5 Secrets of the Best Webinars
There seems to be a webinar for everything — from cooking an apple pie and setting up your email list to creating a company and making your first million. This form of interaction with the target audience became popular for a good reason. It allows to achieve numerous goals:
- Selling products
- Attracting new audience
- Improving engagement
- Building and improving brand awareness
- Creating an image of an expert for yourself or your company
- Distributing content
And that’s we’ve just scratched the surface. Every person who creates a webinar has their own unique goals in mind. This wide array of benefits is what makes webinars such a great way to promote your brand.
However, there is one issue with them — they’re popular. Ironic, we know. But this popularity makes it hard for new webinars to actually attract the audience because people are already bored of them. That’s why we need to create a truly outstanding webinar to make it stand out, gain the interest of the audience, and be a success everyone will be talking about for a while. Here is how to do it.
Start with the topic
While it seems like an obvious thing — to have a great topic for a webinar — many lecturers miss the whole point of creating one. What might seem like an amazing thing to talk about for you can be hard to understand or useless for your listeners. Topics that don’t get attention from the public are born because the lecturer didn’t think of their audience’s interests hard enough.
So before picking a matter to talk about, determine your target audience. What are its interests, what does it want and need to know? Do your best to put yourself in the shoes of your future listeners and understand what they want to hear during the perfect webinar. This will help you to figure out the best topic your audience will find valuable.
Also, make sure that the topic isn’t too complicated if it’s your first webinar. Start with basics and slowly raise the difficulty of your lectures. This will help you to attract both beginners and advanced specialists gradually thus improving your image and positioning you as a true expert in your field.
Tip: you can test topics in your blog if you have one. Or on some kind of platform such as Medium. It will help you understand if the matter is really interesting to the target audience. Also, you can promote your future webinar in such an article.
Finally, remember about keywords, especially if you plan to keep your webinar uploaded somewhere online for people to watch and rewatch it after the actual stream. By including relevant keywords in the title and the description of your webinar you will increase the chances that users will find your webinar through the search.
Figure out the best date and time
The best day and time for your webinar really depends on your target audience. While some experts say that it’s best to host a lecture on Tuesday through Thursday, and others say that Monday through Friday is fine, too, some listeners might find weekends the best time for a webinar. So before selecting a date, think of your target audience — when they would be able to make time for your lecture? The best solution would be to ask your future listeners when they want to attend your webinar if you have such an opportunity, of course.
Things get especially tricky when your audience is spread around the globe. If you understand that some of your listeners live in a drastically different time zone from other listeners, you should consider holding two streams for these groups.
Another thing you should consider is holidays in different countries — you wouldn’t want to have a webinar when a large part of your audience is busy having a vacation or celebrating.
Invest time in your presentation
Your slides are just as important as whatever you’re telling your audience. Many lecturers treat presentations as just some visual entertainment for their listeners — why pack slides with information if you already tell it verbally? But that’s a false thought. Think of this — your visual presentation can later become a valuable piece of information both for those who attended your webinar and those who just found slides later. Why would you want to lose an opportunity to keep attracting attention to your work even after your stream? Moreover, an informative presentation you send to your attendees after the webinar is another way to show your audience that you care.
So take your time and put enough work into your presentation — it will be worth the effort. If you aren’t sure about your design skills, it will be a good idea to get a designer. The slides should both be informative and look appealing.
Actually, talk about the matter
We all know these webinars that seem to have the sole purpose of promoting some product of a lecturer. And they’re extremely annoying. People listen to a person bragging about their product for an hour and get little to no information from the lecture. That’s something you don’t want to do if you really want to create a useful and popular webinar.
Build your material with useful information and be generous when sharing your knowledge. The bad example would be to start telling about some matter and then say, “I’ve told about it in my book in chapter four — you can read all the info there.” Don’t be greedy — tell your audience at least half of the information, and then follow it with encouraging listeners to get your book if they want to know even more.
Answer questions
Don’t end a webinar once you’re finished with your material. Ask the audience if they have any questions and give as detailed answers as possible. Of course, you should remember about time, too. So it would be a good idea to dedicate, for example, an hour to the lecture itself and then another 30 minutes — to the questions.
Creating and holding a truly outstanding webinar is not an easy task. Yet, if you succeed, you will benefit a lot from your work. Use our tips, and you’ll definitely host a useful and engaging lecture.
