A successful webinar requires attention to presentation style, the ability to facilitate questions and answers from a large group and the presentation of smooth content with minimal technology glitches. But beyond pertinent topics and well-executed webinars, are factors that can readily affect the end result.
Following are 10 Tips to a Successful Webinar
1. Planning
The key to success is careful planning. You have to ensure that every aspect of your webinar comes from precise planning, therefore schedules, potential speakers, registration process, budget, promotion, medium, communication format and picking the best webinar service should be considered.
2. Promotion
A well-promoted webinar can ensure success. There are countless ways to promote, you just have to figure out a marketing strategy. The internet can be the best means of promoting events and can be achieved by providing links to your site, using adwords, blogs, tweeting people, or posting it on Facebook.
Also, make sure to provide invitations, have a refer a friend link in the invitation so that others can forward the invitation. Follow-up with potential attendees.
3. Scheduling
Schedule your event appropriately. Make sure that the chosen time creates the greatest number of attendees. You may schedule it fir the middle of the week where people have already started the week right and with ample time before the weekend. Consider also a favorable time that works for different timezones. Mid-afternoon is fine for geographically wide attendees. Regardless, figure your target audience and fit to the BEST time slot for them!
4. Preparation
Get everything ready and set-up a couple days prior to the event, test to make sure that everything works, verify that all links and presentations are working. Avoid glitches and be ready beforehand for any communication failure.
Before you begin your webcast, provide a quick review of housekeeping items, such as how the presentation commences, how to use the chat feature, how the Question and Answer session will be handled or just simply run-down the plan of activities.
5. Time Conscious
Be mindful as nothing communicates disrespect like repeatedly failing to start a meeting on time. Start on time and end on time.
Choose the optimal time. Start at 15 minutes past the hour. Most presentations end on the hour and this gives your participants time to decompress before joining your meeting. Set the right tone, right from the beginning with starting on time. End the webcast on time as this will insure the subsequent word-of-mouth for your broadcast and generating positive feedback.
6. Involve Everyone
At the start of the webinar, eliminate barriers that make attendees feel like passive observers. Showing a map highlighting the location of each participant and allowing each person to introduce themselves to the group creates a sense of personal interaction.
The only way to keep your audience’s attention during a webinar is by offering interesting and valuable information. Deliver interesting and solid content.
7. Conduct Surveys
Pre Webcast Surveys will provide you unique insights of your audiences, categorize prepared participants from not and helping them prepare for a good conversation. It also helps you to adjust your material to match the groups’ interest. Use the gathered information to tailor the presentation accordingly. And don’t miss the chance to ask the audiences of their opinions after the presentation to further qualify them for upcoming webinars.
8. Document and Record
Do recordings, note-takings and save chats. This is the common thing that is commonly missed.
Aside from recording the conversation including Q&A’s, take note of the URL’s mentioned during the course of webinar, save the chat into an MS Word before logging out and provide participants with ready-to print copies.
Reviewing recorded webinars and customers input may be helpful prior to a new product launch, selling event of internal business strategy session.
9. Follow Up
Consider sending a follow-up e-mail to participants thanking them for their attendance, and a “sorry we missed you” email to registrants who failed.
Nurture those people by providing additional information such as directing them to the site to download PDF files, to entice them to attend your next event.
10. Review and Refine
Review all feedback gathered from your webinar. Be open for criticisms and consider variations from large to small aspects to determine what else you could do to make your webinar even more engaging. It is necessary to quantify the negative effects so you can eliminate it from your data base the next time you will hold same event.
These are just 10 helpful tips for you.