Webinars have increased in popularity in recent years, with many people and businesses realising the potential of utilising such media. Like with any new development, there are those that are average, and unappealing to most people.
However, there are ways to improve a webinar, to ensure it is effective, interesting, and successful. Ordinary webinars will be formulaic, predictable and have little interest. In these webinars people will likely leave early, and not hear the pitch, whatever that may be.
Brand Reputation
Also, consider the fact that your brand will be effected when people are turned off by the presentation because they will associate these feelings with your brand. This is a crucial consideration for any business, as brand reputation can make or break a company.
Think about this, if you fail to engage an audience during a webinar why would they then follow any advice, or purchase any products that you may have to offer now or in the future?
Key Factors In Making A Great Webinar
By following the key tips below, you can ensure your webinar is one of the better ones, and achieves a high number of attendees.
As with any training, seminar, presentation, or webinar, finding out about the audience is crucial. There is nothing worse than starting a webinar with many eager members only to find they have all left within the first 15 minutes of your presentation. There are simple ways to find out the needs and interests of your audience before the webinar begins; this could be simply sending round a questionnaire to interested members, asking those who say they are attending, or focusing on a similar interest. Using Google trends and other tools to pinpoint areas of interest in your niche and industry can also serve this end.
Related to knowing your audience, is considering time zones. One of the main joys of the internet is that it connects anyone and everyone, irrelevant of where in the world they are. This however, causes a problem when you want to get people to log on at the same time. Consider the timing of your webinar and your audience – if most of them are located out of your time zone, you may want to think about shifting your clock and fitting in with them. Additionally, making a recording of the webinar available after the session is a quick and easy way to ensure anyone who wishes to access the session were able to.
Appearances are everything in many aspects of life, and webinars are certainly no different. If you are expecting people to sit staring at a screen for an hour then they need something good to look at. Ensure there are plenty of images, colours and different fonts and sizes; avoid the text heavy, solid black and white look. Equally, do not go overboard and make the page so busy that it will give visitors a headache. This will ensure they do not return for another one of your webinars.
As with any conference, speech, presentation, or training session, picking the right person to deliver the session is one of the most vital decisions you will make. Pick a speaker who is interesting to watch and listen to, is passionate about the subject, and is sufficiently knowledgeable. Like with appearances, presenting an individual who is monotone, does not really want to be there and is not very knowledgeable about the subject will ensure no one sticks at it until the end.
Technology fails, we all know that. Ensure you are fully prepared to go ahead without any technical hitches. There is nothing worse than having to cancel the webinar at the last minute because of technology failures; everyone is sat waiting for your webinar to start and it is fairly likely that a significant proportion of them will not return for the second attempt. One way of avoiding this is to do several test runs with friends, family, or colleagues. Get everyone to log on and host the webinar as you plan to and see what happens. If any links do not work, faults appear, or technology fails, you will be able to fix it before the actual webinar.
The best webinars often have two people present during the whole session. This ensures one person can continue presenting without any distractions. If there are any technical issues, questions from the audience, questions that need researching and so on, there is another person there for these things. This avoids taking the attention away from the main presenter, and most importantly, avoids the audience sat waiting around while they look something up.
Overall, think about what you would like to see in a webinar – chances are your audience will be thinking the same sort of thing. If you go with this, you should be able to create a great webinar, not just any ordinary one.
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