20 Tips for Producing Way Better Webinars

20 Tips for Producing Way Better Webinars

Reader Comments (13)

  1. I’ve followed almost all of that advice and gremlins still ruined my webinar. But that’s part of the thrill right? It’s a live event and anything can happen.

    My advice to everyone reading this – expect glitches and push on anyway!

  2. Hi Beth,

    I love doing webinars so much. If only I had reliable high speed internet access. Traveling all over the world, from some off the grid places – yeah I know people feel bad for me – I rarely gain access to a strong enough signal for webinars.

    When I do, I am happy to run them. So much fun. But for now, no dice.

    Your tips are dead on, particularly the test webinar piece of advice. I ran into serious issues during 1 or 2 presentations which could have been remedied by a quick test of my presentation. Live and learn.

    As for the other tips, on the money. Check your bandwidth requirements beforehand and if you are not up to snuff, try to go where you can access a reliable high speed connection. If not, ditch webinars because you will likely be wasting everybody’s time.

    Thanks for the great share Beth.

    Ryan

  3. Great tips!

    My pet peeve with webinars are the false promises.

    First, the landing pages hook me.

    Second, I attend webinars and they turn out to be sales pitches. There’s nothing wrong with selling your product/service via webinars, most do. But please provide valuable information that is related to your product/service — make people want to buy what you’re selling.

    Finally, I’m choosy about webinars. Most importantly, when I start using them, I’ll provide valuable information and be transparent. I don’t want to waste people’s time.

  4. I saw the headline today and said “Oh No!” You see, I hate webinars with a burning passion.

    Why? Well that’s easy, I had an employer in China that forced everyone to come in 4 hours early most Thursdays (our Monday) for a one hour webinar. These would be conducted from the head offices in Shanghai and they went out to our region, which encompassed Russia, China, and Indonesia.

    The problem was they were rubbish. All of the things you talked about (sound issues, static, stalling) were evident most weeks. And the content was about as interesting as watching paint dry. Every week it was just a PPT that everyone could have gone over at their desk in 10 minutes.

    Really it was just a failure of management, mainly in that they allowed it to go on so long. A warning to everyone: It only takes one bad webinar to sour people on them, and you, for some time to come.

    • Greg, this fact (and it is a fact) that the word “Webinar” can be equated with “BORING” or “a good time to catch-up on email” is actually an unfair advantage for all of us.

      Are we using it?

      On average, most Webinars keep 40% of their listeners attention from start-to-finish. My Webinars keep 94% of attendees to the end.

      Plus, my best Webinar had a 29% close rate.

      Generally, here are my ‘rules’ when producing/hosting Webinars:

      1) Go beyond relevant: Make the title irresistible.
      (should sound familiar to Copyblogger readers)

      Your topic should be goal-oriented—specific to a pain, fear, goal or ambition of your customer. More importantly, your title must promise complete satisfaction in a way that customers cannot resist acting on (signing-up AND showing-up).

      2) Skip the introduction.

      Kill it. Shock your audience into paying attention. At most, give a passionate 30-60 second summary on why you are bothering to invest YOUR time. After all, you’re talking into the air at them, alone in a room. You must be on a mission. This is where you connect with the audience. This is where you set the tone: “This ain’t gonna be your usual Webinar.”

      3) Promise viewers something NEW.

      Literally say to them, “I know you don’t have time to waste, so I’m not going to waste it. Most likely, what I’m about to tell you about ______ (insert audience’s goal or pain) will be new to you … you’ve probably not heard this before.”

      Then, meet that expectation & create hunger for more of what you’ve got.

      I get huge results with these kinds of techniques. Hope they help.

      Cheers!
      Jeff

  5. It’s SO true that something almost always goes wrong with a webinar. I remember being signed up for a TED webinar and they had a huge problem. So, it happens to everyone. Be as prepared as you can be and I like the idea of having someone there to help you out. Just like with a live seminar, you need the extra help.

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