. So as usual, please use the chat to share your thoughts and drop any questions for our speakers in the q and a tab. Alright. Let's bring up our guests. Hi, Hi, Megan. everybody. It's great to see so many familiar names in the chat. Hey. How's it going? So good to have you. It's great to be here. This is gonna be a party. Yeah. I'm so excited you're here with me. Let's start with a quick intro. Can you each tell us a little about a little about your role at Goldcast and how you work with speakers and events? Yeah. Totally. So I'm joining from brand and community here at Goldcast and have kind of a long history as does Shidika with this amazing brand. So we've been around for a while, and we've done quite a few events and webinars. So I'm sure we have, lots of stories to share with you guys today. Shiv. Awesome. Hi, everyone. I've been with for about almost three years. No. Almost four years. Sorry. My bad. Almost four years, been working with, you know, amazing people like Alana, Reagan, and the whole team here. My role is basically mostly taking care of all things community partnerships and partnerships, and I work with, like, I work with, like, really close. And with this role comes back... Big responsibility of getting speakers comfortable, and I'm here to, like, share all things about that. Thank you for having us, Alana. Yeah. So today, we're talking about the speaker experience. Like Reagan and Shiv mentioned, we're gonna cover from the first tech check all the way to the content we create after the the prep call as well. But before we get into our own stories, let's hear from everyone joining us today. Head over to the polls tab and let us know... Let me open the polls, actually. Okay. Head over to the polls tab and let us know what's the most challenging part of managing webinar speakers to you. We'll take a look on, we'll take a look at the results in a moment. I thought we'd start with something we can probably all relate to when things don't go according to plan. Would you like to kick us off? Of course. Okay. So, Alit, I know a lot of you are customers of Goldcast, but we have this very cool and very tricky feature, which is this thirty second timer. And this timer basically goes on as soon as we click on go live. A lot of speakers don't really see that, and they just, like, you know, start with delivering their session and on and on and on and on on the go. Okay? So this one time, couple of years back, I was training a new community partner, and, we had a very fresh, a very new, person speaking at a Goldcast event. And, he didn't know. Like, he didn't know this and started. Sorry. Can you all hear Shiv or it's my Wi Fi that's not working? Yeah. She... She's a little in and out. Okay. Shiver, you can hear us. And can jump in with for own minutes. speaker payoffs. This is how you know we're live. Wi Fi definitely knows the perfect day to just give out. That has happened to me quite a few times. All good. Okay. Let me... Why don't I jump in with my own story, and we'll see if Shavika can fix her Wi Fi. I think you two probably also remember this story. A while back, I was part of this big virtual event we hosted at Goldcast, and my task was so simple. I literally just needed to come on stage and announce the giveaway winners. That was it. Like, I didn't have to present anything. No demos. No no deck. No... Nothing. But also that day, my Wi Fi also decided to give up. It was just like... It just knows. It's like, oh, you have something important today? Okay. I'm not working. So everything was delayed on my end. I couldn't hear anyone, and I'd... It felt like nobody was able to hear me, so I was starting to panic. And all I wanted to do was basically just to get off stage. Shiv is back. Yes. Shiv, I'm just sharing my story, and then we'll we'll go with your story after. You can hear me now? Yes. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. So I basically just wanted to get off get off stage. But in the middle of trying, I clicked the wrong button, and I ended the session for everybody. It Hate to see it. was like... Thankfully, Alex on our team, he was able to restart the session. Everything was fine. But, like, I definitely had the moment of, oh my gosh. Did I just end this thing for everyone? I was like, they invited me to, like, announce winners, and I just ended the event. But I think there's definitely... There was a lesson learned. Right? If you're bringing speakers into your event, give them the permissions they actually need. So stage access is more than enough if they're just... If they're not sharing slides. But if they do need to share slides, give them the share access. Generally, speakers don't need full access. I just decided to give myself full access because I always... I've always had full access at Goldcast, but, like, for... On that day, I really just didn't need it. My team trusted me a little too much. I that's my contribution to the speaker fail hall of fame. Shiv, let's try yours again. mean, I don't think so. I need an example. This was an example for me. My first ever session is going live, and this your speaker fail. This was my speaker for it, and this is like a live story. Anyways, going back to... I don't know where did I leave. What did you guys see or last? Give me something. Should I start from the beginning? Pretty much. Yeah. If you don't mind. Okay. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. So we have this thirty second timer, which goes on once the session is live, and the speaker did not see that. He was he was still backstage, and he was giving his entire session for, like, ten minutes straight. And let's just say we had to, like, make around 100 calls to get his attention and move his attention from the second tab to the gold cards tab, and everybody in the chat was like, are we late? Are we early? What's happening? Where's the speaker? What's happening there? But at the end, I know that the event was, like, really great because the content was so good that nobody actually, like, cared about the first ten minutes. It was lost. And we had, like, you know, we had, like, impromptu people coming in. The producer actually got on the stage and had to, like, you know, just entertain the audience. It was hilarious, but it was really fun. a great example. And for mine... So I don't know if anyone noticed in our promotion for this event, but we actually had a potato, emoji, as part of the the poster to kind of tease this. Back in 2022 or 2023, it's been several years now, we, peak pandemic kind of... There was a lot of these kinds of stories happening if if you recall. But, basically, I was presenting on an event, and I was super nervous, which is kind of my brand to get very nervous to go on stage. So I'm already peak nerves, and, someone joined on video feed with a potato filter on. And so she was a potato, and not only a potato, but, like, a confused and a little bit, like, panicked potato. So I don't know if anyone in the crowd was on this event of ours. I I can't remember the name of it, actually. But I just remember literal tears streaming down my face, like, laughter tears, because I was already so nervous to present. And I'm like, this lady has a potato on her face and she doesn't know how to get it off. And I don't know how to help her get it off. So that's probably my favorite, blooper, on this subject. What did you do to recover from that? I just did it. You know? We just kinda rolled with it. We just moved forward with our trauma. Okay. I tried. so hard finding that, I... clip. I really wanted to play that clip here, but I couldn't remember the name of the event. It was super funny. I don't think I was with Goldcast at the time. I really need to see the clip as well. Oh, it was too good. Okay. My face is literally... It's hurting me from laughing. I really love these stories because I think sometimes we we kinda see the, like, the polished end product and then we assume everything behind the scenes was just as smooth and we kind of... Like, at least for myself, sometimes I'm just like, oh, that host or speaker, they're just better at what they do, which may not be true at all. There's a lot of work and sometimes a lot of chaos too that goes into getting there. But we've shared our speak... Speaker fail stories. Let's move on to one of the success stories, shall we? I have... Alessandra is one of our power users, and she first experienced Goldcast as a speaker herself. And then later, she used Goldcast to organize her first big virtual event, which meant she she was suddenly on the other side of the experience preparing and managing her own speakers. So let's take a look at what she had to say. It was our first, virtual event, and we ended up having about 1,700 people register and, about a thousand people attend. And it was, like, a three... Full three day summit action packed. So we had, you know, about, I think it was, like, 40 something speakers. Most... And I had actually spoken at, one of the Goldcast events before, so I had experienced the backstage, experience, which I was like, oh my gosh. This is so cool. I really want to have this for our event, you know, because I just loved being a speaker and being able to go on and have really that seamless kind of, a feeling and have the... When I went backstage and your team met me back there, I was like, I I felt like this is so helpful for me as a speaker to be able to be prepped and to, like, have a backstage area that was really, like, very professional. But then when we when we did our summit, I was like, oh, like, this is just being on the other side of it and being able to be like an... Kind of an admin of that stuff. I saw even more how powerful it was. I I think it was pretty standard on, what we did where we were like, okay. Let's have a call beforehand to just talk about the topic. But then at the end of that, I was like, oh, let me just, like, pull up. There's a... I mean, I feel like Goldcast has, like, fantastic support documents. Like, anything you could think of, there's this, like, in detail. And so there's, like, a a page that's like, here's how to prepare as a speaker for an event. And so I would just pull that up when I was on the call with them, and then I would share... I'd be like, hey. This is what it looks like once you click the magic link to join as a speaker. This is what the agenda will look like. And so I was able to take them to each each step of the process. There... I mean, it's very simple process, but, and, honestly, I think even if I hadn't shown them that, it's, like, so straightforward that most of them could have. But since it was kind of new to them, I'm like, oh, just in case, like, I don't wanna have issues on the day of. And so in just, you know, five minutes, basically, I was at the end of the prep call. Like, they literally were like, this is so simple. Like, I I feel very prepared, and I feel like it's gonna be very easy to do. Day of, like, it went... For all three days went so well where, like, no one had problems. They were just, like, you know, so simple and, like, intuitive, but also, obviously, they had been prepared. And they were, like, really impressed with the experience. So, it was... I mean, I couldn't have asked for it to go better. And then people afterwards were, like, tagging other people on our team on on social and talking about what a good job we did at this, you know, creating the summit. Even some people were like, oh, other event organizers should, like, learn from them because, like, it was so high quality. And I was, like, laughing to myself because I'm like, you know, this is our first event, and then people are saying this should be a model for other event organizers. And so I was really proud of our team, but I think what was so cool was to, to be able to become more, like, front of mind for even the speakers for our whole team. Right? They were, like, able to to have fun and joke around, like, backstage with our... With other people, and then, you know, then I come on stage with me. And I feel like it really solidified our relationships with a lot of those speakers and a lot of the attendees. I think that's such a great example of how much the experience can improve when speakers know what to expect and when they feel supported about the actual events. Because it's not just about avoiding the technical issues. It's also about helping people feel prepared and confident. And that brings us to the relationship between the speaker and the producer, and that's because there's a lot of teamwork behind, a great event or behind a great recording. Shiv, let's start with you. One of the things that can make speakers nervous is not knowing what to expect when they show up to record or go live. Right? So can you walk us through how you prepare speakers, especially when it comes to the the tech side of things? Yep. For sure. I've been, great points by Alessandra. And we also, like, you know, meet speakers quite often before we actually go live with the... When So producers and speakers really have a very strong bond. Let's just say that. So, you know, a quick check check before, an event is always helpful, and especially if you're using a new product or a new platform. So let's actually go in and see the backside of how the event tech experience actually looks like. Perfect. Okay. So as soon as a speaker clicks on their magic link, this is the place where they are directed to. This is where they, you know, make sure that the cameras, their microphones, their speakers are working perfectly fine. They can change the input of the cameras or their microphones or the speakers from the drop down here. If... Or, for example, is sharing their screen, or they like, you know, for example, for that... If they're doing a demo, they can also test screen share. Just quickly do it. Yeah. This is how it looks like. And once they are satisfied with everything, they can just simply click on enter event. The backstage where you can see me right now is where the speaker and the producer meets ten to fifteen minutes before that session actually begins. The chat over here is hidden from the public, so the audience does not really see everything. A lot of things happen backstage, and this is where the producers and the speakers actually communicate while they are live. Speakers can send us alerts. Sorry. Producers can send the speakers alert and let them know if they want to, for example, like, let the audience know something. And once the speaker is ready to go on stage, they basically click on go on stage. Thanks for the demo, Shiv. That's really helpful. I know that you... The two of you also prepared a little something to show us how producer and speaker can work hand in hand. So let's play that one too. That's just a quick thirty second video. We were chatting behind... Backstage how the music was so soft and gentle. Like, Oh my gosh. this we have an amazing video team, is on our marketing team here at Goldcast. only as you can probably tell, this one was me. editing. So the nursery rhymes might not have been fitting, but that's what it is. loved it. But, yeah, I think, you know, being, being a speaker, it can be scary, being on stage in front of however large of an audience you might have. And I think even for those who are not facing that stage fright or or the fear of forgetting their notes and that kind of thing, speakers really should just be able to focus on their job, of delivering the content that they're there to speak about. And I think producers make that possible. So thank you, Shivika. Love it. Thanks, Reagan. And I know you do love everything I do here because... But anyways, like Reagan said that the job of a speaker is just to ensure that they deliver the right content and focus and engage with the chat. And speakers do actually try to, you know, make this very, like, way easier for them. But it's not just a speaker's job to, you know, ensure or boost a speak... Like, it's not just a producer's job to boost the confidence of a speaker. To make things easier, we have this very cool feature like teleprompter. So you don't have to juggle between two different screens and stick to the... Just like, you know, one screen. Also, have a quick view of what's happening in the run off show and keep everything aligned with the speaker and the producer so you know where exactly exactly you stand in the segment and what's coming up next so you don't really have to panic or just, like, you know, go to the second screen again to check what's happening. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. I have eight run of show queues right now for this event. I love that one. Sorry. I I love that when everyone knows their role and then has a process to follow. It's just so much easier, and then it just takes a lot of the pressure off the event and and the speakers too. Let's also talk about what happens after the prep call because the value of a great speaker experience doesn't... It doesn't have to stop when the recording does. Right? Reagan, I know you've posted a lot of great speaker teaser clips on LinkedIn, so let's, let's jump into those. Great. Yeah. I know we only have a few minutes to go through this, but I'm really excited to share four very different examples of how we think about LinkedIn promotion, pre event. So for this first one, guest speaker promotion done well. I think, you know, some guest speakers and some of them are even in the crowd today. Stacy, Logan, I'm I'm talking to you. Really do go above and beyond. And, you know, I think it's just our job to do the best that we can to enable our guest speakers when it comes to the likelihood of getting them to promote the events on social. We're already asking so much of them. I think the least we can do is provide them with that content. And and, you know, we try to get creative with this. And like our CMO, Kelly, likes to say, we try to enable them with content that will really stop the scroll on LinkedIn. So this is an example of our team taking some content from a prep call. Cindy was hosting a few people for a webinar, and she turned it into a meme style, social post. And then Kelly here was actually willing to share it, and this really does stand out and stop the scroll on LinkedIn and helps us to drive sign ups. So our next example... Let's see. We've got brand posts with prep call content. So this is all about the preplanning involved in your promotion strategy to ensure that you get the footage from your prep calls that can be useful then later on LinkedIn. So this screenshot shows you a post where we actually took a short clip from the prep call conversation, and we found a moment that was a great hook, a great teaser for the upcoming episode, and shared that out on social. And I would say the next two are sort of bonus posts because they're not specifically tied to, speaker promo, but they're but they're still related to what we're trying to do here. So I threw them in. And, Shivika, I can definitely speak more to this than I can, but tapping into your partner network, so any of the brands that you're working with or your customer advocates. This is actually an example of an influencer marketing partner of ours at Goldcast, who became a customer. And MC here in this video, she did the classic walk and talk selfie style, very casual, informal, video promoting the content of the event and why people in her network should register. So I think if you're not already considering how your brand partners or your super users, can work with you, definitely send Shavika an email or a LinkedIn DM to learn about how we run our partnership programs, in ways that really benefit everyone and still have that authentic nature to them that's so important to us, I would say. Okay. And I've got one more for you. And this is a strategy we love here at Goldcast Company Posting Day. Sometimes, as this example shows you, we do need to offer up a prize or two to get everyone involved. But this shows you how you can really rally your internal team on spreading the word on social for your upcoming events. So getting sales, CS product to really blast LinkedIn all at once, on on a dedicated social posting day. We've really seen good results from this, and we can kind of back that with data because we use UTM tracking links for all of these social posting days. And we also go back and look at our registration data, and we're like, oh my gosh. October 23, like, a 100 people signed up, and a marketing email didn't go out today. So we know that posting day definitely worked its magic. So those are four ways that we think about getting that organic content pre event to drive registrations both before the event and also long after it. And as we'll touch on in this next slide, we actually see hundreds of on demand registrations coming in post event because this content surfaces on LinkedIn for weeks and months to come afterwards. I love how our team is always thinking through the speaker journey end to end. And I know we covered a lot today, but I wanted to kind of zoom out a little. I saw a question in q and a. We'll get to it, Molly. I just wanted to ask our speakers one last question before we open it up for q and a. From your experience working with speakers and working on events at Goldcast, what's the one thing that you've learned that you wish you'd know earlier? I would say, first of all, valuing the relationships you're building with the people that are working with you because it's all about that authentic connection, first of all, and and showing that appreciation throughout. But on a more tactical note, just making it really easy. We don't wanna make this hard for anyone. So sending the social kit and giving them as much copy paste material as possible, would be my number one takeaway. For sure. Anything to add, Shiv? Yeah. For sure. I mean, going back to what Reagan mentioned in the previous slides, we do tap, like, we do... We have... We we get, like, amazing speakers. Right? It doesn't, like, make sense for us, like, not to tap into their networks, and that's what we do at our best. Like, we create so many relevant clips for them to, like, you know, share on their social, and we get so many good people to attend from their, network. We also amplify, in different ways. We have some great designers working with us, and they create, like, such cool assets, like certificates, you know, these meme cards and stuff like that, which gets everybody's attention and we we... Everybody wants to, you know, join the join the event and the session. Perfect. Okay. That's that's great. Let's Sorry. I was responding to Stacy in the chat. Thank you both for that. Let's open it up for our audience. I think I saw a question from Molly. Let me just bring that up. Okay. My producer is not here. Let me see if I can share that on stage. I did. Okay. Yes. How do you source the speaker teaser clips? Are you recording content calls and using those, or do you ask people to record and send you something? Oh, I think, Reagan, this is probably a question for you. We use recording studio to, record our prep calls. But if you have anything else to add, please. Yeah. Are you recording content and using those? Or do you ask people to record and send you something? Yeah. So with Goldcast, the beauty of our... Using our own product is that we have the amazing recording studio. So we plan that in advance, with our prep calls to just host those natively and then record and find the key moments where we can we can tease out some content. So we'll be going through the run of show and working together, you know, hey. We're gonna try to get a teaser here or whatever. Can you give us a few comments about what you're actually gonna talk about during the live event? And then we can go click that up and use it on social, for promotion. And. I think Molly added a a follow-up. Can we actually... Yeah. Curious how many clips you're sending. So I think more than quantity here, it's like, speed. So after an event, I just try to make sure to at least get them one clip that is really, worth putting out on social just so that that quick turnaround being like, you know, here, we just had our event, and we've already got this on social within the next day, or so is is usually our goal so that we can just start driving the on demand viewers right away. Yeah. Another point to add is something that I've noticed that if you ask a speaker to record something for the promo, high chances are he or she will not, you know, just for the pros. It... It's better to just, like, you know, use the content that we actually already have, and that's on the dry run. And that's clearly, like, working the best for us. Right. Thanks,. Good point. Good point. Well, this. has been so much fun. Wow. I loved it. I I am so happy that you guys were here with me. I've had so much fun. And I think we have the poll results back. So let me just share that with everyone, and then we can wrap this. One second. Okay. So it looks like getting people scheduled and making sure they're feeling... They they feel prepared and, also, honestly, all of you above. So we're all in the same boat getting speaker prepped. It's it's no small feat. So, thank you all for joining us today. Shivika and Reagan, it's so good to have you. It's been really fun getting to share this conversation with you. And we also have another virtual event coming up on Wednesday. It's all about Goldcast MCP. Let me share that ticker here. So So you can click on that link if you wanna join us on Wednesday. It's also linked under the docs tab. For everyone joining us today, thanks so much. And we have two more episodes coming up in the series. If you have anything, any other questions, feel free to leave us a message or... I'm pretty sure a lot of you have my email as well. We're always... We love to chat with our customers and, audience. So thank you so much, for joining us. Have a good rest of your week. Have a great week. Thanks. See you all, soon. everybody.