More and more at Meetupcall we are having customers that are utilising our conference call services to carry our seminars or training sessions over the phone.  These 'tele-seminars' as they are called in the US, cover a range of topics from religion, self improvement, leadership through to organisation specific training.

Generally they last about one hour and follow the format of a lecture followed by a question and answers session.  With anything up to 1000 people attending the calls, tele-seminars are a great cost-effective way to promote a product or service or educate and train your clients, customers and staff about a specific topic. 

Below are a few tips on how you can use Meetupcall conference call services to host your own tele-seminars or deliver over the phone training sessions:

Here are my top 11 conference call tips to ensure you get the most out of your conference calls:

1. Use a good phone with a good quality microphone and speaker, and use it in a quiet room.
2. Ensure the dial-in number, conference IDs and date/time of the call are distributed well in advance of the call.  Our Conference Call Toolbar can help with this.
3. Utilise the mute function on your phone or press *1 to mute yourself when you are not particpating.  This will cut down on any background noise in the call.
   • Have people give a brief introduction about them selves at the start of the call.  It's a good way to get even the quietest of people to be comfortable in contributing.
   • Ask for input directly using a persons name.  People will pay more attention if you mention their name first.
   • Avoid shuffling papers, tapping pencils, typing or any other noisy activities.
   • Do not assume everybody will recognise your voice when you speak, introduce yourself when intejecting into a conversation.
   • Turn off your mobile phone.  Completely off, rather than just on silent as receiving a call or text will interfere with the speaker on the phone.
   • Take care when multi-tasking, it is easy to lose concentration and lose track of the direction of the call.
   • Announce if you are leaving or returning to the call.
   • Be aware of the impact of accents and slow down and speak accordingly.

If you are only an occasional conference caller, then it may seem strange that while conducting market research prior to the launch of our audio conferencing services, that we discovered one of the biggest complaints users of other conference call services had was about the hold music.