Though I never got much of a feedback from Ralph Wilson, he was nice enough to ran a two-line text ad for the SOHO Guide in his DrEbiz newsletter. I remain thankful to him for this act of generosity but I am even happier to see how Good the reading of my content has been in the shaping of the marketing "strategy" Ralph Wilson is now adopting.
Ralph has just run an online testing session with several ones of the tools and solutions that I have specifically recommended in my Guide. Though he does not share publicly this info, he has indeed taken to heart my specific recommendations and advice and has now settled on one of my Best Buy company solutions to setup the first one in a long series of online live seminars.
What does this tell you?
1) If Ralph Wilson read, promoted, and picked up one of my Recommended Solutions companies, this should tell you that in that Guide there is something Good.
2) If Ralph Wilson chose not to acknowledge yet the key inspiration of its newly discovered communication toolkit for his newly launched set of live seminars, this is a sign that what I have placed in that Guide is not only useful, it is "critical" and provides effective "competitive intelligence".
3) What is in the Guide is key, unique information unavailable elsewhere. Brandon-Hall, Thinkofit and Conferzone will not tell you what works and what doesn't among the large number of enterprise-oriented tools and systems they list and review.
4) The tools I recommend are effectively usable out of the box and can be leveraged to create new business and opportunities in many new ways.
5) The live conferencing and presentation tools I recommend are not meant to be used ONLY by large corporations and international organizations. They are meant to be used by professionals, entrepreneurs, small and medium companies, non-profit groups and associations. Not so with most of what you find reviewed in mainstream resources listed above.
6) The solutions I recommend in my SOHO Guide are not cost-effective. They are a "steal". There is no way that any of the enterprise players can match or come close to the price-perfomance ratio offered by all of my reviewed SOHO solutions. I am talking of prices ranging from $ 15 to $ 150 a month to run unlimited live conferences with integrated audio and as many as 25 to 50 participants (who don't have to pay or install anything on their machines). Ralph Wilson saw this through and snapped to realize all of the possible benefits he could squeeze out of it in no time at all.
7) The time it took me to put together the unique information available in the Robin Good Official SOHO Guide to Web Conferencing and Live Presentations Tools cannot be easily replicated. Over 7 months of systematic research and testing cannot be emulated by a 3-hour testing invitation (like Ralph did a week ago to test his favourite live conferencing and presentation tool.) To really find out what works among these live conferencing and collaboration tools you have to spend an incredible amount of time in effectively trying the tools and seeing where they perform as advertised and where the good is only on the features page.
I am a skilled and experienced new media technologies tester. I know how difficult this is. And I know Ralph, and many like you are smart enough to understand that it is not worthwhile to redo such an excellent work when the answers are so clearly laid out for you.
Hats to Ralph Wilson for getting the wind right as soon as it started blowing.
I am going to sign up for his live online seminars and see how well is going to mix the tools with methods.
My prediction is that Ralph will also sell and market a mini-guide devoted to Web conferencing tools that can be used for creating online marketing and training events. Ralph as picked the good hints available in the SOHO Guide and has been looking at other similar, complementary tools. If I am wrong on this one Ralph Wilson gets all my future guides for free.
If I smell the wind correctly the next one in line to become a living testimonial of the valuable information contained in my SOHO Guide to Web Conferencing is Chris Pirillo.
Chris Pirillo is one of the most prominent technology explorers working online. He publishes an incredible amount of good work in the form of specialize newsletters, daily online articles and reviews, mini-guides and ebooks. Check out his outstanding owrk at http://www.lockergnome.com and at http://www.chrispirillo.com/. He has received not one but two complimentary SOHO Guides from me. Though he claims never to have received the first the copy of the email I sent him is still here.
It is interesting to note that Chris Pirillo has chosen NOT to review it or even mention the SOHO Guide in anyone of his many newsletters and that he has plainly refused my offer to him to resell it, even under a different title/name.
When asked for the reason of his refusal he Chris replied to me by email:
"Too expensive for my target audience".
So I wrote back:
"Fair enough. Why don't you then pick a price and sell it at that one you believe to be best?"
His answer?
None.
He has asked though for an extra copy and from the amount of publicity he has given to it, I think I am in for another great surprise.
If Chris can see how valuable my reviews really are and pulls out a trick of his own, spinning off one of the many ideas that such technologies can leverage, then I will know it's time to for me to make my move.
As Ralph has clearly understood ahead of Chris, you have to start riding this technology now and this is where the future of marketing, sales and collaboration is. Imagine that on June 4th, I have even offered Chris Pirillo the following gig for Gnomedex 3 this summer. I wrote to him:
"Chris, I want to propose you something unique for your Gnomedex 3.
A live audio-visual presentation run from abroad and showcasing the best-of-breed tools to present live on the Internet.
I can deliver a live remote session from here to be shown inside a presentation room at Gnomedex through a PC. I need a darkened room with a projector and sound system. The topic of the presentation is to see the best tools to deliver live Presentations from a distance. I will deliver live audio at a quality people have not heard before and will be able to showcase a mini-set of best-of- breeds tools available today to deliver live presentations.
You can bank on it through sponsorship of the event, especially if you have companies among your clients promoting projection systems and audio presentation kits. I am sure there would be other interested complementary sponsors that would like to be seen at this session.
During the session I can also have one or two expert guests from other parts of the world, to show how effective my recommended solutions really are.
Finally the session can be closed by a Q&A session through which people can voice live their questions to me.
My price for this, is obviously my ability to promote all of my Guides (and free access to your Brain Trust).
What do you say?
Looking forward to your kind feedback"
Chris, has politely turned it down saying "It may be too late to do something like that this year, but there's always next! :) ".
But Chris Pirillo is an incredibly witful, intelligent and smart fellow indeed. Why do you think would he ever want to keep a lid on something as good as what it is inside this Guide of mine?
Really. Ask yourself why.
