Consultants and professionals can earn quite a nice living off of paid conference call events using teleconferencing in today's global marketplace. Your business acumen can be put to work to earn you money by using the phone to impart your knowledge to others who are willing to sign up, pay your fee, and then attend your conference call.



Some consultants will charge up to $199 or more for attendance to a weekly, monthly or quarterly conference call. On the other hand, some professionals prefer to provide the conference call free, knowing that they will get new clients or qualified prospects from their presentations. Whether you go paid or free, you've got a lot at stake when you have invested time, expenses, and your intellectual capital on creating your conference call. Now comes the hard part, getting people to attend.

If your attendees have paid a fee, your attendance will typically be higher as participants have invested in you and most likely have noted the date and time on their calendar. For free conference calls attendance however can be an issue that may need your proactive attention.

Here are our top ten tips on how you can increase attendance at your next conference call:

1. Send an email reminder to all registered participants one day before the planned teleconference call.

2. Make sure to do a press release announcing your event up to one week before your scheduled teleconference call. Or better yet, do a press release announcement 30 days out and then another 7 days out.

3. Promote your teleconference call heavily on your website, in your blog, and in your monthly e-newsletter. Use image icons in addition to search engine spiderable text to draw the reader's eye to the information.

4. Add a line below your email signature for all correspondence with your upcoming conference call information and a brief sentence of what the call is about and how to sign up.

5. Send an email reminder out one hour before the conference call on the day of the call.

6. Create an alternative date for those who may have inadvertently missed the call or had a last minute scheduling conflict. Post this on your website after your call has happened.

7. After the conference call, send all participants a link to the recorded call so that they can get the information and exposure to your information even if they could not attend. This may help with future conference call registrations.

8. Post a link in your website or blog to your recorded teleconference call archive location to pick up even more activity even after the fact. Doing this also allows prospective attendees to get a sample of what your conference call will be like and may improve your future registration and attendance rates.

9. If you have voice mail or an online hold message, make sure to include your upcoming conference call information (date, time, and how to register) in your recorded message.

10. Send special invitations to colleagues, past and present clients and ask them to forward your teleconference invitation to others who may be interested in your information. A personal referral from a colleague will carry more weight than just about any other type of advertising; use your own network to help get the word out.

You may even want to try charging a token fee and then send a coupon to defer the cost or provide a credit in full on future services. Typically where a conference call attendee pays to attend, even a modest amount, attendance will be higher than at a free teleconference call. If attendance has been a problem at your teleconference calls, now's the time to try some of our smart tips to see if you can jump start attendance at your next teleconference call.