In my last blog post, we discussed the necessary steps to properly plan out your webinar.  Here are 5 more tips to help you create a successful webinar experience.

1.      Sound Natural

You want to keep your viewer’s attention; get rid of the monotone voice! Try standing up, using inflection by practicing and practicing again. Highlight or bold words in your script (tip #1) to remind yourself to use inflection at key stages during the recording process. Try smiling;  I know this sounds odd but it really works.

2.      Start with the Right Apps

You must have quality applications in your toolbox to record, edit and product your webinar. I recommend using Camtasia for video recording and editing and Audacity  for audio recording and editing. To share versions of your Webinar with clients and others take a look at screen sharing software such as Dropbox, Amazon S3 or Screencast.

3.      Pause Early & Often During Recording

Pause, early and often when recording both the audio and video portion of your webinar. This will give you time to re-focus if you lose your concentration. Remember inflection and correct errors as you go. The pause key in your recording software will become your best friend!

4.      Use Custom Settings

Use the custom setting features in your application. This will allow you to create parameters for your webinar that you can use over and over again for future projects.

5.      Repurpose Your Webinar

Once you’ve created an awesome webinar, let it to work for you! You can create CD’s, DVD’s and MP3 podcasts. You can post these on your website as freeware or market them to visitors to your site.

I love getting feedback. Tell me about your webinar experiences! Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv. That’s a plug in that allows you to leave a link back to your own site when you leave a comment.

Until next time,

Robin

Creating awesome marketing or training webinars takes knowledge and effort and I’ve discovered the following must do steps will help you be successful. If you follow these tips, your end result will be much more professional and your skill in recording, editing and producing webinars will be in demand.

1. Spend Enough Time Up Front Planning

This is an extremely important step if you want to create a dynamic webinar. You should spend 70% of your time upfront defining your webinar scope, mind mapping key messages, and developing a comprehensive project plan and storyboard. You MUST know your target audience – remember – you have about 7 seconds to grab your viewers’ attention before they will move on to something else!

2. Write a Script

You want to sound as natural as possible and believe it or not the best way to do this is to write a script of everything you plan to say. You can bold or italicize key words in your script that you want to emphasize while recording.

3. Have the Right Equipment

A good quality headset is a MUST to produce crisp, clear audio recordings. As well, screen sharing software such as Glance, GoToMeeting or GoToWebinar, will help you capture your webinar content effectively.

4. Record Your Audio Track First

Recording and editing your webinar will go much more smoothly if you start with a high quality audio recording. By recording your audio track first, you will get a quality finished product. Make sure you pause a few seconds before you start talking and use the pause key, early and often.

5. Fix Mistakes As You Go

When you are recording your webinar, take the time to fix mistakes as you make them. Pause often and don’t worry about the ‘ums and ahs’, you’ll edit these out later.

Do you have any great tips to share? I love getting feedback. Here on my blog, you’ll get commentluv. That’s a plug in that allows you to leave a link back to your own site when you leave a comment.

Until next time,

Robin

Focusing on a Solid Virtual Event Plan

I’m a firm believer in having a thorough plan before starting something and I know this is critical to business success. Before making any decision that will impact your business, you need to develop a solid project plan. This also holds true when planning to host a virtual event. There are some simple yet key aspects of a good project plan that will ensure you reach your business goals.

First of all, why are you going to host a virtual event? Do you want to communicate a change in procedure or train your employees on a new process? Are you launching a new product, or trying to reduce costs by switching to an online conference this year? Once you have defined your business goal and the expected outcome, you are on your way! You’ll need to clearly identify your target audience ensuring your event is tailored to them. What does success look like? By starting here, you’ll improve your ability to reach the desired business outcome.

Next what’s the best way to communicate your message? Teleseminar or Webinar? What format should you use? The event format should mirror the results you expect to achieve.  A good project plan will help you choose the most effective way to get your message across.

Choosing the appropriate platform and software to host your event can easily be determined once you’ve completed the 2 steps above. The project plan you develop will ensure you have chosen the most effective technology that’s within your budget. A bit of advice; you should always include a dry run or rehearsal into your plan, who wants to run into technical issues when you’re delivering an important message live to your employees or clients? Avoid surprises! Also, do you know how to use software and platform that you’ve selected to run your venue? Ensure that someone can provide the required demonstration and teach you to run the software with confidence. Or better yet, get yourself a good VA Moderator that can run the event for you. That way you focus on delivering your message, and the event details can be taken care of by someone else. You always need a contingency plan and point of contact during an event in case something goes wrong and attendees aren’t able to connect to the session.

There are many pre-event details that need to be taken care of long before you get to the live event. Developing a solid project plan will ensure you don’t miss any critical steps. When things are written down and assigned to someone they are going to get done! You’ll need to have a way for attendees to register for your event  Invitations have to be sent out,  with ongoing reminders to ensure good attendance during the event. These reminders and invitations can be posted on your blog or included in a press release if you’re including this step as you promote your event.

Your project plan should also include designating who will be responsible for recording the event; it’s important to capture the audio/video from the event. This is important to upload to your website afterwards for replay by those that weren’t able to attend the live event. As well, you may not want to field questions or monitor chat during the event and a good moderator can do this for you.

Another key step that is often overlooked is to gather feedback after your event. You want to find ways to continuously improve and it’s easy to do a quick on line survey immediately following the call so participants can give you their relevant feedback.

Virtual events can really be an important component to running your business. Why not take your success to the next level and work with your virtual event specialist and develop a solid project plan.

What kinds of things do you do to put an effective plan in place? I’d love to get your feedback and here on my blog you’ll get commentluv.  That’s a plug in that allows you to leave a link back to your own site when you post a reply.  I look forward to hearing from you!

Until next time,

Robin