Our story so far:

I’ve taught quite a number of teleclasses about various tech topics, but I only realized recently that the setting-up and managing of teleclasses themselves is a tech topic that you might need help with.

I’ll describe the technological steps that I go through each time I set up and run a new class, from beginning to end.

Last week I talked about conference lines. Now that you have a dedicated phone number for your teleclass, how do you give that number to the people who need it?

Open the doors or close the gate?

The first decision to make is whether to require people to sign up to join the class, or just broadcast the telephone number to the world.

If you are charging admission, you obviously want to collect payment before giving people the call-in details. An example is the Bite the Candy teleclass on backups and upgrades I’m doing on June 10 with Cairene MacDonald of Third Hand Works.

It costs $37 to register for the workshop, and Cairene has a nifty system set up so that buyers automatically receive an email message containing call details once their payment has been received (I’ll describe how I set up systems like this in future installments of this Teleclass Nuts & Bolts series).

If your teleclass will be free, it’s still a common and accepted practice to ask people to register. An example is the free teleclass called three ways to get more out of your AWeber investment (you can still sign up even though the class is over — you’ll get the recording), which I did with Shannon Wilkinson to promote our Love Your List workshop.

Why do you want people to sign up, instead of just handing out the number? So you can get your (electronic) hands on their email addresses, which you can then use to send marketing messages. In our case, we wanted to promote a paid workshop, and we also wanted a way to send people the recording after we held the live teleclass.

Of course, people will (rightfully) complain if you do this in a sleazy way, so it’s always a good idea to be upfront about what you’re going to do with their email address, and then make that something good. Such as sending them a recording of your class afterward, asking their opinion, thanking them with a special offer, or any number of other good-citizen marketing techniques.

Open to all

A note (and a question) about ungated calls: I’ve heard it said that giving something away (like an ebook) without requiring an email address means it will spread 20 to 50 times more people (not 20% to 50% more, but 20x to 50x). I’m not sure if those numbers apply to teleclasses, however (and I wonder if anyone has any information or statistics on this).

Teleclasses are different from ebooks, because they happen at a specific time. I’m sure that many more people will have access to the dial-in information if you make it public (for instance, simply publishing the phone number on your website, your blog, your Facebook and Twitter accounts, etc.). But that might not translate into more people actually calling in. Or it might. Does anyone out there know?

If you’re going to make the call-in information public anyway, I’d suggest going one step further and broadcasting your call as a live Internet radio show. You can do this for free at sites including BlogTalkRadio.com and TalkShoe.com (I personally prefer TalkShoe because there are no restrictions on when you can broadcast, you can have more live callers, and you can also schedule “private” broadcasts). People can listen on their computers or call in, you can easily get a recording (which will live on in your public archives, too), and you also get a bit more exposure by using the Internet radio site as a platform.

Countdown to the call

Whichever way you choose to set your call up, you’ll want to make yourself a Call Countdown Calendar, scheduling your publicity-generating activities so they build to a peak in the day or so before your call.

This is a chance to use your normal online activities to promote your call. For instance, if you hang out on Twitter, tweet a few times each day, and ask for retweets. Update your Facebook or LinkedIn status to include a note that you’re excited about your teleclass (with a link, of course!). Write a blog post (or several).

If you asked people to register for the call, I highly recommend that you set up a reminder email message to go out to everyone who registered, on the day before or the day of (the morning of the teleclass day is best, in my opinion). If you added them to an email list service like AWeber, it’s a cinch to set up a broadcast message containing the call-in details.

In my next Teleclass Nuts & Bolts installment, I’ll talk about recording your teleclass.