Webinar - How to Conduct an Effective Webinar
Posted: Wednesday, October 15, 2008
by David Nour
Relationship Economics
From both personal mistakes, as well as from attending over 100 webinars this year, I thought the following ten "best practices" may be useful for anyone who is currently conducting or is considering conducting a webinar.
1) Present a Timely Topic- Unless your topic is contextually relevant to your audience, you'll get little to no response and much more crucial, little to no active participation.
3) Good Housekeeping- With a plethora of webinar technologies it's critical that you think with the consumer in mind. What you communicate before, during and after, greatly contributes to the perceived value of their return on impact. Word-to-the-wise, this is not a place to be cheap, use capable technology tools to make your life easier.
4) Use Visuals- You can talk all day long but nothing replaces a picture or a diagram. The more interesting the visual, often the more engaged your audience.
5) Practice- Critical to practice your timing, delivery, who answers what questions, do you have a moderator, and particularly if you're showing visuals is there a time lapse between what you're showing and when your audience actually sees it.
6) Interact with the Audience- You don't have the advantage of having the audience in the room to see their nonverbal reactions. Pause for value-added comments from other panelists; pause to answer questions in real time; conduct a quick poll.
7) Be Responsive- Many of the current webinar technologies allow participants to ask questions. Be sure to plan for pauses in your agenda to respond.
8) Follow-through- Did your response resonate, did it address the audience's concerns? If not, everyone on the webinar realizes it and thus you risk everyone checking out.
9) Share Information, Insights and Tools- It's one thing for you to tease me on the functionality of something you show on a webinar; it's of far greater value when you give me a 30-day trial of your tool or help me take critical challenges off my plate with valuable insights after the webinar.
10) Invite Again, will Forward to Friends- If you add value your audience will actually look forward to hearing from you and with a great initial experience they will forward your invitation to their friends.
Bonus: Let me share with you a few painful "for the love of God please don'ts":
Avoid being vague - specificity drives credibility- show me case studies or explain how others are successful using your approach.
Avoid jargons - your industry's alphabet soup is of little or no interest to participants who are unfamiliar with those terms.
If you're not doing anything on October 22, join us for a webinar on Twitter for Business.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Very informative and since I've been thinking of holding a webinar I just might take you up on the offer on October 22 -- Thanks for sharing this, David.
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