10 Best Practices for Conducting Engaging Webinars

Webinars, in plain words, are known as online seminars. It is the smart and cost effective way to conduct a seminar. Instead on normal seminars, it is very much budget-friendly. And so it is very much helpful for non-profitable organizations and also for those organizations that are running out of funds. Another best part of a Webinar is it can easily wipe all geographical boundaries and help you to conduct your seminar globally.

Although there are lots of advantages of Webinars, the critical part is the user engagement. You have to make sure to make it engaging so most of the audience stay connected and do not leave it in the middle. So in this article, I will share out some ideas on how you can make your webinar successful. Let’s get started.

1) Check your setup:

Before starting, make sure to test all your computers, internet connection, webcams, headphones, webinar software as well as your presentation software. Make sure all are working properly.

2)  Backup setup:

It is always good to have a backup. Along with your primary setup keep another backup setup ready and running. If any of the primary setups fails, you can use the backup.

3) Rehearsal:

Try to get used to with your presentation software, webinar tools as well as with your presentation. A good rehearsal can increase your confidence to conduct the webinar more successfully.

4) More interesting visual content:

As the users are not physically present in your location, it is very important to keep them involved and engaged in your webinar. Good and interesting visual content is the best way to keep the audience involved. Also, make sure to highlight the content that you wish to focus on your attendee’s eye and mind. You also need to keep the focus on the topic of your online seminar. If your focus moves, your audience will leave the desk.

5) Avoid short slides:

In the technical aspects, in the case of any online interaction you have to keep in mind that the speed of the internet is a major factor. That’s why, due to the fluctuation of the internet speed, sometimes a short slide can be displayed for milliseconds to the audience screen and eventually they miss that slide. To avoid this, try to use slides that will display for certain of time that any attendee easily read. Otherwise, they will leave the session.

6) Engage users more frequently:

In the case of webinars, you have to engage the audience more frequently, say in a gap of 1 to 2 minutes. This will make sure to keep them involved with your webinar. You can ask your audience some relevant questions. You can also ask them to ask you any related questions. More they interact with you or with each other; the more chance you have to make your webinar a success.

7) Encourage use of headsets:

Encourage your audience to use a good headset with less noise. Avoiding audio noise is a critical part to make your webinar successful. Using the inbuilt speaker and microphone of the laptop can produce too much noise and echo. This can ruin the entire meeting.

8) Avoid very long webinars:

Comparing to the short webinars long webinars has a bad percentage of success. For an online conference, it is very difficult to hold the engagement for a long time. So try to break your long webinars to few short and digestible webinars. This can increase the chance of your success.

9) Assistance & Support:

In the time of a webinar, it is always better to keep two more peoples as your helping hand. One will be from your technical support team who can help you to fix any issues with your technical systems. The other person should be for your assistance to provide you all necessary documents and information you may need. This additional assistance will surely make you more confident to conduct a successful webinar.

10) Clear instruction for Webinars:

Try to provide clear instructions to the attendees so they will not face any issue to join your webinars. If they feel confused at starting, they will surely not feel confident to continue with your webinar. Make them comfortable by providing all sort of assistance they need.

Conclusion:

I just shared out some of my experiences in the hope that it will help you to minimize your mistakes while in the journey of making your webinars a successful one. Feel free to let me know your thoughts and additional suggestion to make a webinar successful.