In 2020, conferences and events took place virtually, attracting webinars from brands around the world.
In addition to allowing marketers to educate their audience on topics related to their brand, the webinar is a Benefits of Lead Generation.
However, while many successful marketers make it easy to create webinars, in reality, there is a tremendous amount of work involved in planning a webinar to ensure solid engagement.
Getting started with a webinar requires other aspects of inbound communication, from stakeholder engagement and webinar, planning to blog and social media promotion, developing world topics. real and focus on the event.
At this point, you may be wondering if there are any checklists that can help you plan your webinar.
Well, look no further. Below, we’ve outlined 12 tactics you should focus on to make sure you and your team are ready for a high-quality and successful webinar.
How To Prepare For An Engaging Webinar
1. Engage With Your Audience Through Promotions Before The Webinar
If your audience isn’t familiar with the webinar or isn’t excited about the topic, don’t sign up.
Think of other creative ways to tweet about an event, write a blog post to promote it, and share it online. To engage attendees, even before the event, promotional messages such as social posts, 2d animation explainer or emails can ask people to submit questions or comments in advance.
Additionally, if any of your webinars have some kind of giveaway or special features, distribute that information to further differentiate your webinars from similar events hosted by competitors.
For example, we distributed tickets for INBOUND, an inbound marketing conference, to someone who tweeted the webinar hashtag before, during, or after the webinar. This allowed the public to participate in the promotion, in addition to other marketing activities.
For more information on promoting webinars and other virtual events, check out our HubSpot expert advice.
2. Pull Out The Sliding Table
If you want your audience to stay engaged for 30 minutes to an hour, you need to deliver something that looks good. So make your slide attractive.
Create slides with lots of images related to the topic you are discussing. You can use the Copy in Slides function. Don’t just write black and white paragraphs on your slides. Instead, make sure a copy is added to the presentation. Stick to one color scheme across your entire webinar platform and don’t get too busy.
3. Tag Your Webinar With Hashtags
As mentioned in the first section, you can consider using hashtags through a webinar marketing process specific to your virtual event. Using lesser-known hashtags or creating new ones will help ensure that all tweets containing the hashtag are from webinars.
For example, I used #TwitterQA in my last webinar which included Q&A with Twitter executives. In a scenario like this, we use webinar hashtags before webinars to build a community of people with something in common. During the webinar, we use hashtags to engage with the audience, answer technical questions, and collect questions for the Q&A portion.
Finally, at the end of the webinar, we use hashtags to track unanswered questions and send additional information.
4. Find One or More Thought Leaders or Experts To Present
There is nothing worse than monotonous speakers that half-lull your audience to sleep in a webinar. Choose a personal, energetic, and expert webinar host on the topic you want to discuss.
Also, if you have more than one speaker, make the webinar one discussion instead of two different monologues by playing both.
If you have access to industry experts or thought leaders with more followers on a platform like LinkedIn, you should also consider including them in your webinar.
Bringing in an expert can make your event more interesting to your audience and even attract an audience that follows what the expert is working on. You can add these people to your online co-marketing strategy before, during and after the event.
5. Meet All The Speakers In Advance
For a smoother webinar, we recommend that you set up a quick meeting where you and the other webinar panellists can explore the webinar topics and get to know each other.
Juliana Nicholson, HubSpot Program Manager, who has participated in several webinars, including the Adapt series, strongly encourages this gathering before the event begins.
Juliana Nicholson, HubSpot Program Manager, says, “Let’s make sure the first organizers and panellists meeting is not the day of your webinar.” “Set a certain time before the event so that the organizers and speakers can get to know each other and see the details of the day.”
“Everything from pronouncing a person’s name to knowing who should call first for each question will feel a lot easier if you practice it ahead of time,” says Nicholson, who recently planned the content. of the webinar for the Adapt 2020 series.
6. Use The Handles Of Presenters And Social Media In Promotions
You want to allow your audience to engage with the presenter even while the webinar is going on for you and your organization, so be sure to mention the promotion that Twitter is running. Throughout the webinar presentation.
Not only will you personally impress your webinar, but also think about every new subscriber you can get!
7. There Is At Least One Host or Moderator
Having more than one presenter involved in a webinar can bring the conversation to life, but if no one is assigned to moderate the discussion, that conversation may not go very quickly.
Put simply, webinar hosts can help you organize your presentation. This person introduces the speaker, asks questions that appear during a webinar or Q&A, and ends the event. When a problem arises, that person can easily resolve the issue without the speaker leaving the topic.
8. Use Different Types Of Media In Webinars
To keep your audience engaged during the event, you should consider using different types of media for your webinars.
Do you have a short video or 2d animation explainer to help show your point of view? Will sharing the screen temporarily help me earn points? Will the downloadable checklist help your audience lead the discussion? Consider ways to supplement your webinar with other forms of media during or after your webinar.
Recently we hosted a webinar with Guy Kawasaki who is 100% screen-sharing. The guy even walked me through my daily social media activities to take screenshots and post them on Twitter! Talk about interactive webinars.
9. Consider Other Public Engagement Strategies
As the webinar platform expands its capabilities every day, you can engage your audience in more ways than ever before. For example, on many platforms, during webinars, the public can comment on questions, vote on votes or take quizzes.
As a webinar moderator or host, be creative and think about how to use these elements so that your audience doesn’t feel like they’re passively listening instead of engaging in the speaker.
10. Perform A Thorough Audio And Video Check
Even today, the software faces technical problems. Test your webinar platform in advance to do your best to avoid it in real-time while on air.
For example, even if you don’t recognize it, you can’t hear sound from your computer very well or your headphones make it difficult for people to hear the sound on the screen. That’s why you should do at least one soundcheck before making an announcement.
Likewise, you should also choose a well-lit work area.
You should also resolve any unexpected technical errors. For example, if you want to share your screen or change controls, use a pre-webinar player that your speakers can practice before you start live.
Ultimately, it’s best not to waste time or wasted guest speakers always knowing where errors might arise before the actual webinar.
11. Host Your Webinar In A Quiet, Uncluttered Workspace
Don’t underestimate the importance of the physical location of the webinar. I sit next to the sales team on the phone all day. If I try to host a webinar at my office, the audience will hardly hear me! So I need to find a quiet (more soundproof) room elsewhere in the office.
If several people are talking in the same room, use a high-quality speaker. To avoid technical problems, avoid using wireless internet as much as possible and test everything in advance.
Complete Webinar Planning
Yes, planning a webinar takes a long time, but it could be worth it. When planning, keep in mind that most of the tips on this list are aimed at increasing audience engagement.
An informative webinar is a great start, but sharing a basic conference with attendees can be difficult. Your audience will continue to register for webinars as they listen more actively, enjoy the content more, and feel engaged throughout the event.
