What Goes into a Webinar?

As your company grows, up-skilling and communicating with your employees can become a challenge, especially as you continue to shape and change the direction of your business. If you are wondering how large corporations and institutions across the world are communicating and educating one another, looking into successful webinars may just be the answer for you and your blossoming business. Successfully done webinars can go beyond just communicating with your co-workers and employees, they can help educate customers on your products and services as well. Webinars are a type of online education and can be used to teach new techniques, catch up your company on your new directives, or engage new customers. You can utilize free services to host a webinar, or choose already established online platforms to reach more viewers. Regardless of how you use a webinar, you are going to want it to be both engaging and educational in order to have a successful process. In this article, we are going to give you a few pro tips to help you prep for a smooth experience with your first webinar and give you a few reasons on why you should take the first steps to creating your own.

Much like the housing market, a webinar’s success can come from location, location, location. Audio, as you might assume, is going to be an integral part of easy sailing on your first webinar so make sure that you are in a quiet room. Unlike most online work, you will not want to be in a bustling coffee shop or even a room where a loud telephone ring, cars honking, or any other types of noises are going to get in your way. Audio requires a few extra preparation steps, first, and perhaps most obviously, check to make sure you are audible before you start the webinar. If possible, buy an attachable microphone for your computer, and if you aren’t feeling computer savvy ask for help from your IT department. After you have checked that you can be heard, make sure you know what you are saying. Practice your spiel more than once, and try to avoid saying ‘um’, ‘er’, and ‘like’ too frequently, especially if you plan on transcribing the webinar for later use. As you practice, try to look in a mirror or web camera, so that you are used to seeing the way you talk and use appropriate body language. A webinar is unique because it’s not just a voice or an email, it is a human to human connection, as you can see your virtual educator you can make a more personal connection. Make sure to make appropriate eye contact with the camera while talking and have expression.

Now that you have the visual and the audio, it’s all about generating content. As we said, this is your chance to make a personal connection with people whom you may have not even met. Instead of jumping straight into your accreditations, or attempting to go straight into content set a more conversational tone by telling a relevant story about yourself and why you are here today. The difficult part about eLearning is that you are going to have to compete with both the internet your users can access and their relatively short attention span. Creating engaging content is only one aspect of a successful webinar. You will also need to divide your content into clear and concise sections and give you time to ask for feedback and generate questions. Have a few built in leading questions for people to participate and encourage them to send you questions in a chat as you go along. If you are using slides, make sure to not overload your power points, and have catchy visuals instead of a lot of text. Creating content for a successful webinar is a lot like creating a business meeting powerpoint, overloading it with content will quickly bore your viewers, so engage them with graphic representations. Finally, in your presentation, don’t be afraid to use humor, you are trying to engage your audience and encourage participation, so feel free to make it fun!

So now that you have tips on how to create a successful webinar you might be asking yourself, why me? Quite simply webinars are growing extensively in popularity as a way of connecting and educating people around the world. Having a successful webinar hosted by your company or through an outside source on a service that your company exclusively provides is going to popular. It is an additional form of both advertisement and connection with your potential customers and can be hosted on many online forums for free. Show off what you do best and generate interest in your business, if what you are doing creates buzz around your company you can send out links later on or host a live webinar. There are so many options nowadays with social networking, that this informal talk about you and your experience is yet another interesting way to educate and engage.

When hosting a webinar, remember these few simple tips to have a successful discussion with interested customers and academics. While it may seem like a daunting task at first, one does not need to be a professional educator to explain their products and services. Keep a light conversational tone, engage your viewers with a question and answer time, and of course, be your entertaining self. If you are still feeling a little camera shy, imagine that you are explaining your company to your best friend. Use simple terms, easy to understand questions, and keep a humorous tone throughout the conversation. With the right advertisement, your webinar could be one of your more successful forms of connecting with customers. Or if you choose to use a webinar to upskill your employees, this platform can be a great way to educate but also introduce yourself to employees who may work on the other side of the world. In an increasingly international business market, connecting personally and engaging through content can promote your work and your passions.