So many webinars, How do I make mine stand out?

Just when you thought the pandemic is creating a severe sense of trauma for you, enters ‘WEBINARS’. 

Well, not exactly as much the trauma but an overdose of them is seriously making us lose our minds much like the Zoom call screenshots, cooking pictures, Dalgona coffee images, or the ‘I know it all’ posts on LinkedIn. With so much at stake, I can vouch for one thing, that WEBINARS are still not that bad. We are raising our hands to strike a better world with only remote sessions left as our options now and 70% of them are making good use of it as well. But then:

Why do people cringe on webinars?

While scrolling on LinkedIn, Instagram, Slack channels, Facebook groups, or Twitter, I was exposed to multiple webinars happening in and around writing or tech. I was intrigued. I registered and attended the top three of them owing to the fields that were relatively close but still out of my niche. But, to my utter amazement, all the three webinars turned out to be either super-boring or super-out-of-context. 

I am pretty sure when people say webinars! The whole cloud of ‘Great Insights’, ‘Exposure to tools and Resources’, ‘Handling Analytics’, ‘Marketing Strategies’, ‘Gaining Clients’ and so gathers us. But the cloud burst happens pretty soon when:

• Your deliverable to tagline ratio is pretty ordinary
• Your sessions weren’t pre-planned and conducted in a haste
• No organization of Q and A segments
• Sheer disregard toward one’s time 
• And, no closure benefits as such before ending it. 

Now, when I say such points, then I assure, the same have been confided in me by no external meters but experience. 

Then how do you suggest our webinars should shine out of all?

Understand one thing: WHAT ARE PEOPLE EXPECTING OUT OF YOU? (If at all they are)

Your audience is your biggest motivator and your biggest critic. Imagine it in this way, if I am putting up cooking videos online on ‘HOW TO BAKE A CAKE’. I should consider and acknowledge that catering to both ‘with eggs’ and ‘eggless’ is super-important. Also, the option of providing subtitles because not everyone watching the video really listens to it or knows your language. With such small strategies on point, you win over the people. Try it for everything you do in Webinars as well. 

Let’s start by juggling through a few ‘MUST TO CONSIDER’ points:

BEFORE WEBINAR

• Mode of Webinar: With extensive research and platform-breeding, you may realize that Zoom is not the only option to conduct webinars lately. Create and market your events through Meetup, Eventbrite, LinkedIn events, or Facebook events, We have many like Airmeet, Hangouts, Crowdcast, and live streaming tools like Restream which allows streaming the event live on Youtube, Facebook, or Twitch. 
• Time of posting: As debatable as this part is, I have realised it 2–3 times by experience that people remember an event and feel the excitement when the upcoming event is not too far. Post the event within a week of its happening and see wonders happening in your attendees’ numbers! I conducted an online “Writing Event” recently and posted about it 3 days in advance. I had around 108 registrations and 67 out of them attended! 
• Create FOMO: This millennial generation comprises not all of us but most of us and we all have this major FOMO feeling every time we see someone else having all that we are missing on! CREATE THAT. Create posters in advance with taglines like ‘COMING SOON’, ‘ONCE IN A PANDEMIC OPPORTUNITY’, or anything that draws quick attention. Make them feel what were they missing before your webinar ever happened! For my event, I configured the event around my story as to how I missed all these opportunities when I started, you should not. The flabbergasted audience joined it! 
• Send out mailers: When people register, on the day of the webinar, send them personalised mailers asking them to be e-present. Such mailers have always caused great leaps of faith and have instilled a bond to attend. 

DURING WEBINAR

• A Welcome Call: E-meet and greet everyone and by everyone, I mean as people keep joining, call out their names when they put up their questions and assimilate humor-filled intros too.
• Value Time: I remember opting out of webinars for them to be apathetic toward valuing their audience’s time. First, if the webinar isn’t interesting and second, if it goes on and on for more than an hour, you are in a serious pit of seeing no people ever in your next webinars. BE assiduous enough by catering to your audience’s needs.
• Talk more numbers/tools/resources/strategies: People hardly like philosophical chit-chats in webinars! They are more concerned about if ‘Hemingway’ is a good text editor or ‘Pro-Writing Aid’. The tools to get free images, the resources to follow, the communities to be a part of, and so on. Talk in RELEVANT terms and use terms, to be precise.
• Little Details: Not just welcoming but keep a track of the questions being asked, make sure the recording is on, the attendees are allowed to enter
• (as per new zoom updates), everyone is on mute, the audibility ratios are good, and that attendees are interacting via chat with each other (again a small detail that brings them back to the next sessions).

AFTER WEBINAR

• Send Feedback mailers with a CTA as your site URL: Highly advisable to create a webpage!! When the webinar is done, you should again send out mailers asking for feedback and pointers that should be deciphered the next time. Always make the attendees your Godfather to ensure their next visit. Bring traction to your site with such CTAs. 
• Track the mailing list: When you are more than one webinar old, track the number of attendees ‘Who attended for the first time’, ‘Who revisited it’, ‘Who sent the feedback’, ‘Who talked about your webinar on social media’, and the members who asked questions. Such insights deliver major numbers at considering. 

Also, as the last tip, if you are the host, join the webinar 20 mins in advance to test everything and if Zoom is your platform, buy the premium one to avoid the meeting getting ended in 40 mins. 

Such tips are not only highly advisable but also measure the right intent with the audience.

Because the intent is equally important with the content!