5 Questions with Mike Volpe of Hubspot about Interactive Webinars

As I mentioned last week, I listened in and commented on the Interactive Website Optimization Webinar from Hubspot which was hosted by Mike Volpe and Jeanne Hopkins. I was able to reach out to Mike, VP of Marketing at Hubspot, and ask him a couple questions as a follow up to the webinar. It was interested to hear the feedback Hubspot received from the webinar and how they expect to change the format in the future.

Natasha: How did you decide to do another interactive webinar? As you mentioned, the last one was for "5 Tips to Turn Your Website Into a Marketing Machine" in 2007.

Mike Volpe: Actually, the first webinar we ever did was in 2007. But this one was our first 100% interactive webinar - we alwats take audience questions in our webinars, but this was the first one where the whole thing was live discussion with others.

We are always looking new types of content, and this interactive webinar was something we had talked about - it is based on the talk radio shows where people csll in for advice on topics like relationships - and we finally decided to give it a shot.

Natasha: I'm sure the response to this webinar was positive. What kind of feedback did you get that will help you make the next one even better?

Mike: The feedback was way better than we expected! The major thing we heard in terms of improving was go faster and do more examples - sp I think for next time we will try not to do a complete optimization for each person, but just focus on one thing.

Natasha: The topic of this webinar was website optimizatio - what would you say is the single most important aspect of website optimization to someone is creating a new website or is trying to optimize an existing one?

Mike: There is not one good piece of advice, except to use http://www.websitegrader.com/. There are a bunch of things you need to do that all work together to form a solid inbound marketing program from creating content, to optimizing content, to promotion content, to using conversion to get leads and sales, but running a Websit eGrader report will get you started.

Natasha: I know you had many people email in their website for review. Were all three callers from an email or did you take some from Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn?

The three that we took this time were by email. We're still figuring our the best way to manage the interaction. A lof of people don't want to share their phone number on Twitter...I am sure it will evolve.

Natasha: Being VP of Marketing at Hubspot you get to wear many hats. What is your favorite role?

Mike: I am really passionate about marketing, so anytime I can interact with people and talk about marketing is fun! I love to learn from others and also share what I have learned.

Thanks again to Mike for letting me interview him and get an inside look on the thought process for conducting the live webinar. I look forward to listening in and hopefully participating in some interactive webinars in the future.