The beginner’s guide to webinars

Webinars have been around for longer than some people may think, as far back as the 80’s in fact, but they have become more accessible as technology has improved overtime. Given our current climate with so many events being canceled in order to comply with restrictions, now is a great time to utilise webinars to showcase your business and open up networking opportunities.  Think about why you might want to run a webinar, do you have an interesting topic that is relatively untouched? Perhaps a traditional subject looked at from a new perspective? Or you may have a service you can offer and want to showcase your experience in the area through a discussion with other likeminded experts. Whatever the reason, here are some tips to consider. 

1.     Choose a platform that suits you

There a tons of webinar platforms available out there so do a bit of research into the one you choose before committing to paying for anything. Here at Squirrels&Bears we use Zoom for our online events. Zoom became a bit of an overnight celebrity when lockdown hit and fast became a go to tool for our team with virtual catch-ups and client meetings. When doing research into the webinar side of the platform you will quickly discover the comprehensive FAQ section that covers every aspect of running a webinar with Zoom. There you will find all of the features you have access to when using Zoom to run your webinar, and there is a lot.

One pitfall is the email communication. Zoom offers automated emails, that you can personalise with your branding, that will be sent to your registrants. These, however, are quite limited in wording and the design was is not consistent across desktop and mobile and could come out formatted badly when adding your own branding. It might be better to incorporate your own marketing email platform for promotional emails, so you get a look and feel that suits your brand.

2.     Let everyone know

Speaking of promotional emails, it is important to emphasise how important promoting your webinar is. Zoom does all the hard work, but you have to do the leg work. You need to spread the word that you are hosting a webinar and there are a few factors you need to get consider:

• Timing – Not only do you want to advertise, on say social media, at the right time of day but also calculate the best amount of time to start promoting before the webinar takes place. Too early and people might get tired of hearing about it, too late and you may lose out on potential registrants and all your planning was for nothing. Start promoting your webinar 1-2 weeks before the event and slowly build up awareness and interest.

• Testing – You want to make sure your registrants are able to sign up quickly and efficiently. Any broken links may put them off following through with the registration and they could potentially lose confidence in you as a business. To ensure the best user experience, try testing the registration links yourself before promoting them out to your wider audience. These landing pages for registration can also be branded and are easier to format than the emails so get creative.

• Content – You need to build a campaign to sell your webinar as a product. Generate interest by doing a social media campaign. Instagram is great but linked based posting sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn make the process easier and therefore should be prioritised. Though this ‘product’ is likely free, if you want to garner as much attention as possible consider investing in a paid ad for better results.

• Email - Then you have emails, which we have touched on before, you will want to send out an initial email to your subscriber list in the lead up to the event. The week before your webinar is scheduled to take place, send another email as it is likely that some recipients have missed the first one. Then send a reminder email to your registrants the day before. This is something Zoom does automatically, but you can switch it off if choosing to design your own.

3.     Practice, practice, practice

As they say, practice makes perfect and luckily when using the Zoom webinar platform you will have unlimited practice sessions before the big day. It is important to run through your session as though it were the real thing every time you do it as you want to get an idea of how it will be when it actually takes place. This might feel odd at first, but this is the perfect time to get rid of any nerves or jitters and get comfortable with things. 

As a moderator, practice is important as you want to make sure you properly introduce the speakers, greet your registrants, go over house rules and the agenda, as well as practice timings for the accompanying slides or images. Writing a paired down script with prompts should help you to remember what you need to be saying without having to look down all the time, eye contact is still important on video too. As for the timings, fine tune this with your speakers using keywords, as cues for you to move on to next slide.

4.     When things go wrong

Sadly, even when you put all that practice in, things can still go wrong. It is just what happens when there are so many extenuating factors involved in running a webinar. Things like, sound issues, internet connection or other general technical difficulties could strike at any time. Stay calm, address the issue and remember the show must go on. If one registrant is having trouble, you can likely put that down to it being on their end, but if more begin raise the same issue, then that is when you step in to try and resolve it before carrying on.

In my experience we had numerous flawless practice runs, yet on the day of our most recent webinar we suffered issues with our presentation. Wherein the first half lost the images and it was only text. It was disappointing as it took away from the overall look that we worked quite hard on. However, we addressed the issue, continued with the webinar and at the end let everyone know we would send a copy of the presentation so they could have the full effect when re-watching the recording.

5.     Follow up after the session

So, you’ve done your webinar, recorded the session and can breathe a sigh of relief. But you aren’t quite finished yet. Following up after a webinar is crucial for turning those registrants into potential clients. Think back to why you wanted to do your webinar in the first place, are you showcasing your skills in a particular area? Or are you looking to push a product that relates to your topic. A follow up email campaign sharing the session recording and any other attachments or information, is a perfect opportunity to also push your business and services. It will also give your registrants who may have missed the session an opportunity to ask questions that weren’t covered on the day.