Conducting a Successful Webinar

New Web Meeting technology leverage the strength of the telephone and connects it with the Internet’s capacity to deliver real-time visual communications at low cost. Web Meetings enable presenters to conduct virtual seminars for anyone to participate as long as they have a PC with an Internet connection.

This technology not only makes traditional seminars more affordable, they facilitate reaching a far wider audience and add considerable advantages over traditional on-site seminars, such as interactive Q&A, real-time collaboration, and the ability to archive the materials for future playback from a Web site. Internet-based technology also can help facilitate seminar registration, attendance management, and post-event reporting.

How Does it Work?

Follow these simple steps to conduct an effective Web Meeting.

1. Determine the goal of your event. Is it to educate clients and prospects, generate sales leads, or launch a new product?

2. Develop an interesting, compelling, and timely topic that will drive the registrations and attendance of your target audience(s).

3. Choose your technology wisely. You’ll
want a Web Meeting solution that works with a variety of operating
systems, is reliable, can scale to a large number of attendees, and has
the features you need including polling, chat, Q&A, and recording. There are two options for delivering the audio portion of your seminar: a teleconference call or audio streaming.
Audio streaming is less expensive for large audiences, however, only
allows for one-way communication and the sound quality is inferior. A
teleconference (via a conference audio bridge) is more reliable and
allows for two-way interaction.

4. Select your speaker and meeting support team carefully:

• • Pick the right speaker. It’s preferable to have a speaker
    who is recognizable to the audience, credible, and has solid
    presentation skills.
  • Pick the right moderator. A
    Web Meeting is much like a radio show to your audience. A skilled
    moderator improves the flow and feel of your event in several ways.
    A moderator will put a nervous speaker at ease with easy questions and
    prompts that will help them stay focused on his or her presentation. In
    addition, a good moderator can read the audience’s mood by viewing the
    questions and comments submitted by online participants (so the speaker
    can also focus on his/her presentation). This gives the moderator cues
    about speeding up the program, or taking time to answer pressing
    questions raised by the audience.

• • Pick
    the right support person. Have at least one support person on hand to
    handle any technical issues experienced by participants.

5. Select an appropriate time for your event.
For events based in the U.S., 10:00 am PST, 11:00 am MST, 12:00 pm CST,
1:00 pm EST is usually a good time. Skip Mondays and Fridays when
possible.

6. Establish your registration process before you start to promote. Streamline it as much as possible. Make it quick and easy. Online
registration is effective and convenient, but if you ask too many
questions or make the process cumbersome, you will lose a lot of
registrants.Also, make sure the technology can separately track who attended the meeting for follow-up.

7. Invite and engage the attendees with a mix of offline and online
promotion early and follow-up, follow-up, follow-up. Send confirmation
e-mails immediately after registration and at least two reminder
e-mails prior to the Web Meeting. Reminder phone calls the day before
the event are also effective.

8. Pre-seminar walkthrough. Practice your Web Meeting with your
speaker(s) and moderator at least once prior to the actual event.

9. Conduct your Webinar.

• • Join early: Presenters should join at least 15 minutes
    early to set up the presentation including any interactive content such
    as polling or Q&A.

• • Interact with the audience: Your content can be
    delivered with PowerPoint slides only or also include interactive
    polling, Q&A and the sharing of a desktop application like a
    browser or Excel. Polling is the most popular method of increasing
    interaction. Once a participant responds to a polling question, results
    can be shared with the entire group for further interaction. Many web
    conferencing solutions offer a chat feature so that participants can
    send questions to the presenter without interrupting the presentation.
    Interactive content is recommended when possible in order to keep your
    audience engaged in the seminar, plus it enables you to collect
    valuable information and feedback. Remember, keep your seminar
    educational and avoid sales pitches.

• • Emphasize the main points: Annotation tools are a great way
    to emphasize what you are talking about at any given time. These tools
    allow you to highlight areas within your presentation, draw on the
    screen, and keep your audience focused on the subject at hand.

10. Collect feedback. Use the polling, Q&A and chatting transcripts to learn about your audience and develop a post event FAQ.

11. Archive for playback. By selecting a Record and Playback
option, both the audio and the Web portions of the presentation are
synchronized for future playback, further extending the reach of your
event.

More Tips to Make Your Next Web Event More Successful

Let your event determine the technology, not the other way around.
Is it important for your attendees to communicate with the presenter
during the presentation? Is a valuable element of your presentation to
show live software? Do you want the option to record and archive the
event for playback?

Offer something valuable.
Don’t be disappointed if your attendance numbers are only at 30-40
percent of your total registration numbers, that’s the industry
standard for attendance at Web Meetings. It is just how it is. You
can work to increase those numbers by offering a prize or valuable item
at the end of the program. A special gift that only those that
registered, signed on, and attended the entire event are eligible for.
Also, don’t forget that a recognizable speaker is the best way to draw
a higher attendance percentage.

Make it interesting. To keep your attendees interested in your
event, and not off checking their e-mail, make sure it’s designed to be
appealing, fast moving, and interesting. This doesn’t mean that you
need to become an expert (although it wouldn’t hurt) using all of the
robust Web Meeting tools; it means that the presentation material
itself should be both timely and exciting. Web Meeting tools help you
get your point across; they should never be a replacement for good
content.

Reminders are the key to increased attendance, “It’s so easy to
attend a Web Meeting!” I’ve heard it over and over again, but it’s also
just as easy NOT to attend. E-mail and phone call reminders are a key
to increasing attendance.

Start and end the event on time. Unlike a face-to-face
meeting, where you physically scan the room for familiar faces, search
for a seat and greet your neighbor, Web audience members are generally
sitting quietly in their offices reading e-mail, and checking the clock
for the event to begin. A slight delay in a face-to-face event
generally goes unnoticed, but at a Web Meeting, a few minutes can seem
like a lifetime.

Create a welcome slide that lets the attendees know they are at the
right location and what to expect. When starting your event go through
ground rules such as how they can mute their phones and how to use chat
and polling features.

Troubleshoot
before the event begins. It’s important to know what to do in case of
technology related problems. They will happen. Review all
possible solutions for if the presenter loses his/her connection, or
what happens if attendees can’t hear the presenter’s voice. It’s
important to be prepared and to stay calm.

Proofread and test everything twice. It can be devastating to
a Web Meeting if the “log-in link” doesn’t work, or if the date and
time of the event on the confirmation is incorrect. One of the most
common–and avoidable–mistakes in producing a Web Meeting is providing
incorrect information. Remember, you don’t get a second chance to make
a first impression.