Webinars have been around for more than 15 years and they are still one of the strongest tools for experts to use in their business development and online education efforts. According to ON24’s 2019 Webinar Benchmarks Report, 95% of their respondents agreed that webinars are a key component of their marketing efforts. In GoToWebinar’s 2019 report, The Big Book of Webinar Stats, 95% of respondents said webinars improved marketing performance and learning retention.

The truth is, most webinars are still presented by marketing teams, and part of their know-how includes presentation skills. So if you’ve been tasked with providing webinars for business development or online education, odds are it’s something you only do a few times a year, and not necessarily a skill set you’ve had a chance to fully develop.

A webinar lets you showcase your wisdom and insight with a captive audience for an average of 45 minutes. It’s important to make the most of that time by building a connection in a virtual environment. And there are important skills to develop in order to turn a presentation into quality follow-up conversations, or to have a positive affect on customer success.

Create a Webinar Project Timeline

Wait, aren’t we talking about presentation skills? What does a project timeline have to do with presenting? Well, experts in every industry face the same challenge: a calendar overflowing with meetings, projects and schedule changes. A webinar event can easily slip through the cracks and suddenly you find yourself with a week to prepare content, slap a PowerPoint together, and *maybe* do a dry run. This does not bode well for a world-class webinar. Adequate time spent in creating valuable content and a polished presentation will have a positive affect on how a virtual audience reacts to the presentation and whether they are open to connecting after the event.

A well-executed webinar does require proper planning. A simple webinar project timeline will help determine the actual time that needs to be invested and keep you on target. Here’s what to consider in the timeline:

Start with the webinar date

If possible, choose a window of two months. Set the webinar date near the end of two months and then work backwards on the timeline.

Schedule a dry run

Set the dry run for a week prior to the live event and make sure it’s already on the calendar. This gives adequate time to make any adjustments and fine-tune your presentation. Record the dry run to get a sense of sound quality and flow. A USB headset is always best for virtual presentations.

Create the slide deck

Set the date for when the slide deck should be completed. It’s best to have it done by the dry run. Allow time for review from peers or if presentations need sign-off and editing from other departments like Marketing.

Develop the outline for the content

Determine when the outline of the presentation should be completed so that it can then be fully fleshed out into a slide deck. Note that creating a slide deck usually takes the most time!

Develop Educational Content

I truly believe that most experts are natural educators. But there are several best practices in creating content geared towards the learning styles of adults especially in a virtual environment. Things to keep in mind when developing your educational content:

• Start by taking a moment to describe your ideal audience. This helps to determine what is most important to a specific group and how to best impart that information: Do they prefer statistics and numbers? Are they more visual and creative? Have they already had exposure to the topic in some way? Are they executive or mid level in their role?
• Keep the presentation topic fairly high level or narrow it down to something specific. Simply put, avoid cramming a bunch of information into the presentation because all of it seems important. When the topic is kept simple, it’s easier for people to absorb and retain the information within 45 minutes. For more complex subjects, break them into a series of webinars.
• Determine 2-3 outcomes of the presentation: What change might the audience experience after participating? What skills or new learning will they be able to apply and how will they apply it? As the content gets developed, the 2-3 outcomes should be the guidepost in determining which points are important and relevant. Here is an example of descriptive outcomes:

Listen to examples of communicating with confidence.

Utilize the art of asking questions to elicit more from others.

Develop a script to help you give your best first impression.

• Finally, the most interesting webinars include case studies, client success stories, personal anecdotes, and how-to’s.

Create a Compelling Slide Deck

I do roughly 60 webinars every year. That includes my own webinars and those I consult on. One of the improvements I’d love to see is the quality of presentation decks. I get it, not everyone is a graphic designer, but the value of presenting a classy, well put together deck not only showcases professionalism, but it absolutely enhances the ability for participants to remember the information being presented. Here’s what to keep in mind when building an effective presentation deck:

• The aspect ratio of a PowerPoint deck should be widescreen, 16:9.
• Slides are meant to display jumping off points, imagery to complement ideas and elicit emotions, relevant data like graphs and charts, and guideposts around the topic. They are not meant to be read like a document. Place detailed information into a handout.
• Short, high-level phrases are easiest to remember. One phrase per slide is best. Yes, this creates a much bigger slide deck but the presentation should be kept moving.
• When using images, fill the whole slide with the image for greater impact.
• Consider nixing all bullet points! I have done this and my slides look so much cleaner and more modern now.
• Remember to be inclusive. When using visuals and stories, be sure to include images that reflect various races, genders, ages, cultures, abilities, etc. There are so many groups who have been wanting to be truly seen, represented, and heard since time began. Let’s all be mindful of that going forward.
• My favorite site to visit and ogle presentation decks for inspiration is SlideShare.
• Lastly, consider creating an infographic! Here’s a how-to from HubSpot on creating an infographic in PowerPoint. You can also find infographic templates on Canva.com. After saving the infographic as a PNG file, you can post it on social media as a follow-up to the webinar (see the one I created in Canva below).

Include Interaction In The Presentation

Anyone who reads my webinar best practices knows I’m all about creating interaction and engagement in my webinar events. I probably sound like a broken record, but it’s so important to connect with a virtual audience and build trust and connection, especially if there are plans to follow-up with participants. When building interaction into the presentation, consider the following:

• Read comments out loud from the audience and include the participant’s first name.
• Team up with a colleague to co-present and give a more conversational tone to your presentation.
• Present a problem, provide education around solutions, and include the audience in solving the problem.

For more ideas on creating interaction, here are 5 Creative Ideas To Improve Webinar Audience Engagement.

Ask Quality, Open-ended Questions

Most webinar events leave Q&A until the end and then there’s a round of “Any questions?” followed by a few minutes of dead air. In this scenario, it’s challenging to get engagement and there’s very little data to use when following up with prospects.

Allowing the audience to think about and respond to open-ended questions addresses how adults learn best. It helps them feel included, especially in a virtual environment. It can also spark interesting conversations. In addition, any comments provided by the audience, whether through the chat or Q&A function, will be captured in a report that can be used for follow-up conversations later.

A valuable habit to develop is to prepare quality, open-ended questions to pepper the presentation with. Here are some examples of changing yes/no questions to open-ended ones:

• Do you participate in regular networking? Change to: What is your definition of effective networking?
• Can you tell if a startup has the potential to be profitable? Change to: How do you know if a startup has the potential to be an enduring $1 Billion dollar company?
• Does your company offer anything for free to clients? Change to: What was the last thing your company offered clients for free?
• Did you find this webinar beneficial? Change to: What is the first thing you will change after having participated in this webinar?

In reading these examples, how might open-ended questions affect the types of responses you would get instead of yes/no ones?

Wrapping Up

When it comes to effective webinar presentation skills, my recommendations are focused on content design which includes understanding who your ideal audience is, developing educational content geared toward that group, and then including that audience in your presentation so that you build connection in a virtual environment.

Don’t be fooled by how much time it takes to put together a world-class webinar. A webinar project timeline ensures that you have given yourself enough time to develop content, create a professional slide deck, and run a practice session. Once you get the hang of this, it will be a valuable skill set you can easily repeat.

Here’s an infographic with the highlights from this article. Hover over the image to share it!

Here’s to your success!

~ Corena

Corena Bahr is a webinar expert, speaker, and trainer helping experts at corporations and global firms deliver world-class webinars for client outreach and customer success. She teaches experts how to create a human connection with a virtual audience, structure content for engagement, and how to use the “bells & whistles” of webinar platforms to drive business goals. Corena is also a LinkedIn Learning course author.

The most important thing to consider is the goal of your webinar. If you are providing educational webinars for business development, you are going to use polling differently than when you are delivering a webinar for customer success training. In this article, I will be comparing these two scenarios and giving examples for each one.

What are Webinar Polls?

Webinar polling is an engagement tool within a webinar event where the audience is asked to respond to a question in real time. Depending on the platform, you are also able to share the results with the audience if you choose, and the results are usually displayed graphically making it easy for you and your audience to respond to the results.

Can you poll participants in different ways? Of course! You can poll your participants before the webinar using the registration form, or by using the survey afterwards. You could even toss out a question during a webinar and ask your audience to respond through chat or Q&A. The difference however, is that when you use a polling feature, most webinar platforms include the data specific to polling in webinar reports.

Depending on the webinar provider, polling questions are created with three different answer types:

1. Single answer
2. Multiple choice
3. Fill-in

For the purposes of this article, I am referring to in-session polling using a poll function within the webinar platform. Here are some examples of what a polling feature looks like:

On24

GoToWebinar

Zoom

Why Develop Polling Questions for Webinars

Launching one or two polls during a webinar is probably one of the most effective ways to interact with and gather information on your audience. Because you have your audience’s immediate attention, you can get that data right away rather than relying on them to fill out a question before the webinar in a registration form or even in a survey after.

The benefits of polling are many. Here are some examples for two types of scenarios:

 Client outreach and business development

• Polling keeps participants engaged. Any time you launch a poll, participants must click somewhere on the webinar interface. This pulls them back into the webinar if they’ve been distracted elsewhere.
• Your participants are adults. It’s better for them to actively participate than to expect them to sit passively for an entire 45 minutes. Adults like to share their ideas, insights, experiences and opinions.
• When you capture poll responses, these are most likely included in the attendee reports from your webinar provider. Responses can be used as warm conversation openers when you follow-up with audience members. For example, let’s say you launched a poll on recent experiences related to retail banking. Based on an individual’s response captured in the report, you’re follow-up email might look like: “Thank you for attending our webinar. I’d love to meet with you for a brief call and hear more about the challenges you’ve experienced with retail banking.”

 Customer onboarding and success training

• Polling keeps your participants engaged but also helps you check for understanding. Think of it as a mini test after showcasing a set of procedures or teaching account setup. Because it’s in real time, you can easily see if your audience is “getting it” or if you need to review any steps.
• Use this function to get real time feedback on who your audience is during each session. You may have one session with more beginners and another with more advanced, or yet another with varying roles. What information about them will help you direct your content? This enables you to customize each webinar to that specific audience. Your webinar becomes more valuable as a result, and your customers will appreciate the time spent with you.
• Studies tell us that people need a short pause or activity every 15-20 minutes in order for information to be moved into short-term memory, otherwise the data gets overridden. It’s effective, then, to use polling as a means to pause and let the learning sink in. This supports your training efforts.

Examples of Webinar Polling Questions for Client Outreach and Business Development

For this scenario, you want to offer questions that are interesting to your audience, but also provide responses that help you customize content in real time and are helpful to you in follow-up conversations. Here are some examples:

•  Open your presentation with an interesting factoid.
  Example: According to the Institute of Legal Reform, which five states in the US rank as the most reasonable and fair?
• Learn about audience members’ roles or experience level to customize your content in real time (and use for follow-up).
  Example: How long have you been using front office billing software?
• Understand audience members’ particular scenario and how you can help them.
  Example: Where are you in the process of becoming GDPR compliant?

Examples of Webinar Polling Questions for Customer Onboarding and Success Training

For customer onboarding and success training, your poll questions should be geared towards learning and checking for understanding. Here are some examples:

•  Learn about participant job function to know which features are best to showcase.
  Example: What is your role in using XYZ software?
• Test participants after reviewing one or more case studies.
  Example: Based on evidence given in Case Study #2, would you dismiss this case? (Bonus: Ask participants to respond in the chat why or why not)
• Seek real time feedback on whether participants are able to follow steps correctly.
  Example: After setting up your billing codes, what is the next step?

Tips for Developing Your Own Poll Questions

Here are some final tips on creating your own poll questions:

•  Know your audience. Create a detailed description of your intended audience. What interests them? What is their typical experience level on the topic you’re presenting? Where are they in your onboarding process? What are you hoping to learn about your audience? What information about them would be helpful to you in prompting a follow-up conversation?
• Always make your poll questions relevant to your presentation. Do not launch a poll simply for the sake of creating variation.
• There is no hard and fast rule on how many polls to launch. As long as they are relevant, interesting and helpful, you can have 1-4 polls during a 1-hour webinar.
• Include a poll transition slide in your presentation as a cue to yourself and your audience that it’s polling time!

Launch a Poll Sample Script

Okay you’ve created a poll or two, now what? If you’re new to launching polls in a webinar, below is a sample script for managing them during your event.

I’m going to start our presentation by asking you a question.

>Launch the poll.<

>Read the question out loud to the audience. Wait 20-30 seconds for attendees to respond or until 65-75% of your audience has voted. You can talk a bit about the question so there is no dead air during the poll.<

I’m curious to know how you answer! This question comes up often in our practice and there are lots of creative solutions. I’m sure some of you have encountered this problem before and I’d like to learn later on in the presentation how some of you address this issue. Okay, most of you have responded, thank you!, now let’s take a look at your responses.

>Close the poll and show the poll results. Speak to the responses and relate the poll question and the responses to your presentation.<

Final Thoughts on Polling

Polling your audience is a valuable tool in any type of webinar. Not only does it add interest and include your audience, it can help you gather pertinent data to assist you with follow-up conversation openers. If you are providing customer onboarding training, polls can draw your participants back into the training by engaging them, and you can easily use them to check for understanding.

After your webinar, be sure to check out the reports offered by your webinar provider. There is most likely a report specifically geared towards audience engagement and poll responses. This enables you to easily get data on how each participant responded.

Lastly, remember to get clear on your audience so that you create poll questions that are relevant to them, and make sure the polls are relevant to your presentation topic.

Here’s to your success!

~ Corena

Corena Bahr is a webinar expert, speaker and trainer helping experts at corporations and global firms deliver world-class webinars for client outreach and customer onboarding. She teaches experts how to create a human connection with a virtual audience, structure content for engagement, and how to use the “bells & whistles” of webinar platforms to drive business goals. Corena is also a LinkedIn Learning course author and public speaker.

While a feature comparison chart is fine, it doesn’t really put the differences into context, especially when your intention is to deliver training. The point of this article, then, is to expand on the differences between each platform for online education.

Online Conference Versus Online Training

To start, in terms of overall feature set, there really is a difference in the level of interaction between the two platforms.

• GoToWebinar is like attending a conference where speakers engage with the audience in a one-to-many scenario. Interaction is essentially limited to polling and Q&A just like it would be at any large conference. If you want to deliver training using GoToWebinar, it’s conducive to presenting information in a more formal fashion, to large groups, and when you want to have formal guest speakers.
• GoToTraining is like attending a workshop. Participants join unmuted by default, just like when people trickle into a training room and everyone can hear each other. Participants can interact using chat, testing, polling, draw tools, pre-course work, and webcam. GoToTraining is conducive to teaching both small groups and larger groups where higher interaction is key to your learning outcomes.

Custom Registration

Both platforms offer custom registration forms, and registration is hosted within the applications themselves. Choose from a list of common registration questions or create a custom question or two to get to know your audience before the event (and even help you adjust your learning content accordingly). Then send out or post the registration link. You can also determine if attendees are automatically or manually approved upon registration. One major difference:

• GoToWebinar offers a Source Tracking feature. Let’s say you offer public customer onboarding training and you provide the registration links through multiple outlets or third parties, Source Tracking enables you to create unique registration links to help you track campaign efforts.

Speaker Roles

Because GoToWebinar is like a conference experience, and GoToTraining is like a workshop experience, there is a difference in the assigned roles that are available in each platform.

• GoToWebinar has the following roles: organizer, panelist and presenter. The organizer is the person scheduling and managing the webinar. You can have more than one organizer during the webinar to help you manage it. A panelist is essentially a guest speaker and may or may not present their desktop, but cannot manage the webinar itself. The presenter is the person sharing their presentation (desktop) with the audience. As you can see, these roles offer more formality and control. A typical webinar may have two organizers and two or more panelists. The panelists may take turns sharing their piece of the presentation. The organizer will manage things like changing presenters and monitoring Q&A.
• GoToTraining has the following roles: organizer and presenter. Usually the organizer is also the trainer and is the person presenting their desktop as well as managing various aspects of the training. You can promote anyone in-session to be an organizer to assist with larger audiences. As part of your interaction toolkit, you can make anyone in your audience a presenter. This is helpful when you want participants to share in the learning, check for understanding, or model learned behavior in real time.

Materials and Handouts

• In GoToWebinar you can upload up to five handouts to your webinar event. This is great for adding workbooks or other materials to assist with your training. One caveat: handouts can only be viewed and downloaded in-session, so for working documents, you’ll want to spend a few minutes during housekeeping to guide participants in downloading any docs you want them to work on in-session. The Handouts pane shows up for the attendee like this:
• One of my favorite features in GoToTraining is Materials. You can add materials such as handouts, workbooks, and external links. But more than that, you can make your materials accessible before, during and after your training. When you mark any materials as available before the training, participants will receive a confirmation email with links to view any materials. This means you can extend your training beyond the in-session time. Here’s what it looks like after a registrant clicks the Materials link in their confirmation and reminder emails:

Audio

Again keeping in mind the formality of a conference and the more informal nature of a workshop, audio works differently in the two platforms.

• When webinar staff (organizers and panelists) join a GoToWebinar event, they are initially joined in a subconference. This means you can talk freely with each other, do a sound check, and review any last minute details privately without the audience hearing. When you click “Start Broadcast,” all attendees can then hear you but are in listen-only mode by default. If you want to engage your audience in verbal discussion or Q&A, you can unmute individual attendee lines. GoToWebinar includes a practice mode so that you can launch your webinar privately with webinar staff to run through slides or practice webcams before allowing attendees to join.
• In contrast to this, GoToTraining participants join the training unmuted by default and can hear you, the organizer, and each other. However, you can mute all lines at any time. Muting all lines is helpful when you have larger groups joining your GoToTraining session, or when participants join from outside your organization (public training) and you want to create an environment of privacy.

Polling

Both platforms offer polling. On either GoToWebinar or GoToTraining, you can use polling to gather data that can help you adjust your content to a specific audience in real time, or even use it as a type of engaging pre- and post-testing.

Webcam

Both GoToWebinar and GoToTraining include webcam. The difference is that in GoToWebinar, you will most likely only use webcams for your panelists who are presenting, as it tends to be a more formal affair. In GoToTraining, you might use the webcam feature with your participants when engaging in interactive activities such as small group discussions or role plays.

Q&A Versus Chat

Two features that often get confused within the two platforms are Q&A and Chat.

• GoToWebinar has the unique Q&A feature. This enables audiences to submit text questions throughout the presentation. However, there are some important things to know about Q&A. Only organizers can view the questions submitted. Questions are private and other members in the audience cannot see them. This level of control is important for large-scale webinars or when you want to keep audience questions private for organizer-viewing only. There is a Chat function, but it is only for the webinar staff to be able to communicate with each other in-session.

• GoToTraining does not have Q&A, but includes the Chat function. An organizer can adjust chat permission levels so that participants can either chat freely (even with each other) or chat only with the organizer, or the organizer can turn the chat off completely.

Video Sharing

Sharing video is unique to GoToWebinar. You can upload up to 5 videos to the webinar. It’s important to note that as of this writing, video sharing is still in beta and the audio for video streams only through computer speakers (VoIP) or through a mobile device; anyone listening through a phone needs to either switch to computer audio or join the webinar through a mobile device.

If you want to share video in your GoToTraining session, my recommendation is to upload your clips to Vimeo, YouTube, or even a hidden page on your website. You can then add the links to the videos on your Materials page and make the links accessible as you choose, either before or during. Participants can view the clips prior to your training, or you can ask them to view a clip during your webinar as an activity. It will then stream on their end using their computer and browser settings.

Survey Versus Evaluation

It’s important to seek feedback on any events you hold and to give your participants a voice. Both platforms include built-in functions to survey the audience. GoToWebinar calls it a Survey, GoToTraining calls it an Evaluation. The Survey and Evaluation can be launched after the webinar ends or included in the follow-up email. In my experience, higher response rates occur when the survey is launched directly after the webinar, and it’s helpful to announce it to the audience before you end the presentation. If you want to see a few examples of good survey questions, take a look at 8 Best Webinar Practices for 2019.

Certificate

GoToWebinar includes an option to send a certificate along with the follow-up email. It is built into the system and cannot be customized at this time. The certificate will include the webinar title, the name of the participant, the date of the webinar, and the name of the organizer. It looks like this:

Additional Features in GoToTraining

Library

The Library is one of my favorite features. You can upload and store documents and external links (to online articles or webpages, for example). You can also store tests, polls, and evaluations. Add one or more materials into your training and make them accessible before, during and after the training. Corporate accounts can share materials in the Library.

Catalog

If you offer multiple customer training sessions, the Catalog feature enables you to create and publish one or more online course catalogs. Then when you set up a training, you can add it to a specific catalog and your online catalog is automatically updated to include the new training.

Testing

Testing is definitely an important feature if you are delivering any kind of compliance or continuing education training. Any tests you create can be saved to your GoToTraining Library for re-use. Make the test accessible before, during or after the training. You can also determine if participants are able to see their results after they take the test. One of the ways I use testing is to give the test both at the beginning and at the end of the training so that participants can see the improvements they’ve made.

Timer

One last feature I want to call out is the Timer. Unique to GoToTraining, use the timer to manage activities and breaks. When you turn on the timer, participants will see the timer in the GoToTraining viewer window and they can easily keep track of how much time is left.

Recap

As I mentioned at the beginning, I have been using both GoToWebinar and GoToTraining for more than 10 years and I have used them both for educational events.  GoToWebinar was initially designed for marketers and sales professionals so the features are geared toward that type of user delivering to a large, mostly passive, audience. Still, you can easily use it for customer onboarding, just be aware of some of the limitations in engagement.

GoToTraining was obviously designed for trainers (I did a lot of testing and feedback with the original UX design team). It’s more feature-rich on participant interaction than GoToWebinar. If you plan to use it for large audiences, be aware of the difference in how audio works, the chat function, video sharing, and the organizer role.

Here’s to your success!

~ Corena

Corena Bahr is a webinar expert, speaker and trainer helping experts at corporations and global firms deliver world-class webinars for client outreach and customer onboarding. She teaches experts how to create a human connection with a virtual audience, structure content for engagement, and how to use the “bells & whistles” of  webinar platforms to drive business goals. Corena is also a LinkedIn Learning course author and public speaker.

Fun times! We’ve certainly come a long way in webinar software, thank goodness!

These days I deliver, view, or assist with webinars on a weekly basis. While the quality of webinar software has vastly improved, what hasn’t changed much, is the way webinars are still being delivered: 45 minutes of talking speakers, often reading their presentation, and a few minutes of Q&A. While this is the standard format, it does create a scenario of attendees checking out or multitasking. And that means they won’t remember much of what you worked so hard to put together in your presentation.

I’m here to encourage you that there is SO MUCH MORE you can be doing in a webinar to engage, and connect with, your virtual audience so that you can build quality client relationships and create better follow-up conversations.

In a previous article I wrote – 8 Best Webinar Practices For 2019 – I mentioned to “consider blocking your content into 15 minutes of information and then pause to allow for some type of interaction with your audience.” This style of webinar interaction encourages better retention of the information you share, which in turn can lead to better client success. Below are 5 creative ways to engage your audience in a webinar.

Case Studies

Case studies provide a story-like experience, and they enable you to showcase how your expertise helped clients solve a problem or improve a situation. Present the Problem-Solution-Outcome using visuals: images that fill the slide to evoke an emotion, graphs, and PowerPoint’s SmartArt in lieu of bullet points.

One way to include your audience is to pause after you present the problem and ask them an open-ended question: What would your next step be in this scenario? If you’ve experienced this, what did you do? This is a great way to get to know how your clients are thinking. If you know how they’re thinking, it can help you have a more personal follow-up conversation.

Strategy Plans and Working Documents

With strategy plans and working documents, you are basically providing some light training or consulting. This is such a great way to give insight into how you work with clients. And a strategy plan can give your audience an easy win that could warm them up for a next step in working with you. Most webinar platforms let you upload handouts. If you choose this strategy, be sure to highlight in your webinar promotion that your event is going to be a working session and describe what the outcomes for participants will be.

Verbal Q&A

Imagine you’re at a conference and at the end of the presentation, you get to ask your burning question to the keynote speaker up at the microphone. It’s nice to connect on that level with the speaker, isn’t it? And it adds interest for the audience. It should be no different in a webinar. Here’s what to think about when including verbal Q&A:

• Prepare your audience at the beginning and explain you’re intention is to make this an interactive experience, and that they will have the option to ask questions verbally.
• Use the Raise Hand feature in the webinar platform to manage unmuting individual lines. For example, GoToWebinar, Webex Events and ReadyTalk all have the Raise Hand feature somewhere in the attendee interface.
• When it’s time, here’s what I say: “We’d love to hear some of your questions at this time. If you want to ask your question verbally, click on the Raise Hand button and we’ll go through and unmute your line when it’s your turn.” I switch between written and verbal questions.
• If I can’t immediately hear the person, I say, “Unfortunately we can’t hear you, so we’re going to move on to the next person. Please type your question instead.”
• If the question is off topic or somehow not conducive to the presentation as a whole, I’ll answer very briefly and move on or say, “That’s a great question but requires an in-depth answer. I want to do it justice so I’ll send you an email with some information.”

Panelists

Guest speakers are nothing new. However, there are ways to make the conversation more interesting. Consider the following:

•  Instead of each speaker going through their section of a presentation, come up with several questions for the panelists to discuss during the webinar. This way the entire presentation is unscripted. Include questions from the audience (during, not at the end).
• Have the panelists share their webcam.
• Always do a dry run to review nonverbal cues so that the speakers aren’t interrupting each other, go over the discussion topics, and run a sound check (headsets are best).

 Live Consulting

Live consulting can seem a bit intimidating and does require some planning. But the payoff is huge. It’s interesting to the audience, switches things up, showcases how you work, and gives real-time results. How to do it:

• Choose something light of course that’s easy for you to do with 1-3 participants in the webinar (in other words, most of your presentation will be the live consulting).
• Ask for volunteers in your registration form: Would you like to participate in some live consulting in our event? If so, please provide your contact information. You will be notified if you’ve been selected. (You can also add any other questions to the registration form that would help you determine the right candidates.)
• Select the participants for the live consulting and have a call with them to make sure they are the right fit, gather any information you need, and that they will show up to your event.
• Another option: Contact current clients or prospects and ask them if they’d be willing to participate in some live consulting. You can determine what sort of incentive you want to include that is appropriate for your industry.

You only need to do one of these in your webinar to create more audience engagement. The more you can interact, the deeper the connection you will end up having with a virtual audience. When your participants experiences a better connection, they will be more open to follow-up conversations.

Here’s to your success!

~ Corena

Corena Bahr is a webinar expert, speaker and trainer helping experts at corporations and global firms deliver world-class webinars for client outreach and customer onboarding. She teaches experts how to create a human connection with a virtual audience, structure content for engagement, and how to use the “bells & whistles” of webinar platforms to drive business goals. Corena is also a LinkedIn Learning course author and public speaker.

There is a ton of information online about marketing and sales webinars but the truth is, you’re a professional looking to connect with your clients and prospects and showcase your expertise. So for you, this requires a unique approach to webinar content and delivery.

Below are eight of my best practices to help you deliver world-class webinars in 2019 and beyond.

Webinars Are an Opportunity to Teach

Teaching is incredibly powerful in gaining customer loyalty and interest from new clients. It’s one of the best ways to get people to know, like, and trust you. As you put together your content, consider approaching the structure like a mini course. This means you want your participants to experience some kind of “win” or success and be able to implement one or two new skills after the webinar. This makes you look good!

Define Your Ideal Audience

It’s important to take some time to describe your ideal audience. And the more specific you can get the better. Think about who you are looking to work with. Some questions you can ask yourself:

1. Who are you hoping to attract? Clients? Colleagues in the same industry?
2. What industries are they in?
3. What is their role? Who are you hoping to speak to in a follow-up call?
4. What is their experience level with the subject matter?
5. What challenges do you think they face related to your topic?
6. Where are they located? Are there any cultural differences you need to be aware of?

Once you know who these people are your content will be more on target and you’ll be able to create a better connection. Be sure to describe your ideal audience in your webinar promotion, this way you’ll attract the best people who align with your topic and services.

Share Client Success Stories

Everyone loves a good Before and After story. Client success stories are relatable and help your audience envision positive outcomes. To keep it interesting, show the story: use images, graphic stats and client quotes. Bonus if you can get one of your success stories to do a live interview with you (even for 10 minutes) in the webinar.

Create a Vibrant Slide Deck

This will be direct, but I mean this with total respect and friendly support: Most presenters still need to improve their slide decks. I get that this can be a daunting task, but it actually doesn’t require a fancy graphic designer (although that’s a nice-to-have!). You most likely have a branded template created by your organization’s marketing team. Here are some tips to developing more vibrant slide decks:

1. Limit bullet points or even challenge yourself to nix bullet points altogether (I did and I love how my decks turn out!).
2. When using graphics (like icons), keep them all in the same style so it looks polished and professional. And hopefully, no one is still using clip art!
3. Where possible use images that fill the screen and evoke thoughts and ideas. Turn data into graphs and other visuals. With PowerPoint’s SmartArt function it’s really easy to transform one-dimensional information into something visually-pleasing and easier on the eyes to digest.
4. Limit the amount of content on each slide. Too much information on a slide creates overwhelm and people tend to tune out.
5. For inspiration, head on over to Slideshare and see if you can find one or two new ideas to implement in how you style your presentations.

Keep Your Slide Deck Moving

When you deliver a presentation in person, it’s very dynamic. Everyone is looking at you; your slides are the back-up dancers. This changes drastically in a webinar. As mentioned above, looking at one slide for too long is one reason people check out or multitask. So keep your slides moving. You’ll most likely spread out your information over more slides and your deck will be much bigger. This is totally fine. What matters is holding your audience’s interest so that they get the most out of your presentation.

You MUST Have Regular Interaction

Add engagement every 15-20 minutes. Studies have shown that the hippocampus part of the brain can only hold so much information before it must be processed and pushed into short-term memory. Studies show this to be a maximum of about 20 minutes of information. This means the hippocampus requires a few minutes of processing time otherwise that data can be lost to the participant (and you will have wasted your time). Consider blocking your content into 15 minutes of information and then pause to allow for some type of interaction with your audience. I give several ideas on audience engagement in another post here. This is where you can really connect with your audience and create value.

Engage in Verbal Q&A

It’s always helpful to have some seed questions ready to get the Q&A going. However, one of the skills I recommend practicing is opening up the Q&A to allow for verbal questions. This means you would unmute any attendee wanting to ask their question over audio instead of through texted Q&A. Is this unexpected? Yes. Is it worth it? Oh yes.

I get that many presenters feel uncomfortable about this…

• What if the question is irrelevent? That’s okay. Answer as best you can and quickly move on.
• What if the audio doesn’t work and I can’t hear the participant? Say, “We can’t hear you so we’re going to move on to the next question.”

Webinar Surveys Are Valuable

I’m not sure what happened, but somewhere along the way surveys seem to have slowly disappeared. They are an important part of gathering valuable information on who attended your event. Will everyone respond? Nope. But I feel it’s respectful to give your participants the option to voice their feedback. I usually give everyone the heads up before we end that the survey is fast with only a few questions, and I’d love to hear any comments.

Two or three specific open-ended questions can give you valuable information to use in a warmer follow-up call. So what are good questions to ask? Decide what information will be helpful to you in a conversation later on.

• What has changed for you after hearing this information?
• What is your timeframe for ________________?
• What, if anything, limits you from next steps?
• Did the level of information match your level of expertise?
• Is there anything we missed?

And there you have it. Eight best practices to deliver exceptional webinars in 2019! If you’re just getting started with webinars, take it one step at a time and build your skillset with each event. Experiment and see what works and what needs adjustment.

Here’s to your success!

~ Corena

Corena Bahr is a webinar expert, speaker and trainer helping experts at corporations and global firms deliver world-class webinars for client outreach and customer onboarding. She teaches experts how to create a human connection with a virtual audience, structure content for engagement, and how to use the “bells & whistles” of  webinar platforms to drive business goals. Corena is also a LinkedIn Learning course author and public speaker.

Too often, people get hung up on whether they need a fancy-pants training software with all kinds of bells and whistles to deliver effective virtual training. It’s certainly nice to have, but the truth is, effective training is not about the software. It’s about how you design your content using proper instructional design techniques and then creatively using the training or webinar platform features available to you.

And just to stand behind my words, I’ve highlighted ways to take advantage of some of the features in GoToMeeting to show how you can deliver an interactive learning experience…no fancy training software required.

In this article, I’ll highlight:

• A common mistake made when designing virtual training
• My favorite hack to developing interactive activities
• 3 ways to create engagement using GoToMeeting

A Common Mistake

Let’s take a look at the typical instructional design process. Where is Delivery Method in relation to the other parts of the process?

It’s near the end! But you know where everyone puts it? At the beginning. As in, “I have to deliver a new training on XYZ compliance and I’m going to do it virtually.” So you’ve already mentally limited yourself in your creative thinking to identify learning activities and develop interaction. I strongly encourage you to stop thinking about the virtual delivery method and design your training FOR YOUR PARTICIPANTS. Otherwise you’re actually designing it for the software.

My Favorite Hack to Develop Interactive Activities

Alright, with the above in mind, when you get to Learning Exercises, this is what I have my clients do: I have them pretend they are delivering their training in person. What learning activities and what types of interaction would you create if you were to deliver face-to-face? This gets us in a place open to more ideas, and many of us can visualize interaction better when we think of face-to-face. THEN – after Sequencing – take a look at the features available in your meeting software and determine how you can simulate the in-person activities. I cannot tell you how many Aha! moments I get when teaching this approach.

3 Ways to Engage With GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting caps attendees at 25, which quite frankly, is a good thing. The more learners you have in your session, the more challenging it is to provide true engagement and there is a risk of diminished learning outcomes. But I want to point out that I can appreciate not every trainer has the luxury of keeping the virtual class size small and you must use a platform that allows for higher attendance.

Calendar Invite

With GoToMeeting you can schedule your training using a calendar invite. This gives you the opportunity to add materials like pre-course work, and add links to articles or videos to the invitation email. Providing pre-course work introduces your participants to the subject matter and gives them time to formulate questions. This tactic also maximizes your in-session time.
The other nice thing about using a calendar invite is when you have a multi-session course (I highly recommend you break up your content into multiple sessions), you can use the recurring meeting feature which will automatically add all sessions to participants’ calendars, including reminders.

Webcam Discussion

We’re all familiar with the chat function, so consider switching it up by creating a webcam discussion or role play between 2-3 participants. Other attendees can give feedback or add to the discussion through the chat. GoToMeeting includes HDFaces which is the highest resolution video conferencing quality currently available among web conferencing providers. Prepare your participants in advance that you will be engaging them through activities using webcam. No one wants to be caught on a bad hair day!

Guided Practice with Screensharing or Keyboard and Mouse

When using GoToMeeting as my training platform, two of my favorite features to use for guided practice are passing the presenter role or giving keyboard and mouse control to another participant. I generally set this up by giving a demonstration, then asking for a volunteer (um, because otherwise I’ll just make you a volunteer) to do a similar task by either giving them presenter role where they can do the task on their desktop or give them keyboard and mouse control of my desktop. In GoToMeeting, if I give keyboard and mouse control, I always have override control and can remove the permission at any time. This activity is great when you are teaching new software or workflows.

I hope these examples of engagement inspire you to come up with ideas of your own whether or not you’re using meeting software for your training. There really is no shortage of ways to keep your participants interacting and actively learning. Remember that the trick is to first come up with activities as if you were delivering your training in person, then determine how you can creatively translate the training or meeting software features available to you.

Corena Bahr is a webinar expert, speaker and trainer helping experts at corporations and global firms deliver world-class webinars for client outreach and customer onboarding. She teaches experts how to create a human connection with a virtual audience, structure content for engagement, and how to use the “bells & whistles” of  webinar platforms to drive business goals. Corena is also a LinkedIn Learning course author and public speaker.