Webinar 101
The world of online meeting solutions can be confusing at times, we’re the first to admit that. With many different options, how do you know which ones right for you? To help answer that and alleviate some of your mental strain, we’ve put together these 101s, this one focusing specifically on webinars and all you need to know.
What is a webinar?
It’s a large-scale online event essentially. Think of it as a big conference but everyone is tuning in from the comfort of their own home, their office, wherever they happen to have their laptop or phone. The difference between a webinar and other online meetings is you as a presenter have full control. Your audience are still able to interact with your event via Q&As, surveys and polls but they won’t be able talk over or interrupt you. This makes them brilliant tools for hosting large scale events, company wide meetings or lead generation (more on this later).
How to hold a webinar?
This is the part that deters some people, when you first hear about a piece of meeting software that lets you present to 100s, even 1000s, it can sound slightly daunting. What people don’t often know (and we’re here to educate on) is that they’re surprisingly simple to set-up and run. If your nerves are heightened by the thought that this all must be done live, then you can relax. You can create the illusion that it’s live by pre-recording your event, this allows you to practice until you feel it’s just right. Alternatively, you might want to present live, the point is you have options.
With our webinar tool we guide you every step of the way, with numerous how-to videos and guides, meaning you can set up events in minutes.
When to hold an online event
There are several reasons, we’ll touch on what we think they’re most useful for.
- What do you need to grow as a business? That’s right customers. An effective and affordable way to generate high quality leads is by using webinars. You can create custom registration forms, which can be made mandatory to attend the event. You choose what information is most valuable and what you’d like to gather from them, so you’re in the best position to follow up afterwards. With many of us now working remotely and unable to attend large scale conferences, you can use it as an opportunity to reach even wider audiences!
- Training and developing your employees. Educating new employees on your company values, procedures etc can be a time-consuming task. The same can be said for developing your workers skill sets. With features built into the product dedicated to training such as exams and certificates you can tailor make courses, saving time and resources that can be better spent elsewhere.
- Sharing unique insights with your audience. If used properly they can be fantastic for building company reputability and authority. You can provide expertise, without asking for much in return. If you’re an expert in content marketing, social media, life guru, computer programming, whatever it may be, the platform can be used to educate efficiently and on a much larger scale. This in turn builds trust with you being recognised as an expert in that field and are more likely to make a purchase.
Creating engaging content
There is a notion that webinars are outdated, obviously we’re going to argue against that, but it’s simply not true. Like anything, if you dedicate time to produce something of quality then people are going to pay attention. The same goes for online events, the whole idea of it being an outdated platform spawns from people using the platform in the same monotonous way. Don’t just upload a PowerPoint and expect to generate 1000s of leads. Make the most of the platform to showcase engaging content, use multimedia, polls, surveys and Q&As to create the best possible experience for your audience. Sounds like a huge challenge but with some planning and thought put behind it, you’ll be surprised with what can be done.
On that rather encouraging note, we’ll leave it up to you to explore what online webinars can do for you.
Dazzle colleagues and clients with a large-scale interactive webinar.