What Is A Webinar?
A webinar is currently the most essential piece of artillery in the warfare of content marketing. Or if you like to think of it as a game of chess – it may be considered as an all-powerful piece on the board that has got all the right moves. You just need to use it strategically. And to do so, you need to have a better understanding of this term.
Going by the Oxford Dictionary, a webinar is simply “a seminar conducted online”. However, by the way of explanation it can also be defined as an online event where a speaker or group of speakers give a presentation to the audience and engage via polls, surveys, questions etc.
People new to the game of webinars often confuse it with online meetings. But, it is not the same. In an online meeting platform, a small group comes together to discuss and collaborate on projects real-time. Thus, not requiring many features. On the other hand, webinar events are arranged mostly for training, learning and skilling purposes with the average audience size ranging from 50-5000.
What Is The Main Purpose Of Webinar?
Webinars have numerous benefits that can persuade any brand into giving their best whilst conducting a successful webinar. We only list here a few out of those.
- A new webinar means inviting a whole new database of people interested in your content, and indirectly in your brand.
- These webinars are the perfect way of establishing yourself as an industry expert. Your target audience will see you as a reliable information source that can take up their doubts and give right answers.
- The people who register for the webinar are your qualified leads. After the event, you can concentrate your efforts completely on converting them into a client/customer.
- The recordings of your all webinars help you back your expertise.
- Through them, you get to set your brand voice, raise brand awareness and explore new branding opportunities with them.
- Such webinars are also a great way to onboard new hires, a face-to-face interaction without having to travel miles.
How Does A Webinar Work ?
A webinar works only if it has been thoroughly worked upon. The three human roles essential in making a webinar as engaging as possible are – at least one presenter, organizer and attendees. The presenter delivers the content, whereas the organizer works behind-the-scenes to regulate the flow of the event.
For your advantage, we have given here a checklist of six tasks you need to complete before proceeding with the webinar.
- Set objective – Understand the objectives you want to accomplish out of the aforementioned webinar. It helps you outline your plan more effectively too and measure the event’s success in quantifiable terms.
- Keep the audience in mind – Choose the subject of your webinar according to the pain points of your primary audience. Think hard on which topic resonates most with them.
- Schedule it – Find out the best time to hold your webinar. 11 am to 2 pm is said to be the most optimal time for this purpose.
- Promote it – Create the needed buzz for the event. Use personal network, email and social media to talk about it.
- Make a presentation – Prepare the bite-sized learning content for your audience to consume. Best, do not keep it text-heavy.
- Rehearse – Test technical setup and your content delivery beforehand.
How Do I Choose A Webinar Platform?
In the middle of all the above-mentioned points, you would also need to zero on an all-in-one webinar interface that will enable you to broadcast, engage and network seamlessly throughout the time span of your event. The selection of the right platform would not just produce the most effective results for your webinar but also give the attendees the best event experience possible. A feature-rich intuitive webinar platform would help them get the full picture more clearly. Both literally and figuratively, as the platforms today come with a zero-delay HD LIVE stream broadcast.
Make sure to go through the entire list of its features. A platform with the option of –
- unlimited hosts and parallel session with almost 1 million attendees,
- event customizing options, advanced analytics,
- more interactive tools,
- integrated registration & ticketing,
- zero-delay HD live stream broadcast, and
- no need to download the software that will help you achieve increased participation and engagement with your audience.
With the ease of features in the selected webinar software, you would also be able to fully focus on generating awareness, making sales and building rapport rather than killing time in the operational aspects of the event.
And, at last a few tips…
Try to keep your webinar precise and concise. Always keep its duration under an hour and make sure all your equipment (like a camera and microphone) are of high-quality and in the right working condition.
Lastly, do not forget to engage with your audience as much as possible. After all, it is for their advantage that you are conducting the webinar.