ASK MR. INTERNET
Michael Russer answers your Internet marketing questions
Virtual meetings Know No Physical Boundaries
Online services promise you a marketing coup—meetings that keep clients in the loop wherever they are.
DEAR MR. INTERNET:
With more of my clients and associates using the Internet, is there a better way than "chat" to meet with people online? Bob Blount RE/MAX Central Realty Virginia Beach, Va.
DEAR BOB:
Chat isn't exactly the richest or most compelling medium for communicating with clients and prospects. But until recently it was the only affordable way to hold meetings online. Not anymore.
Let's take a meeting
A new category of online software and services is emerging, called groupware, that's racing to provide comprehensive, virtual meeting capabilities to anyone with an online connection. Armed with such capability, you'll wow consumers with your online marketing and business savvy.
Most online groupware solutions offer basic collaborative tools:
Chat is still the main means of real-time communication between meeting attendees, at least until bandwidths allow group videoconferencing.
White board capability lets participants edit a shared image, such as charts or spreadsheets, with everyone seeing the changes being made in real time. You can use this capability to discuss, edit, and comment on newly designed marketing materials without visiting the designer’s office.
Document sharing allows participants to view a document even if they don't have the proper software typically required to open it. Use it to show and discuss CMAs, contracts, and marketing plans in real time with clients and prospects from around the country.
Application sharing allows participants to manipulate any application active on the meeting moderator's computer. Imagine discussing a spreadsheet with projected closing costs, and clients and customers manipulating the data to see the bottom line results of various options.
File transfer lets you transfer computer files between participants during a meeting. It's similar to sending attachments through E-mail, but a file transfer uses a browser to send and receive files. It's handy for sending marketing or transaction-related documents to clients while discussing them.
Some groupware products even offer voice and videoconferencing. However, unless all participants have a very fast Internet connection, its practicality typically doesn't live up to vendor-hyped promises.
Your place or mine
Although there are a growing number of products that offer virtual meeting capabilities, two particularly are worth mentioning:
Microsoft NetMeeting is a full-featured online groupware product available free from Microsoft. Many corporations use it for intranet group collaboration and for real-time client support. This is primarily a client-side product in that the each attendee must download the package from the Microsoft site on their computers.
Webex.com is a server-based solution that allows you to set up a free virtual office that includes all the online meeting features listed above in addition to scheduling and creating forums, also called bulletin boards. The advantage of this kind of approach is that since it works through your Web browser (after installing a plug-in), almost anyone can participate—not just people with Windows-based computers.
Although the current offerings that enable you to conduct virtual meetings are good, they barely scratch the surface of what's possible when collaborating online. Over the next year or two, we'll see frequent and dramatic innovations in this important area of conducting and marketing business online, especially as bandwidth steadily increases.
The real payoff in using these capabilities, however, is that involved clients and prospects who are part of the process feel more in control of what can be a scary transaction.
Article resources:
NetMeeting—Available free from Microsoft. Currently works only with the Windows operating system.
Webex.com—From Santa Clara, Calif.–based Active Touch Inc. Offers an online cross-platform browser-based service that's worth checking out.
Mr. Internet's Tip of the Month
Have you ever needed to turn a printed document or fax into a text or word processing file so that you can edit it? Until recently you had to either have it retyped or use expensive and hard-to-learn optical character recognition software.Well, not anymore.
In May 1999, my Tip of the Month mentioned how easy it is to receive faxes over the Internet (free, of course) with eFax. Now, the eFax viewer let's you request their OCR services to convert your eFax faxes to editable text or RTF (Rich Text Files) files right over the Web. (NOTE: To take advantage of this service you need to sign up for the eFax Plus service, that includes eFaxSend, for a small monthly fee.)
It's amazingly fast and accurate—with clean typewritten faxes. Within minutes of hitting the Web OCR button on the eFax viewer, you receive an E-mail with the attached text or RTF file. This works so well that you can take any existing printed documents you've wanted to put into a computer file, fax them to your eFax number, then request them to be converted to an editable file.
Mr. Internet is the alter-ego of Michael J. Russer, an Internet speaker, trainer, author, and consultant. You'll see his column on REALTOR® Magazine Online every month and in the magazine quarterly. Send your questions to help@askmrinternet.com.