A Little Story About LinkedIn Training and FreeConferenceCall.com

October 25, 2016 / in Information Technology, LinkedIn / by Mic Johnson

Post written by Mic Johnson, Blog Coach | LinkedIn Trainer | WordPress Website Guy | Rational Optimist | Jayhawk | Sushi Lover | @MJMeetings Husband

This past July I was invited by my good (and totally awesome) friend Jamie Gagnon, National Sales Manager at Wynn Las Vegas and Encore, to do several short LinkedIn presentations for 70+ Meeting Planners for their annual Wynn Forum event.

During my time in Vegas and leading up to the event, I’d heard the name Diane Goodman several times because she and her team booked several of the other speakers for the event.

Diane is the owner of Goodman Speakers Bureau and they’ve been booking keynote speakers for events since 1979.

Unfortunately (and a NetworkingFAIL on my part), I saw Diane a couple of times but we never had a chance to talk to one another. Thankfully she saw my LinkedIn Presentation and it sparked her interest. About a week or two after I returned to Kansas City, I got an email from Diane asking what it would take to train her team on how to utilize LinkedIn more effectively.

We had a phone conversation where I laid out how we typically deliver our LinkedIn Training. I let her know that we typically do these training sessions in person for a wide variety of reasons…primarily because in-person training allows us to read the room and engage and interact with the participants.

Diane understood but asked if I could do the LinkedIn training virtually. I told her what it would take to get it done, she signed the proposal, and we were on our way.

The only thing I needed to figure out next was which free service I could use that would allow me to do a conference call, screen sharing and maybe even video if I needed it.

So I did a little research and the one I landed on for this training session was FreeConferenceCall.com. It was super easy to set up an account and I was impressed by the several great free features they offered.

Diane and I did a “test run” of the service a few days before the training and everything worked great. A few days later, I did a 2-hour virtual LinkedIn Training session covering just about everything I know about LinkedIn, including what makes a great LinkedIn profile, how to personalize LinkedIn invitations and more. FreeConferenceCall.com worked like a charm.

The audio was clear, the screen sharing worked perfectly, and I was even able to pull myself up on video at the beginning of the session to introduce myself to the team. (I then quickly turned the video off because I didn’t want my big smiling face to be a distraction during the training session.)

Diane said the training went well and that her team would be working on their profiles and using LinkedIn more regularly going forward.

I was happy that she and her team felt the training was beneficial and now they know how to leverage LinkedIn better for themselves and for the business.

And while my preference is still to do LinkedIn training face-to-face with organizations and their teams, FreeConferenceCall.com worked perfectly for this situation.

When I told Jason about this virtual training session, he found the following article online: Top 10 Conference Call Services of 2016. Each has their own features/benefits/limitations and it’s a great list if you find yourself in a similar situation where you’re looking for a free or cost-effective solution.  

Have you used FreeConferenceCall.com or any similar service? Let me know what you think and share your comments below so that we and our readers can learn from your experience.

If you and your team are interested in learning how to better leverage LinkedIn for your business, email me at mic@bluegurus.com or call me at 913-645-6650.