It is easier to frustrate your webinar audience than you may think. Whether it is your first webinar or your hundredth, do not overlook the details. Even the best planners in the industry sometimes miss something. These tips will help steer you away from any mishaps that may turn off your audience and result in missing out on connecting with leads and converting them to loyal customers and followers who will be interested in all your future offerings.
Table of Contents
Top 11 Ways to Annoy Your Webinar Audience
1. Starting late
Your participants’ time is valuable, and they will become easily frustrated if you do not treat it as valuable. Be sure to begin on time, no more than one or two minutes past start time.
2. Failure to give instructions on how to use the chat function and/or microphone
If you plan on having a Q&A session, or plan on enabling participants to send in comments and questions via the chat function, then you must explain these features at the very beginning. This may be the first webinar that some participants have ever attended, and they may not know that these tools are even available. Moreover, all other technical aspects should be clearly explained, such as how to submit questions. IT is also important to important that you are being heard by participants, so ask them at the beginning to make sure everyone can hear you correctly.
3. Unprepared host or presenter
There’s almost nothing worse than an unprepared host or presenter. The host needs to have copies of the presenters’ biographies on hand, and a good host has memorized their introduction of each presenter. Presenters should know their material backwards and forwards, as audience members consider you the expert on the selected topic.
4. An echo when you speak
Echo noises can be quite common, especially if you do not use a headset during the presentation. Conduct a test run before the big day and have a backup audio source on the ready (e.g., external microphone, built-in computer microphone, and headset). If you have multiple presenters, make sure they all have a headset, if available, and that they all test their equipment beforehand.
5. Other background noise
Audience members easily notice background noise. Turn off your cell phone and other gadgets before you start. If you are presenting from home, be sure that dogs and children are taken care of, and try to close yourself into a quiet room.
6. No assistant to help with technical difficulties
It is easy to forget that webinars require a lot of technology in order to work – a computer, a software program, an Internet connection, a microphone, and speakers. You use this equipment all the time and you may assume that you can address any problems. However, technology tends to fail when we need it most, so it’s important to have a tech specialist on hand who can support you as needed.
7. Sloppy or slow transitions between presenters
The biggest problem when it comes to transitioning between presenters is switching “control” of the screen from one person to another. Practice this with each presenter beforehand to avoid annoying your audience with unnecessary delays. The same goes for transitions from sub-topic to sub-topic, it is important to present all material in an organized and easy to follow manner.
8. Annoying pop-up notifications throughout the webinar
Be sure to turn off all email notifications, Facebook notifications, and anything else that dings or pops up on your computer automatically.
9. Running over time
Again, your participants’ time is valuable. End when you say you are going to end, even if you feel like the audience is highly intrigued. They can stay on the webinar longer to ask questions, email you, or call you if they want to know more. It is also possible to do a part 2 webinar to present more information as needed.
10. No recording available
People may want to share the webinar with their colleagues or partners afterwards and may ask you for a recording. This is a valuable business opportunity that you don’t want to miss! Be sure to record your live webinar from start to finish; it’s very simple.
11. Veering off topic
Another way to turn off the audience is veering off topic during the webinar and wavering off course from the topics promised at sign up. This is easy to do when you adlib and do not have a detailed outline of the presentation in front of you.
If your audience is turned off at any point, you may lose sales opportunities and the potential to build a relationship. To adequately prepare, place yourself in the shoes of the audience as you think carefully through all of the details.
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