Tips to Make Your Webinar More Engaging
Before starting the topic, just a reminder, ‘wear a mask and stay home to stay safe. Wash your hands regularly and drink plenty of water.’
A few months ago, we all were having a normal life where we were allowed to wander placed and make contact with others. Then in February, we got hit by the pandemic. So now, we are in our houses, doing most of our stuff from home. Going digital was easy for some of the industries while some are still struggling.
Yesterday, I saw my niece attending a webinar. This made me wonder how these presenters are struggling in making a good webinar? When a webinar is not good enough, the audience will lose interest in the topic.
When these seminars were used to happen in the real world, there were fewer distractions. But now, as these are happening virtually, we got a lot of distractions around us.
So what are the tips then? How can one make his/ her presentation or webinar even better? So let’s dive in.
Keep Your Audiences Busy:
When your audience is sitting still, there are chances that they will get distracted with their surroundings. To minimize these chances of distraction, you need to keep them busy from the start.
An engaged audience grabs more information that a neutral one. First, you need to analyze your content. As you analyze it, you will find places where you can add some interactive segments. These interactive segments will help you increase engagement with your audience.
Video conferencing software like WAVE allows you to create breakout rooms for audiences in a webinar. This way, they can make discussions without interrupting the webinar.
Also Read:- 7 Different Ways to Give a Best Virtual Presentation
Humans Are Made to Get Bored Quickly:
Whether you are in a real seminar or a webinar, humans are made to get bored after a time and you will too. What you can do to prevent it is to use polls to get into the heads of your audience.
We can call it icebreaker polls. These polls will fill the communication gap. The gap is usually not visible, but you can feel it while making interaction. Breaking this wall between you and your audience will help you know where you need to steer the event.
Not just polls, you can also try ‘giveaways’, random chat with a participant, or bringing a special guest in a webinar. These spontaneous acts will keep their brains at alert, and the mind that is awake grabs more information.
Be Flexible With Time:
If you measure the attention of a participant in a webinar over a span of time, you will find that it falls drastically in the first 15 minutes. After 40 minutes of the webinar, you will see that participants are showing interest again. So what can you do in this situation? You want to deliver the whole content, but it will make the webinar long. If the webinar is long, you will lose the interest of your audiences. So make the webinar short? A short webinar means not delivering the whole content. If the whole content is not delivered then what is the purpose of making one.
The solution is, press the reset button. The human mind gets attracted to new changes. So, what you need to do is grab the attention of participants by introducing some changes every seven or ten minutes. If you keep up with this flow, the chart will change to this:
Learn More About Your Audiences:
In business, if you don’t know what your customers need or want, then you can never make good sales or products. The same goes with a webinar. You can not make then interest in what they do not want to learn, even for free.
You can use polls, feedback forms, or other methods to know what your audience wants. What they have in mind? You can ask them about themselves to connect with them. You should make notes from all these.
So when you write new content, try to connect with your audience. This will help you grab their attention and other’s interest.
Some simple questions you can start asking them are:
- What was your purpose for joining this webinar?
- What were you expecting to learn here?
- What are your short term goals?
- How is your pandemic life going?
- How are you keeping yourself mentally and physically healthy in lockdown?
So these are the tips that will help your webinar shine more. If you think you have some more up in your sleeves, share with us in the comment section or write it to us. We will be happy to share it with others.
Before starting the topic, just a reminder, ‘wear a mask and stay home to stay safe. Wash your hands regularly and drink plenty of water.’
A few months ago, we all were having a normal life where we were allowed to wander placed and make contact with others. Then in February, we got hit by the pandemic. So now, we are in our houses, doing most of our stuff from home. Going digital was easy for some of the industries while some are still struggling.
Yesterday, I saw my niece attending a webinar. This made me wonder how these presenters are struggling in making a good webinar? When a webinar is not good enough, the audience will lose interest in the topic.
When these seminars were used to happen in the real world, there were fewer distractions. But now, as these are happening virtually, we got a lot of distractions around us.
So what are the tips then? How can one make his/ her presentation or webinar even better? So let’s dive in.
Keep Your Audiences Busy:
When your audience is sitting still, there are chances that they will get distracted with their surroundings. To minimize these chances of distraction, you need to keep them busy from the start.
An engaged audience grabs more information that a neutral one. First, you need to analyze your content. As you analyze it, you will find places where you can add some interactive segments. These interactive segments will help you increase engagement with your audience.
Video conferencing software like WAVE allows you to create breakout rooms for audiences in a webinar. This way, they can make discussions without interrupting the webinar.
Also Read:- 7 Different Ways to Give a Best Virtual Presentation
Humans Are Made to Get Bored Quickly:
Whether you are in a real seminar or a webinar, humans are made to get bored after a time and you will too. What you can do to prevent it is to use polls to get into the heads of your audience.
We can call it icebreaker polls. These polls will fill the communication gap. The gap is usually not visible, but you can feel it while making interaction. Breaking this wall between you and your audience will help you know where you need to steer the event.
Not just polls, you can also try ‘giveaways’, random chat with a participant, or bringing a special guest in a webinar. These spontaneous acts will keep their brains at alert, and the mind that is awake grabs more information.
Be Flexible With Time:
If you measure the attention of a participant in a webinar over a span of time, you will find that it falls drastically in the first 15 minutes. After 40 minutes of the webinar, you will see that participants are showing interest again. So what can you do in this situation? You want to deliver the whole content, but it will make the webinar long. If the webinar is long, you will lose the interest of your audiences. So make the webinar short? A short webinar means not delivering the whole content. If the whole content is not delivered then what is the purpose of making one.
The solution is, press the reset button. The human mind gets attracted to new changes. So, what you need to do is grab the attention of participants by introducing some changes every seven or ten minutes. If you keep up with this flow, the chart will change to this:
Learn More About Your Audiences:
In business, if you don’t know what your customers need or want, then you can never make good sales or products. The same goes with a webinar. You can not make then interest in what they do not want to learn, even for free.
You can use polls, feedback forms, or other methods to know what your audience wants. What they have in mind? You can ask them about themselves to connect with them. You should make notes from all these.
So when you write new content, try to connect with your audience. This will help you grab their attention and other’s interest.
Some simple questions you can start asking them are:
- What was your purpose for joining this webinar?
- What were you expecting to learn here?
- What are your short term goals?
- How is your pandemic life going?
- How are you keeping yourself mentally and physically healthy in lockdown?
So these are the tips that will help your webinar shine more. If you think you have some more up in your sleeves, share with us in the comment section or write it to us. We will be happy to share it with others.
