I may dislike the word “webinar” but there’s no denying that they are all the craze now. It’s easy to see why.
- Webinars can bring people together like never before. Your audience is in Manila but your speaker is in Cebu? No sweat! Working from home but need to do voter education for a general public stuck at home in quarantine? Kayang-kaya!
- Webinars are easy for the intended audience to attend. No physical travel required, right? And – let’s be honest – no need to dress for the occasion; and
- Webinars enable the audience to directly interact with the speaker, giving them unprecedented access to YOU – the subject matter expert they’ve all heard about!
So yeah, webinars are a big hit. But they can be challenging to get right. So here are 5 Tips to make your next webinar a smashing success.
- Do your homework – before anything else, make sure you understand your intended audience. What do they need to hear from you? Are they facing some sort of challenge that you can help them with? When you know your audience, you can tailor your webinar to be responsive to their needs. REMEMBER: No one has ever appreciated a rambling speaker who goes on and on about everything, rather than sticking to the point – no one did before and no one does now. SO don’t be that guy!
- Don’t be a bore – Every presenter falls into the trap of getting lost in the bullet points. Don’t. When you forget that you’re actually having a conversation with the audience, that’s when you lose the audience. REMEMBER: Take the effort to make your presentation interesting to the audience. Draw examples from familiar experiences; the more practical and relatable your discussion is, the more useful your talk becomes, and the better engaged your audience will be.
- Keep things visual – In face-to-face presentations, I normally use slides only as guideposts. My talking does the heavy lifting. Which is why for in-person presentations, my deck is full of slides that only have pictures or just a single line of text. In person, I want my audience listening, rather than squinting at distant slides and trying to read them. In a webinar, things are different. Your slides are right there in front of every single individual in the audience. This makes each individual slide a powerful information delivery system that you need to make maximum use of. Make the slide visually appealing, but don’t just put pictures in there either; put in a little bit more text as well, and not just slide titles or single lines of text. REMEMBER: Your slides can be screen-capped by the audience, so take advantage of that reality by putting useful information in each slide.
- Interactivity is key – One of the biggest challenges of webinars is that the audience is literally free to do anything while you’re talking, so make sure that you work interactivity into your presentation so that their attention doesn’t wander off. Unmute their mics for a bit and ask them for their opinion, for example. REMEMBER: Make sure that the interactivity is relevant to the presentation. And if you’re letting the audience speak up during your presentation, make sure you’re in complete control and don’t allow too much digression from the topic at hand. Otherwise, you might just end up killing your momentum.
- Be a storyteller – One presentation strategy that has transitioned well from in-person seminars to webinars is storytelling. You are a speaker not just because you have a unique grasp of the subject matter, but also because you are experienced in your field. Experience means you’ve got lots of stories to tell. Tell them! But tell them in a way that they illustrate points you’re trying to make, and concepts you’re trying to make your audience fully grasp. REMEMBER: You know you’re subject matter because for you, it is a real part of your life. Most people in your audience will probably not dedicate their lives to the subject matter the way you have, but you can give them a taste of what it’s been like for you. And that’s guaranteed to hook them and keep their attention.
And there you have it. Five tips on how to make your next webinar a success. Good luck and tell me which ones worked best for you!
