Five tips for a great webinar

The other day, I met with Chamber Members Wolper Subscription Services to discuss their upcoming webinar.  We've used webinars, with great success, let others know the benefits of Chamber membership and allow our Chamber members the opportunity to speak with others on areas of their expertise.  Webinars can be great tools, if done right; they can also be insanely boring if done wrong.  Here are some tips on the right way to host a Webinar.

1.  Data collection - do it right:  When you register for any Webinar, you have to fill out basic information - but, most webinars allow you to ask for more.  Get someone's position in the company.  Ask what kind of business their company does.  Make sure to collect data that is related to your objectives for holding the webinar, be it sales info, accounting, etc.  You can also usually have somone answer a pre-webinar question or two that can help you create the content that they are looking for.


2.  Short slides, brief bullets:  It is much better to have twenty slides with two bullets each than five slides with eight bullets.  To keep someone's attention, you have to make webinar slides brief and bullets short.



3.  Make it interactive:  One of the problems with webinars is "drift."  Someone can be sitting at their computer, their attention can wander and BOOM, they're on Facebook and no longer paying attention to what you have to say.  To limit that, make your presentation interactive...have numerous poll questions and surveys.  Use the highlighting and pointer features to try and grab someone's attention.  Don't just give a power point presentation...odds are decent you will lose your attendees.


4.  Practice and prepare:  Nothing looks worse than being unprepared for a webinar...having slides out of order, having animation that doesn't work right, etc.  It makes it look like you didn't run through your presentation first...something you'd never do in a real world presentation.  Treat your webinar the same way - practice it and proof the slides ahead of time.  Make sure that everything looks the way it should and that nothing will appear on the presentation that surprises you.


5.  Follow up right:  Most webinars allow you to send out a pretty standard follow-up, thanking your attendees for coming.  Don't settle there; send them a white paper.  Ask them to fill out an evaluation.  Give them a special offer for attending.  Make sure that there is some wort of benefit to the attendee that goes beyond having just attended the webinar.