by: AskPat 367 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 367 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today.
All right, here's Daniel.
Daniel: Hey, Pat, man. What's going on? My name is Daniel, and I'm currently working with a company that does one-on-one services with children with autism, and they're looking into expanding into online webinars. And my question is, what equipments do you need to record webinar? Now, you have plenty of resources for the webinar launch sequence and maximizing the reach and everything like that. But, I can't really find anything on the fundamentals of recording the actual video. So, I'm looking for what camera would you recommend? Do you need external audio microphones? Do you need lighting? Just kind of something similar to your podcast tutorial. Instead of a podcast, but for webinars. I appreciate it. Love everything you do, man. Keep it real.
Pat Flynn: Hey, Daniel. What's up? Thank you so much for the question today. I really appreciate it, and just as a kind of rundown, I'm going to go over the different equipment and software and websites you could use. Now, I'm not sure where you are at exactly with the whole setup and stuff. But, just for everybody out there, because this might be the first time people might be learning about webinars. I want to go through the whole process and there's obviously different options you can use and stuff like that.
But, we'll get to the recording aspect of it as well, which is obviously very important, because with recordings you can give those to people who didn't attend a webinar. Maybe they signed up for a webinar and couldn't make it for whatever reason, and different kinds of webinar software can share with you those who had subscribed to watch, but did not, and you can send those people the replay. Plus, you might as well send everbody the replay, because everybody may want to watch it again. That's a good thing to do, especially if at the end of the webinar, for example, maybe you pitched something. It's another opportunity for people to get that pitch. To buy whatever it is that you're perhaps selling on that particular webinar. Plus, a replay is something you can sell. If wanted to record the webinar maybe it's a private webinar, then you wanted to sell it. As its own thing later on, you can do that. Or, maybe it's something you could include in a membership site or a course that you have. So, you can record it and plop it in there. Maybe you record the webinar and then you put it on YouTube. There's a lot of different things you can do with the recording of a webinar. Now, webinars are super high value. Which is absolutely why you want to record them.
Now, if you use GoToWebinar by Citrix, GoToWebinar. If you go to AskPat.com/gotowebinar, that's the affiliate link for that. It is rather expensive, but they do have recording software. So, they can record it, but I actually record it using other tools which I'll mention just in a second here. But, let me start from the beginning. Webinars, different ways to do it. John Lee Dumas has sort of made Google Hangouts a very famous way to do webinars. And it's a great way to do it, because it's free, and there's other tools out there that go along with Google Hangouts to make it easy and have the registration process … There's one called Webinar Jam that can do that for you. Or, you can do it manually using Leadpages and some combination of an internet … Or, an email services provider like AWeber or Infusionsoft or other, along with Google Hangouts, and you can put the embed code into a particular page on your website. Like a LivePage; that's how John does it. He does it very well.
So, you can do it that way. And, that can be recorded in a number of different ways. Which, I'll get to the recording, again just a second. Then you could use a tool. Or, you could otherwise use a tool like I mentioned earlier called GoToWebinar. That's what I've been using lately too. That, I like the process, because it's fairly easy to set up a webinar and it's very … The flow and the process for a registrant is really nice. They automatically send out these reminder emails beforehand; it's very professional. The software is very reliable, and those are the only two that I've done in the past. I've done both Google Hangouts for webinar, and also GoToWebinar for a webinar.
Now, in terms of the equipment, well, a lot of times on webinars you're going to share your screen. So, whatever is on your screen is great. Mostly people who are using GoToWebinar use screen-sharing features. It automatically does that. It allows you to choose which window you want to share. You can also share your webcam. So, you can switch from the screen that you have to the webcam. And yeah, you can do the same thing with Google Hangouts too. Now, what webcam should you use? Well, I use the Logitech HD Pro Webcam; C as in “Charlie” 920. Again, Logitech C920, records in 1080p. It's great, it's fantastic. It runs for about $70 on Amazon. There's different price ranges depending on where you get it. But, it's a fairly cheap, but very reliable and very high-quality webcam. Just stick it on top of your desktop or your MacBook Pro or whatever and you record, and it's great. So, if you use that, that's what you would use as well.
For audio, again, the audio is very important in a webinar as well. A lot of people think that it's the video, the video is important, yes and you want the lighting to be fine. If you're anywhere where you're close to daylight or direct sunlight get close to that, because that's what's going to make things look best. You want to make sure the front of your face is lit. Now, if you're doing it at night you want to have some light … kind of three-point lighting system, any sort of light that's lighting your face, which is good. Sometimes the monitor is just enough, but sometimes when you're switching between screens it can mess with the lighting of your face a little bit. But, lighting on either side of you and lighting the background too, so it doesn't look like you're telling a campfire story, is the best to do. You don't have to worry so much about lighting, but the lighting is something to think about. As long as you're conscious about it, and you'll see a preview of what's shown on the screen on the video before you hit record or hit broadcast. So, that's fine.
But, in terms of audio, the audio is very important. It's something a lot of people forget about. Now, I would go podcasting quality with it. Now, that doesn't mean you have to spend a ton of money. There is a mic out there called the Audio Technica ATR2100, ATR 2-1-0-0. It's a USB cardioid dynamic USB/XLR mic. Which mean that it can connect to your USB port or it can connect to a mixer through a XLR cable. It runs about $60, which is very cheap, and it sounds almost as good as a HeilPR40, which is an XLR microphone that has to connect to a mixer and then connect to your computer, and also runs about $300 or $400. So, again the Audio Technica ATR2100 USB. It's a great, great microphone. I use it when I'm on the go. So, you can use that for your webinars, and that would do the job in terms of audio quality.
Now, in terms of recording… Again, I'm sorry, Daniel, it took so long to get here if this is the only part you're looking forward to. The recording, I always record on a second device, because if you record on your own device, on your own desktop, you're going to record everything on your screen, and there are certain administrative panels that you don't necessarily want shown on a replay, for example. But, you want to get the point of view of the viewer. So, what I do is I have my laptop, I do my webinars on my desktop, and I have a laptop. Or, if I'm on my laptop on the go and I don't have access to a second computer, I call my buddy or I call my friend and I tell him to record it. And I tell him to record it using something like Screenflow or Camtasia Studios. That's what'll do it. So, make sure it records the … the most important thing is if you are using a computer to record the webinar, using Screenflow or Camtasia, that you record the system audio. If you don't have the system audio on, you're going to record the video, but not the audio, and that's not good. You want to record the system audio.
Now, some screen capture software will require you to download a certain plugin or tool in order to do that, which is fine. Screenflow, I think does that. Maybe not in the latest version, it might have it enabled already. But, it just makes it really easy for you once you download that driver. I don't even know exactly how it goes, but it'll walk you throuhg the process. But, get Screenflow; AskPat.com/screenflow is the tool. It's amazing. You just record your whole screen, and then from Screenflow, after you're done, you can go and hit stop recording, and then you can edit it from there and just export it directly to YouTube if you wish. Or, export it into something and then upload it into a host where you can then put it into a membership site or a course. Or, behind a paywall and sell it. So, there's a lot of things that you can do, but that's how I would record. Screenflow, you run the webinar the exact same way but you just record on a second computer using Screenflow with the system audio on and you're money.
So, Daniel I hope that answers your question and for everybody else out there, hopefully that educates you a little bit more on webinars and stuff. I would definitely go to LewisHowes.com for more information on webinars. He's got some great information on webinars. He's the one who taught me initially how to get hooked up with webinars, and actually, let me look online here really quick. Lewis was on the SPI podcast, the Smart Passive Income podcast way back in 2011, but this is very relevant content still. It's Episode 29, “How to Conduct and Master a Webinar with Lewis Howes from lewishowes.com.” Go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/session29. SmartPassiveIncome.com/session29, and that will take you directly to this particular episode. You can listen to it and it's fantastic and it'll tell you everything you need to know about mastering a webinar and the sales process and what has to go into it and what parts and transitions and all this stuff. Lewis is amazing. So, check it out. Again, that's SmartPassiveIncome.com/session29.
All right, Daniel. Thank you so much for your question. An AskPat t-shirt is going to be headed your way for having your question featured here on the show. Thank you so much. For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show just head on over to AskPat.com, you can ask right there on that page.
All right, thank you so much for listening today. Here's a quote to finish off by Tony Blair. He said, “The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It's very easy to say yes.” Cheers, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks.