Choosing to do a webinar can be a great way for your company to reach many people, with comparatively very little investment.  However, it only becomes beneficial if it’s done right by using webinar best practices.  Just like an unprepared sales call, poor webinars can be a difficult problem to overcome for a potential customer.  Not using webinar best practices can also ruin your webinar and can frustrate you and your employees during an internal conference.  To avoid these problems, follow these webinar best practices tips.

Webinar best practices: Plan with the audience in mind

First, an essential step in webinar best practices is to plan your webinar with the audience in mind.  This sounds simple, but all too often webinar software is treated as just an easy way to check off a list of people talked to.  While that is a benefit of a webinar, if that is the reason you are doing it, stop.  There’s so much more that is being missed.  It is not about what you say; it is about what your audience hears and how it benefits your organization.  Obviously you have an agenda, just be careful how you execute so the benefits are fully realized.

Webinar best practices: Promote your event

Another of the webinar best practices is to make sure you webinar has a good attendance.  Besides the obvious of getting the event marketed to the audience you are targeting, it is also important to make it easy to get there.  Your audience has precious minutes in each work day, and if you want them to spend it with you, make it easy for them to do so.  Do not have a laundry list of questions to get someone registered.  Make sure you send a follow up to registrants shortly before the event as a reminder.  Simple things that can get lost in the preparation and need for knowledge, but can significantly impact your audience size.

Webinar best practices: Make sure your software works!

No list of webinar best practices is complete without discussion of the webinar itself.  Make sure and then make sure again that the call in information is working properly.  Get yourself on 10-15 minutes early and have a colleague call in so you are comfortable with what the information coming from your audience will look like.  Also, have some information slides going before you actually start.  Often this can include a countdown to the start time, so your audience knows what to expect.

Also, planning to the minute your webinar with all presenters is another of the webinar best practices.  Have a clock for each part of the webinar, and stick to it as closely as possible.  Your audience usually does not have excess time to listen to extra information or unprepared speakers.  Making sure that everyone knows their roles, helps ensure that everyone is fully prepared, and that your audience is engaged and interested throughout.

Finally, probably the most important webinar best practices are the words you say during your presentation.  Rehearse with your team, have energy and excitement without sounding phony, have easy to read slides so your audience can pay attention to you, communicate with the audience about things like question times and how they can interact with you if at all possible, and address your audience as if they were individuals, not just a group of people on the line.  When you are done, send out your slides to everyone who attended and tell them thanks.  Webinar best practices are designed to help you succeed. Follow these webinar best practices, and you will see your effectiveness with online presentations grow.