How to Create an Impactful Webinar
Before COVID 19, we at Taxila Business School were hosting and have created 100s of the webinars for the people who could not attend our training or for that matter counseling sessions. In the last few years, our team has created many virtual meetings, conferences and webinars and thereby benefiting a large mass of audience. If done correctly, webinars and V. Conferences are one of the best media to generate business and connect with your audience. And based on our experience and success rate, listing out some tips and tricks to make a webinar successful and how to create an impactful webinar.
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Virtual Communication:
Few things you need to plan before you jump in the virtual communication field. Virtual communication is a hybrid of humans and machines, so for the desirable results, you need to have the best of them in your team.
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Choose your best human Team: That makes a successful webinar!
Any webinar generally has three main partners. All three of them need to be good at their jobs to make the webinar a success. If even one of them is weak, the webinar will go for a toss.
The Creator:
He is responsible for creating content for the webinar. His important duty is to find a suitable speaker for the event. He is one who will promote the event well, which means getting the attendees is his responsibility. Creator will ensure the smooth registration of the public. Also, He will introduce the speaker to the audience in the beginning and also share the thanks note with the audience at the end.
The Speakers(s):
The speaker or the Subject Matter Experts or the experts are the ones who create the content, which includes verbal communication, text, slides, or visuals. Speakers need to be good at demonstrating body language. A good speaker is the one who engages the audience till the end of the webinar.
Support Staff:
There are two kinds of people in the support staff. 1. Technical, who knows about the hardware and software. 2. Subject experts, who can answer those questions for which speakers don’t have the time. The Technical Team will help by responding to technical queries, i.e. “cannot hear, you are not audible, Video is stuck!”
The subject experts will write the answers to the questions raised by the attendees. There has been proper coordination between the speaker and the expert who is writing answers so a similar message is delivered to the audience.
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Decide Webinar Layout
To take you further, decide on the webinar layout. One needs to choose the layout which transmits your message effectively to the audience. In my view, there are four types of webinar layouts. You can choose one of them after evaluating your requirements.
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- One Speaker: Here one single speaker talks to the audience. She or he will also exhibit the contents of the webinar. And after or in-between webinar he/she can answer queries raised by the audience. This format can be used with less number of audiences.
- Webinar in Interview Format: In this kind of format there need to be at least two persons, one subject expert, and the other interviewer. The interviewer will ask pre-designed questions from the subject expert. This type of webinar format is highly engaging and prompts the audience to ask questions from the expert, thus making it more engaging and knowledge sharing.
- Panel Webinar: similar to a panel discussion generally used by news channels, several speakers are there in this type of webinar, who talk over a predefined topic. These webinars are highly engaging and informative. nowadays most of the TV shows are into this format.
- Question & Answer: This type of format allows attendees to ask questions directly from the subject expert, face to face on audio-video. Generally, during press conferences by politicians or leaders, this format is used.
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Fix your hardware and software:
Creating a webinar is not a difficult task. But the success of your webinar largely depends on four factors:
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- Internet speed
- Video camera
- Mic
- Webinar Platform.
Quality of webinar delivery mostly depends on the internet speed, slow speed connection will spoil the audio-video experience, and attendees will start dropping out of the show. Use slides with minimum text.
In fact, a webinar will be successful if it feels more similar to the face-to-face experience. Permit the attendees to see the speaker during the presentation, which enables non-verbal communication. This requires each speaker to have a good camera preferably, better than their onboard laptop camera as well as correct lighting. Install the correct drivers for the attached camera and transfer your video through this. Lighting should be either from the top or from behind the camera. These tips will answer your question, How to host a successful webinar?
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Webinar Platform selection:
There is n number of platforms for conducting webinars like GoToWebinar, BigMarker, Adobe Connect, WebEx, ClickMeeting, ZOOM, and more. In the recent past during COVID, ZOOM was being used largely. But due to the hacking attacks, a couple of Government departments have banned it. But all of these platforms have their own positives and negatives and there is no perfect solution. For small webinars, free platforms are also available.
Polls and surveys should also be used after the webinar. This activity is very useful for you to enhance the quality of upcoming webinars. You can improve your upcoming webinars by implementing the suggestions and improvements in surveys. -
Fix the Right Place
You need to have a silent area for the webinar. If you are in the office you may think of a conference room or someplace which is free from the background noise and disruptions. If you are delivering it from home ensure complete shutdown of the room you have selected. Take care of the pets, generally, they need attention and during the webinar, as your attention is somewhere else, they might disturb you to get your attention.
Equipements play a vital role to make a webinar successful.what if your mobile wifi is suddenly getting disturbed?
You can imagine the level of disengagement of the audience just after your connection is suddenly disturbed.
so to get rid of it prefer to use landline or lease line internet connection and a headset microphone.Always have a backup laptop that’s fully charged, with required data copied and stored in it. Keep an active login in this alternate laptop or mobile. Keep the mic and video off on the alternate laptop or mobile until that is required. If something went wrong with your primary machine or internet connection. You can easily switch to your spare computer system and internet connection. By doing this you can smoothly manage almost any technical glitches.
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Promote Your Webinar
Creating a webinar is not enough. Until the audience knows about it, it’s not going to be much meaningful. If enough promotion is not there then few attendees will be going to attend it and the whole effort will be wasted. So to make the webinar successful, promote the webinar as much as you can.
First of all, create an interesting landing page that introduces the webinar topic, the speakers, display the date and time. The most important thing is a call-to-action button for attendees to register for the webinar.
Create a display poster for your website’s homepage to make visitors aware of the upcoming event.
Publicize it on social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to blow out the webinar.
Blast several reminder emails talking about the start of your event. Trust me, emails are the most effective at getting registrations. On event day, ensure to send emails and reminders with the direct link to your webinar. -
Pick the Right Date and Time:
Its COVID time now. Everyone is on paid holidays. You may select any day, barring Sundays, as psychologically Sunday is still a holiday, though these days every day is a holiday. Otherwise, Tuesdays are generally the best days followed by Wednesday to have a webinar, to have maximum attendance. Try to have a webinar between 11.30 AM TO 12.00 MIDDAY OR BY 5.30 PM.
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The audience should enjoy your topic:
If your topic does not match the interest of the audience, it will be difficult to get the attendees. Even though your strong marketing, they may join initially, chances are bright that they will leave in between or will start putting wrong messages in the chatbox. To avoid such things and to make the webinar successful, select the webinar topic very carefully.
For example, What is a webinar? is a generic topic so instead of that,
What is and How to make a webinar successful? is a catchy and effective heading. -
Practice makes you Perfect:
Practice! Practice!! Practice!!! I always recommend at least 4 practices before you go on air. Get familiar with all the menus and buttons on your webinar solution or platform. Learn the following things about the software you want to use for webinar.
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- how to run your slides, videos, and visuals.
- Explore how to mute or unmute the mic of the audience.
- Also learn how to shift to another laptop in case of the failure of the primary computer.
- How you can troublshoot your camera and mic if an error occured.
- Learn how to open chat and Q&A sections. Do a couple of testing with your team.Finally at least 4 hours before, check all your hardware including camera and mic. Ensure that everyone in the team is well versed with the webinar platform, all its menus, and moreover with the content of the webinar.Also, allocate the personal responsibilities to each and every team member on conducting Polls, Chat handling, and Q&A handling.Every team member should know about the registrant and their profile, especially the speaker.
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Follow up with Registrants and attendees:
It is noticed that most of us stop any engagement with registrants and attendees after the webinar is over. This is a blunder, a grave mistake! You had the chance to engage with the audience, which you lost. Send all the registrants and attendees one thanks email. Ensure sending them the follow-up emails with the link of the webinar video. Share feedback and survey forms. Explore the topic they would like to have on the next webinar. Encourage them to join the upcoming webinar. After the webinar is over, evaluate your efforts. Don’t console your failures with excuses. Take genuine feedback from your team. Team members should give original feedback to the host even if she/he is a senior person.
In the end, I would like to sum up by saying that “don’t plan your Webinars in the Lockdown period only”. If you get a good response from attendees about your previous webinar(s). And you think that your webinars are successful and meet your expectations. Continue to organize them after COVID-19.
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