I believe that vastly increased levels of interactive connectivity have been the single greatest achievement of mankind in the 21st century. Whether it comes to waging war, setting up a corporate takeover, researching a miracle drug, shopping for stuff or simply sharing data, being connected to each other through an increasingly efficient system of networks is making a profound impact on our lives.
Webinars represent the first wave of innovation when it comes to interactive corporate communications and that’s why there exists a real need for marketers and business people everywhere to know how to set up a successful webinar. Moreover, conducting interactive audio-visual events in virtual space erases the expense involved in setting up, traveling to and staying at a physical “in person’ event, and allows us to leverage networking power and reach out to a much wider audience.
Here I’ve put together a short guide on how to go about creating a powerful webinar that builds relationships and converts prospects.
Get it out there
People aren’t going to know about your webinar unless you actively promote it. Integrate information about the webinar into every aspect of your organization from marketing and sales to customer service and business development – make sure these departments effectively disseminate the information across the length and breadth of your.
Get your timing straight
Timing your webinar is paramount to having a high attendance webinar. Ideally, you should schedule your webinar so that the maximum number of people will attend. This means conducting a fair bit of research into the work and lifestyle habits of your target audience, especially if you are intent on bagging overseas participants. But on a general note, you can avoid the Monday blues and the Friday mellow, by scheduling your webinar around the middle of the week.
Ensure that the technology you use is effective
Glitches, long wait times and broken connections will reflect badly on only one person – YOU. As the host of the webinar, the blame for any problems that might arise will rest squarely on your shoulders. So, make certain that the software and hosting services you engage are efficient and bug-free.
Also, keep in mind that if you want to launch a successful webinar your bandwidth must be high enough to quickly and smoothly transmit large amounts of data.
Be animated yet professional
A webinar is an opportunity to share ideas and gain insight through an interactive discussion. The idea is to keep your audience interested and engaged enough to actively contribute to the entire exercise. In order to better facilitate audience participation, you may want to split duties and allow one individual to host the webinar, audio-visually, while another monitors the conversational thread and cultivates discussions.
Be animated yet professional
A webinar is an opportunity to share ideas and gain insight through an interactive discussion. The idea is to keep your audience interested and engaged enough to actively contribute to the entire exercise. In order to better facilitate audience participation, you may want to split duties and allow one individual to host the webinar, audio-visually, while another monitors the conversational thread and cultivates discussions.
Be articulate
Avoid all non-lexical utterances, false starts, slips of the tongue, grunts and other meaningless fillers. While speech irregularities may be overlooked as a matter of course during “in person” meetings and presentations, they won’t earn you any brownie points with a webinar audience. As the host of a webinar, you’re expected to be fluent, with a strong grasp on the topic under discussion.
Don’t be too wordy with your slides
A slide filled with a lot of textual content doesn’t always make for an interesting read. Instead, incorporate visual examples, images and only as much text as is required to effectively convey the crux of your statement.
Ask for opinions
Take an interest in all your participants and make heavy contributors feel rewarded by actively responding to them while ‘nurturing’ introverts with polls, occasional light humour and encouragement. You may also want to note down specific participant contributions and weave them into the substance of the discussion – this help make everyone feel appreciated and makes for a more cohesive and amenable event community.
Narrate a story
As humans, we perceive things in a linear fashion and a narrative is nothing but an engaging manipulation of that linearity. Your webinar must be a story from beginning to end, with carefully monitored and controlled rhythms, peaks and troughs. By being in control of the narrative and in tune with the audience, an exceptional webinar host will know exactly when to raise and lower energy levels and exploit discussion patterns to keep the audience engaged.
Record everything And post it online at a later date. Why? Well
Even if your webinar was a complete disaster, a recording can help you make sense of exactly what went wrong. However, in this last scenario, you may not want to post it online.
Check: 5 Ways To Help Your Brand Gain Authority Through Podcast
Follow up
After the event is over, remember to send out thank-you notes to all the attendees. Also include webinar download links and any additional information. If people liked your webinar, now is also a great time to indulge in a little corporate promotion so get some company literature out there, but don’t overdo it.
Send out a survey
Feedback surveys provide valuable data on the good and bad of your webinar and can help you raise the bar the next time. If you choose to request feedback from the audience, do so immediately after the event and you’ll likely get a much better response than if you’d waited a day or two.
Decent planning and logistics will save your ass from failure
Here’s a check list of things you need to keep in mind
- Have you publicized the event enough?
- Do you look good? You may not have to worry about cologne, but if you look genuinely attractive you automatically generate a degree of interest.
- Conduct a thorough review of all your presentation material.
- Test for connectivity issues, technical glitches and equipment functionality.
- Create and review a timeline for the webinar. Make sure you include plenty of time for people to air their opinions.
- Send out reminders to all presenters and potential participants.
- Confirm that all presenters will be attending. Replace cancelled speakers with fresh ones or take to the stage yourself, but NEVER fail to discuss an issue that you’ve listed in the presentation guide.
- Ensure that all presenters are connected to you and each other through an offline connection. This will smoothen the transition into uncharted waters and help resolve any problems that may arise.
- Double check.. no.. triple check your recording equipment.
- Is everyone present? Conduct a simple chat-based roll call before you start.
- Are your follow up measures in place? Review them.
If things go wrong, don’t let your frustration show
Bear in mind that your audience will react to everything you do and blowing your top or displaying an erratic personality will make them uneasy. No matter the hurdles, maintain a calm and jovial exterior and try to keep up the illusion that everything is under control, even if it isn’t.
Remember, by eliminating the logistical and physical barriers to communication, networks allow us to accomplish much more in a much shorter span of time. With remote workforces becoming increasingly popular and bandwidth steadily expanding, I believe that communicating in an online space is set to replace traditional brainstorming, seminars and even board room meetings.
Well, that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say about webinars. Did I miss anything? Or do you have anything interesting to share about your webinar experiences? A few tips or a disaster story, perhaps? Leave a comment and let me know!.
