Aretha Franklin was singing about something a little bit different, but the theme is the same. In the fast-paced B2BMarcom world, it is CRITICAL to respect your audience.
OK, so why am I on this "respect" kick? Well, I just attended an AMA webinar on search engine optimization. The featured speaker commanded a whopping 12 minutes of the 1-hour event. First we had to suffer through an AMA"commercial". Next came a protracted "commercial" from the "sponsoring" company (clumsily read from a script throughout most of it).
Finally! It came time for the main speaker to take the stage. Almost immediately he apologized for having to be brief. He wanted to be sure his information fit into the time remaining. 12 minutes.
Then came a wrap-up "commercial" from the event sponsor. Finally, a "commercial" from the AMA.
One hour of poorly-used time on my part. It was particularly bad as I had one member of my staff and two vendors in the meeting. I also noted that (according to online survey stats) 304 sites were registered and online. At 1.5 people per site (my assumption for an average) and guessing that half the people felt the way I did, that made over 220 disappointed and abused individuals.
Pay particular attention to this on YOUR next webcast, or at ANY event that you put forth. We don't need to shovel our message down peoples' throats. We just need to be really meaningful to the audience's goals. When we are they will beat a path to our doors.