#InboundSci  – Did @Hubspot break the Webinar World Record with 11,000 Attendees on July 12, 2012?

HubSpot hosted a webinar on the Science of Inbound Marketing, presented by Dan Zarrella, HubSpot’s social media scientist, and VP of Marketing at Hootsuite Ben Watson.

@SherrieRose contacted @hubspot @danzarrella @hootsuite and Ben Watson @bitpakkit via Twitter after the webinar.  Here’s the tweet “Still waiting on ‪#inboundsci‬ attendance stats (so I can finish my blog post) – Did we make 11K?”  To date, no direct reply.  (see below for the answer)

After the webinar, Dan Zarrella tweeted that there were over 20,000 tweets with the hashtag #inboundsci.  It was trending for over 2 hours after the webinar.  The hashtag is still active two days after the webinar.

Susan Hanshaw, Inner Architect and  Farrukh Naeem quickly prepared blog posts. “#InboundSci – Top Tweets from the Most Tweeted Social Media Webinar in the World – The Science of Inbound Marketing” http://like2.us/inboundsci2   There was no mention of the Guinness Record for Largest Webinar.  Farrukh also prepared a Storify story from the tweets with the hashtag #inboundsci.  Molly Porter created a storify with the takeaways from the webinar.

Like many webinars there were bonuses for attending which were promised at the beginning. The three bonuses were listed on one of the opening slides.

What was your favorite ‪#InboundSci‬ takeaway today?

Dan Zarrella, who is a man I respect for his work and his scientific abilities has done better work on other webinars. Perhaps the pressure to break the world record for world’s largest webinar (in July!) did not help.  Dan did a pretty amazing job getting through all his slides (fastest mouth on a webinar). 

So instead of answering Dan’s question above about my favorite takeaway, I will share my least favorite experiences on this webinar with the idea that all webinar presenters can benefit as learning takeaways.

=> What was your LEAST favorite ‪#InboundSci‬ takeaway today?

• If you are trying to break a record and require your webinar attendees to be tweeting all throughout the webinar don’t create distraction and conflict with the attendees who want to fulfill the request of the presenter (please tweet) and create competitive incentives (we’ll give you a prize). See comments on the Hubspot blog post  “Telling everyone to twitter 62 (102?) times to win tickets was not in the best interest of the people attending the webinar.”
• If you have set a precedent to provide a replay for your webinars and your attendees expect this don’t tell them 30 minutes into the webinar (on a 60 minute webinar) that you will not be providing a replay.  Tell them at the beginning so they can make a decision whether to tweet for the presenter while listening or focus and watch the slides and pay attention to presenter and take some notes. Multi-tasking is usually something webinar presenters ask attendees to NOT do.
• The motive to get people to attend a live event which would be a perfectly good call to action at the end of the webinar seemed like it overshadowed the real value and importance of providing the content throughout the webinar.   Watch for conflicting interests.  Remember the adage: A confused mind doesn’t buy.

Even the great ones have rough days.

Also, there were supposed to be 50 attendees to win each of the second and third bonuses.  But only five winners each were listed in two separate tweets on the actual day of the webinar. Perhaps these winners were for something else but with all the demands for competitive tweeting it is hard to say what transpired.

The Next Day

The day after the webinar Jason Flores created a blog post on the top takeaways from the webinar.

Hubspot sent an email to attendees stating that “You win some, you lose some” and they didn’t break their record (despite promoting for more that 6 weeks prior to the event).  They never stated how many attendees were on the webinar. They also offered a discount, “As a way of expressing our thanks, we’re offering you a special, friends-only discount of 25% off” registration for Inbound2012.  This is not what the same as the 50% off that was advertised on the webinar.

The day after the webinar Hubspot also posted a blog post with the Top 7 Questions From #InboundSci

1) Why do you consider email marketing to be inbound?

2) How do you make a somewhat boring product or industry more interesting on social media?

3) Any thoughts on what makes people more likely to engage on social media?

4) What factors tend to influence an email’s click-through rate?

5) If I send emails more frequently, can I get blacklisted as a spammer?

6) How do audiences respond to command words in calls-to-action?

7) How can a company or brand increase blog readership?

Here are the Answers: http://like2.us/inboundsci1

Corey Endon who prepared the answers also wrote, “As you might have heard, we tried to break the world record for the largest webinar ever, but missed the mark.”

Hubspot still holds the webinar attendance world record from last year with approximately 10,000 people in attendance.

#inboundsci stil continues live in the tweetstream with top tweets and current tweets.

#LIKESUP for Webinars, Hubspot, and Inbound Marketing!

P.S. This was one of two worthy free webinars on July 12th