Avoid the Crash & Burn – 10 Things To Consider When Conducting Webinars

Webinars are a powerful communication tools that allows you to deliver a content-rich presentations to viewers within your organization and over the internet. As quickly as a well-produced webinar can have high positive impact and poorly done webinar can have the equal negative effect. Here are some quick tips to help avoid some of the most common pitfalls when planning, producing, and presenting a webinar. Have other good tips? Drop them in the comments section at the end of the post.

1. Size Matters – Your presentation will be the focal point. Use large readable fonts.
2. Less is More – You want people to focus on what you are saying and reading is distracting. Make slides that strongly reinforce your message in just a few words (graphics are even better).
3. Change is Good – We have all heard of death by PowerPoint, but you don’t want your viewers staring at the same slide for too long. Build a presentation that you can change frequently while you are talking. The visual change will keep your audience more attentive.
4. Questions Anyone? – Stop frequently to allow for questions or comments. Not only does this give your audience a chance to ask questions, but this also give you a chance to catch your breath and thoughts.
5. Give it Away – If you are referring to documents or other reference material in your presentation make sure to have a copy available for viewers to download (this could be the presentation itself). This lets people refer back to sections and also provides them with a high-quality version of the presentation.
6. Timing is Everything – If you are targeting an audience that is in a specific time zone than schedule your webinar that is at a convenient time for them. If you are going to speaking to a global audience let them know in the invitation that you will be recording and it will be available on-demand. Then send them a follow-up with the on-demand details.
7. Practice Makes Perfect – A lot of people are intimated by talking to themselves, but do a dry run of your presentation. Get someone to be in the room with you if that helps. This will help you find an bugs in presentation, allow you to adjust timing, and make it seem more natural when you do the actual webinar.
8. Short and Sweet -  Your presentation should be 30 minutes or less. Anything longer and people are going to miss the message. If you need more time consider breaking up the presentation into several smaller webinars. This is also a great way to keep an audience coming back for more.
9. Lights, Camera, Action – Make sure that you have good lighting, quality audio, and a decent camera. The quality of your audio and video speaks volumes to the quality of your presentation, the quality of your message, and the quality of your company or organization. You don’t have to break the bank to get good quality.
10. Hearing Your Body Language – Confidence is key and you need to be energetic and engaging, especially if you are doing a webinar without callers on a bridge. Some people use a mirror so that they can see how they are presenting. Another option is to have someone else with you and make the webinar a more conversational format. This takes some of the pressure off of you and makes it even more interesting for the viewers.

The webinar platform that you choose can also have an impact on the quality of your presentation and your ability to reach a large audience.  Take a look at VBrick’s Rich Media Studio for producing high-impact presentations, the VBrick Enterprise Media Systems for delivery that presentation within your organization, and the VBrick Online Streaming Service to reach a global audience outside of your network.