First, imagine this scenario. Your seminar is due to begin at 8:00 p.m. Around ten till eight, the recording technician from your recording service dials in. He stays muted and waits. No problem there. Some of the attendees may already have joined the seminar. A few more minutes roll by, and one of your co-hosts or guest speakers joins the call. They say “hello” and your name, but hear no reply. Another guest speaker dials in and calls your name but you don’t reply because you haven’t dialed in yet. Now it’s three or four minutes till eight, and the guest speakers at some point notice one another and ask each other where you are and is something wrong? They hope not…as they discuss the possible reasons you are not there yet and should they call your cell phone? (and the attendees listen). Of course, the attendees have been saying something like: “Is this John Smith’s call? Am I on the right call?” and “Well, he’s not here yet. Wonder what happened?”

Meanwhile, the recording technician has noticed that one of the people he thinks is going to be speaking has an exceptionally low volume and debates whether to ask outright will he be speaking and tell him to try to raise his volume or maybe wait for you to come on the line so he can ask you who will be speaking. More time passes. You get on the call a few seconds before eight (“right on time” as you think), immediately mute the lines, greet everyone, and go straight into the content. Your volume is also extremely low, but now it’s impossible to get that all around volume check so you could have a better recording. However, your guest speakers breathe a sigh of relief and so do the attendees, but no one hears them because they are now muted. Maybe that’s just as well.

I hope this does not describe you! No, you don’t want to be this guy! He made an impression, for sure. He seems unprofessional and inconsiderate of everyone; plus, he is not going to get as good a recording as he could have had had he been there early, announced himself, and allowed the recording tech to check everyone’s volumes. You get the idea, though: Be professional, be considerate of your attendees and guest speakers, and give the recording technician a chance to do his best job. That means dial in early!

A land line is a phone line where the voice signal is delivered to and from the phone over a physical line that connects with a telephone company network.

The biggest advantage to using a VOIP line is the savings in cost. It helps reduce expenses because telephone calls travel over the data network rather than the phone company’s network, which is less expensive.

The biggest disadvantage is sound quality. VOIP converts voice into digital data, which is then transmitted over the internet. Sometimes the data isn’t received in the correct order which can result in a second or two of silence while the data is reassembled. This can be a real problem during a teleseminar. To avoid this, data is compressed to reduce bandwidth requirements, but this in itself can also cause further reduction in sound quality and has been known to create echoes. However, with sufficient bandwidth and good equipment, it is possible to get fairly good sound quality from a VOIP system.

The biggest advantage to using a land line is the sound quality. They also don’t require the internet or electricity so will work even during a power outage. Land lines are more reliable than VOIP lines and you’re less likely to get dropped during a call, and you don’t have to have high speed internet to use them.

The biggest disadvantage is cost. Since land lines use the phone company’s network and not your own computer, it’s more expensive. Long distance charges apply when participants dial in from outside of their toll free area code.

All it takes is you or your guest loosing service for less then a minute and your call can go from sounding very professional to having to spend time finding out where the guest is, and where they left off. This adds confusion to your listeners, and doesn’t help you to sound professional. And it can be fixed very easily.

So what’s a teleseminar entrepreneur to do? Plan on using a traditional corded phone. A corded phone on a land line will give you the best result on your recording since it is far less likely to produce static or electronic noise than a cell phone or even a portable phone. And of course there are no batteries to go dead! You can’t control what type of phone the participants dialing into your teleseminar use, but if you want a successful telephone recording, you can and definitely should control what type of phone you and your guest use.

How to avoid a disaster like that? Make sure that you have someone recording your call from a totally separate location – I even like to advocate it being in a separate state. This removes the possibilities of power outages, or phone lines down affecting the final product.

An added benefit of having a second recording – there are times when the distance to the call center can affect the call quality, and having multiple recordings gives you additional options for which recording to use, and sometimes more options when editing.
Why should you pay even more money for a backup recording when you’re already paying for the primary recording? Well ask yourself this: is it worth $50 per hour to ensure nothing goes wrong with a recording that could potentially earn you hundreds of dollars, even thousands? It’s a sound investment not only financially, but for your peace of mind as well!

1. Use a Land line for your recording. Cell phones can drop calls and tend to pick up background noise that can be difficult to remove later. Internet phones can also drop calls, and are subject to outages along with your internet service.

2. Check your microphone volume before the call so you don’t have to adjust throughout the call.

3. Move all cell phones away from your phone and microphone as they can create a buzz on the line. To be on the safe side, you should place it on the floor or a desk at a good distance from the phone and your microphone.

4. Call in ahead on your bridge line so that you can run a sound check with your Recorded Moments recording technician. Your technician will adjust your volume and inform you if you have a good connection on your line.

5. Please inform your guest ahead of time to call ahead on a land line so that the sound check can be performed with them present.

6. If you are going to have live listeners, make them aware of your bridge line instructions. If you want to include a q & a in your call-have all your callers mute themselves until they are ready to ask a question. This will prevent background noise from coming through. If there is no q & a portion, please mute your callers, so they can’t be heard during your conversation with your quest.

7. And best of all…your Recorded Moments technician will be with you every step of the way prior to, during, and after your call. If you or your guest stumbles while speaking, you may repeat the phrase and Recorded Moments can edit your dialogue to make you sound the best you possibly can. Take a look at the list of services Recorded Moments offers today, and set up your next tele-seminar with confidence.