Tag Archives: how to plan a webinar
Webinar Tips from Tax Day?
While scrambling to gather the last bits and pieces for the tax man, it hit me: we’d do well to take a few lessons from tax day when it comes to webinars.
Make a copy
You’ve got a file cabinet packed with copies of W2s, receipts and past returns for a reason. Having a copy of your webinar presentation is an equally good idea. Imagine your computer crashes 10 minutes in to your presentation. Scenario A: You “vamp” while attempting to reboot. I’ve been in this audience. It’s not pretty. Scenario B: You make a folksy remark about Murphy’s Law and ask your colleague or producer to take presenting rights and advance the slides while you continue seamlessly from the hard copy you printed just in case.
Don’t wait until the last second
You won’t see me on the 11:00 newscast live from the Post Office on April 17 (procrastinators of the world, rejoice in those two extra days!) but I’m not done, either. If you leave your webinar preparation to the eleventh hour a) it shows in the delivery and b) you have zero margin for error. Leave enough time to make sure your deck is loaded and looks good, your audio and web connections are solid, and everyone is clear on the event flow. Your audience will thank you for a polished, professional event.
Prepare to be audited
Webinar technology can do it all. You can record your event. You can keep the chat log. You can save your whiteboard. Should you? Did you? Consider the implications of keeping content before your event, and make certain to configure your webinar software accordingly.
Learned any lessons (webinar or tax) the hard way? Let us know in the comments.
All-Hands Webinars
Janine Popick’s Inc. piece (apart from making me wish more of our All-Hands meetings included pizza) got me thinking about why some Town Halls flourish and some flounder.
Be Prepared
The best webinar hosts must’ve been Scouts in their youths, because they’re always prepared. They plan every aspect of the event – topics, speakers, agenda, promotion, logistics, etc. – and they leave enough runway to do it right. They expect the unexpected – overbooked executives dropping out of or off of meetings with little or no notice, power or internet outages, etc. – and they make contingency plans so that the show goes on.
Do It Right
Every day, in a thousand little ways, the best places to work show employees they are valued. All-hands webinars are no exception. The best hosts set up professional A/V so that remote attendees can easily and clearly hear speakers. They incorporate quality visuals, and make all materials readily accessible. They encourage remote employees to be part of the meeting – sharing ideas, participating in Q&A, etc. They keep the lines of communication open, making all-hands webinars a regular and valued part of the culture.
Momentum
Popick keeps the momentum going with post all-hands pizza, and that’s where many webinar hosts fall down. Don’t send your webinar attendees a virtual pizza, please, but do challenge yourself to keep momentum. The best hosts schedule follow-on meetings, or split company-wide webinars into departmental breakouts, or launch polls or surveys post-webinar to keep the buzz going.
Found a trick for making your webinar flourish? Know how to keep momentum? Share your idea in the comments.
Webinar Hosts vs. Attendees
Intellor Group has just released its 2011 Webinar Timing Report. You can download a copy of the full report, or take a ringside seat for the hosts vs. attendees matchup here.
Where are all the webinar gurus?
The avalanche of social media “gurus” has left me guru-ed out, but it’s also got me thinking. There are domain and subject matter experts, specialists, and gurus of all sorts in most every field. Google “best practices” in e-learning, marketing, presentation, training, and you get millions of results; 47.8, 41.9, 42.9 and 131, to be exact. Google webinar best practices and you get only 5.8M results. Given how common webinars have become, where are all the webinar gurus?
While pondering this question I headed over to LinkedIn. More than 51,000 updates, 17,000 people and 522 companies were returned by a keyword search for webinar. But there were only 14 open questions – less than 1/10 the number of open marketing questions, by way of context.
According to MarketingSherpa, more than 60% of business decision-makers attended a webinar in the last month. According to MarketingProfs, marketers have a 70% confidence rating in webinar effectiveness. We’re hosting webinars, we think they’re worth it, and the right people are coming. So why aren’t we looking for opportunities to improve?
The tagline for a rotisserie product I dimly remember seeing on late-night infomercials when my youngest was a wee, up-all-night thing sums up my theory – set it and forget it. We paid for the research, we have the white paper, the subject matter expert is available to speak, so we’ll have a webinar. Set it and forget it. But bullets on a slide and droning audio just don’t cut it anymore. They never should’ve, but in a social media, multimedia, signal vs. noise world, audiences demand more. Has the research been translated into a deck that’s effective for the webinar format? Does the white paper presentation engage attendees a world away? Is the speaker used to the visual cues of bodies in the seats, and is s/he ready to read a remote audience? How can we give the audience more? How can we make the webinar better?
We may not anoint you a guru, but we invite you to share your expert advice in the comments.
Think Inc. When Planning Your Webinar
Inc. has a nice piece this week dealing with executive communication, but there are some good takeaways for webinar hosts, too.
Thirty Seconds
If you doubt the assertion that “half a minute is forever,” set your timer. While it’s ticking, think about the people on the other side of the computer. You know they didn’t close IM, right? Their cellphones are not switched off. Their office doors aren’t closed and locked. Is what you’re saying more compelling than all those other inputs…combined?
Boredom
You can’t see them and you can’t hear them, so you’ve got to take their temperature. Use interactive tools to gauge whether they’re “still with you.”
What’s In It For Me?
“Station WIIFM” is funny, but for those of us who aren’t sales people it’s also a handy little reminder that every webinar attendee is there for a reason – his/her own. If you put your audience’s needs at the forefront of your webinar planning, you can spend less time competing for their attention and more time getting results.
Great Webinars: They’re Not Over When They’re Over
You planned. You promoted. You delivered. The learners learned. The leads rolled in. You archived your webinar and extended your reach. Now what? Wring every last drop of value from the content you worked so hard to create, of course.
One of our clients compiled the (many!) questions from a compliance training series to create an internal FAQ site related to the issue. Webinar hashtags have sparked great conversations. We’ve seen webinar polls form the basis for everything from blog posts to white papers. Slide decks have been placed behind lead capture forms and on public sites such as SlideShare.
Gotten more mileage from your webinar? Share your secrets in the comments.
Agile webinars?
Maybe you don’t have to stand. A webcam of the rubber chicken just doesn’t sound the same. And most webinars probably aren’t the time or place for off-key renditions of “I’m a Little Teapot.” But this WSJ piece on agile meetings does offer a few good reminders for webinar hosts and presenters.
Your Webinar Needs an Agenda
And a slide deck is not an agenda. Do you have a strong, well-rehearsed open and close? (If a presenter is going to run off the rails, these are the two most likely culprits.) If you’ve got multiple presenters, do you know who’s speaking when? Who is moderating Q&A and how? Do you have checkpoint slides in your deck? (Checkpoint slides are the ones that clue you in to your progress against your scheduled timing – e.g. you should be at the 15m mark on slide 8.) Agile webinars have a plan.
Your Webinar Should Start On Time
While fining your attendees probably isn’t an option, starting your webinar on time is. Using a webinar may mean you get the (occasionally valid) “it took forever to get connected” excuse, but that’s the exception, not the rule. Manage to the rule and keep your webinar on schedule. Two minutes past the scheduled start is a fair allowance for connection time, and respects the time of those who were prompt.
Your Webinar Could Probably Be Shorter
When we get a deck that’s so large we have to break it before loading into the software, my eyes roll back into my head on behalf of the audience. If you have 40 slides, could you deliver a better presentation with 35? (And not by squeezing more information onto each slide, please.) While you’re taking a second look at your deck, practice. Less fumbling equals a better and shorter presentation. And while you’re practicing, pull yourself up on every filler word – ummm…uh…well…actually… Ditch the detritus and you’ll come across better and faster. Agile, even.
Are your webinars agile? Share your best tips below.
When to Host a Webinar
Now that you’ve heard the bad news about webinar timing, we’ve got good news. But first, a few disclaimers. This dive won’t be our deepest, and it won’t account for the differences between webinar categories – i.e. marketing webinars, training webinars, etc.; this first look is simply aggregate data. And we’re not addressing content here, but content is still king. Now for the good stuff.
The Webinar Bests
True, the majority of webinar hosts played it safe, but those who ventured gained attendees. Again, we’re not saying it’s the metric, but it’s certainly one quantifiable metric.
Best month: December
Best day: Friday
Best time**: 5:00 p.m.
So is it time to start scheduling all of your webinars on Fridays at 5? No! (Sneak peek: Especially not if you’re a trainer!) But should some webinar timing taboos die? Definitely! We’ve got more data and a lot of theories about it for you, so stay tuned for more Intellor-gence.
Tried a ‘nontraditional’ webinar time? Let us know how it worked for your audience.
*Based on average number of attendees
**Based on ‘traditional’ business hours (9-5) and stated in US Eastern Time
When Not to Host a Webinar
You’ve got great content, a brilliant presenter, and the right target audience. Now the question is: when should you host your webinar? If your audience is US-based, conventional wisdom suggests a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday afternoon. We decided to challenge conventional wisdom and the results are in: conventional wisdom is not necessarily wise.
Intellor Group compiled a data sample representing more than a thousand webinars (including corporate communications, lead generation, training, etc.) conducted on our platform in 2011.
Webinar Hosts See Safety in Numbers
The majority of webinar hosts stuck with conventional wisdom – mid-day, mid-week, avoiding vacations and holidays.
• 27% of webinars were conducted on a Tuesday
• 1:00 p.m. took the top timeslot
• 13% of webinars were conducted in October
The Webinar Worsts*
If we look at attendance as a measure of success (plenty of room to debate whether that’s the metric, but it’s certainly a metric, and an important one at that) conventional wisdom is sometimes wrong.
• Worst month: August
• Worst day: Tuesday
• Worst time**: 12:00
So the good news is, you should definitely still take that beach vacation in August. The bad news is, it might be time to rethink Tuesdays. Ready for the best? Stay tuned for more Intellor-gence.
*Based on average number of attendees
**Based on ‘traditional’ business hours (9-5) and stated in US Eastern Time
Set the DeLorean for “Before There Were Webinars”
Fast Company served up a tasty little treat for marketers last week – Howie Jacobson’s flashback to the pre-email software, pre-Google AdWords marketing era. (Does anyone remember what we actually DID back then?) In way-back mode, Jacobson ponders talking with customers and prospects over the phone and web, and even “shooting for the moon” and recording those events. Pretty incredible, when you consider his audience is a marketer in 1998.
MarketingProfs says: 70% confidence in webinar effectiveness
So of course the technical reality Jacobson defines is table stakes for today’s marketer. But pop quiz: how often do you pull this tool out of your kit? Not often enough, if the MarketingProfs/Content Marketing Institute’s 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report is any indicator. While we have a 70% confidence rating of webinar effectiveness, only 46% of us are using this tactic. Seems like we should move that needle…
Closing the webinar vs. in-person event gap
And while we’re moving needles, can we narrow the “not the same as being there” gap that Jacobson references? True, the webinar will always be short the lukewarm coffee, frigid ballrooms and rubber chicken dinners of its big brother, the in-person event. And, yes, sometimes the audio crackles or a slide lags a few seconds. Maybe some of us even miss that glass of warm white wine with hot prospects at the networking reception. But the reality is we’re all going virtual – at least some of the time – and there are plenty of ways we can give our customers a better webinar experience.
Service
The last time I turned up at a users’ conference, staff members stood ready and waiting to check participants in, provide conference materials, answer questions, moderate panels, manage Q&A, and generally create a positive experience. Not once did a presenter have to climb off the podium to handle any one of these activities. That’s a danger with webinars – the idea that, since it’s all virtual, the presenter should just handle it. The reality is that does a disservice to the presenter, the audience, the participants who have questions and, in the end, the content. Food for thought: during one webinar we produced last week, there were 14 chat questions within the first 5 minutes. Option a) the presenter ignores those, frustrating part of his audience. Option b) the presenter pauses to reply, frustrating a majority of his audience. There’s a reason in-person events staff for audience support; a producer can make your webinar run equally smoothly.
Networking
Even when the white is warm, networking is hot. It’s one of the reasons some of us still go wheels up to trainings in Houston, sales meetings in Chicago and user conferences in Miami. Absent the wine and stick-on nametags, how can you give your customers the benefit of a little peer brain-picking? A little planning here goes a long way. In this brave new social media world you can certainly embrace social tools for a little pre-event connecting. If your event size is appropriate, you can encourage some good old-fashioned ice-breaking. If you want to foster in-session discussion, pre-screen your registration list for a few credible, collegial faces you can call on to start quality conversations. Leave time at the close of your event for some friendly chit chat, or consider offering a breakout room or two for those who might want to continue a debate. The possibilities are endless, with just a bit of preparation.
The long and short of it? There are things folks will always miss about in-person events. But time and budgets mean your customers are likely attending more webinars than in-person events. With a little effort, can we shift the customer perception from “not the same as being there” to “you really should’ve been there”?