Improve your online webinar hosting skills to improve efficiency. Webinars are a great method to inform and engage your remote staff.
Despite recent global lockdowns, remote employment has been on the rise for years. Over 77 percent of workers think working from home makes them more productive, and 65 percent of companies agree. Webinar hosting is a terrific way to reach customers, employees, or stakeholders.
Keep everyone informed about your company’s progress and insights. Webinars are excellent for business. In addition, they may be an efficient marketing tool.
To get the most out of a webinar, you need to follow specific rules and avoid making typical webinar blunders.
What Makes Online Webinar Hosting Work?
More and more teams are working remotely, and a webinar is a terrific method to bring the company together.
1. Stick to your schedule.
Creating, communicating, and adhering to a schedule is critical to a successful team webinar.
It exhibits effective project management and respects and values your audience’s time. When communicating, include the webinar’s schedule, time, date, and link. Outline your webinar’s benefits, goals, and any prerequisites.
In addition, share the agenda with your attendees well in advance. Having a plan will help them manage their time and workload. Furthermore, start and end on time.
2. Hire a speaker for your webinar.
An excellent strategy to ensure your webinar is truly beneficial to your company is to outsource professional speakers.
It’s not always optimal to have a team member deliver the webinar. You’ll be busy hosting the webinar and taking notes. Therefore, don’t try to present the content as well.
Beyond their subject expertise, experienced speakers can educate and engage their online audience, no matter how large. In addition, they’ve worked hard on their communication skills. Furthermore, they will shine when addressing questions from your team during the Q&A portion of most webinars.
It’s not hard to outsource a speaker. Reach out to your network and state your needs clearly.
After that, once you’ve chosen a speaker, make sure to sign a speaker contract. This ensures both parties know what to expect from the experience. In addition, it protects you both legally.
3. Market your webinar.
No matter how big or small your team is, if nobody knows about it, nobody will show up.
It’s no surprise that 57 percent of webinar attendees come by email, as 88 percent of remote employees do. However, one email won’t suffice to reach your complete audience. Therefore, plan to send many invitations, albeit spaced out.
While most registrants will sign up the week before your webinar, early marketing is still advised.
Almost a quarter of your potential audience will likely sign up over two weeks in advance. Notably, 25% of sign-ups occur on the day of the webinar. Therefore, don’t let up at the finish.
Given that 73% of B2B marketers believe webinar hosting is the best method to generate leads, you may want to consider making your webinar public. However, this is entirely dependent on the webinar’s intended audience and consequences.
Conduct Tests for the Pre-Webinar
Plan well enough that your webinar should go as smoothly as possible.
Of course, certain things are out of your hands. Attendee engagement, for instance, or speaker performance are things you cannot always control.
However, there are factors you can monitor and evaluate. As you do so, you help to guarantee that your webinar operates smoothly.
- First, test your camera and mic using the built-in functionality tests. Additionally, you might enlist a friend or colleague’s assistance. This provides you with plenty of time to troubleshoot any issues before your guests arrive.
- Second, your wifi and environment must be crisp. This should be no problem after working from home for a while. If you’re worried about your connection, try hosting the webinar from somewhere else. Nobody wants to strain to follow a crackly conversation, right?
5. Remind registrants.
Reminding folks about your webinar ten minutes beforehand does wonders.
Additionally, a calendar invitation sent out a few days before the webinar can do great things for attendance. After all, only 40-50% of registrants attend the webinar.
A calendar invite or Slack ping reminds interested parties that your webinar is about to begin.
People are busy and may have forgotten they signed up for your webinar weeks ago. Therefore, include the agenda to help them remember and the link and password to access the webinar.
6. Mute alerts in your webinar.
Webinar hosting is no easy task — don’t fail at the last barrier.
Therefore, mute your notifications to avoid getting distracted by other matters. You’ve put a lot of time and effort into the webinar, so give it your complete attention.
Ask attendees to mute their notifications for the length of the webinar. Further, your participants should recognize your attempts to respect their time and obligations. Muting notifications and ringtones should be easy enough to request verbally or in the invite.
There’s nothing worse than slack and email pings interrupting your speaker’s message. It’s rude and annoying. Therefore, everyone should quiet their phones and follow the webinar guidelines.
7. Record your webinar.
Even though webinars are usually between 30 minutes and an hour long, taking notes is a good idea.
The speaker may provide additional visual aids upon request. However, having your own notes is always beneficial.
Q&A is also a valuable and fast-paced component of a webinar. Attendees are encouraged to express their opinions and ask questions about the content presented.
In addition, attendees will be happy you hired a qualified speaker to help them learn more about the topic.
Afterward, share your notes with your team. They’ll hopefully have taken their own, but it never hurts to supply more. As the webinar organizer, you can highlight significant points and provide key takeaways for your team.
