Technology makes it easy to spread your message to your audience. However technology is only as good as its execution.
When to use it: If you have your own business, webinars can be used to market yourself or your business product or service. Webinars can also be used as an online teaching tool, especially if your team, audience or clients are based in different geographic locations. It is an effective way to talk to a large audience and reduce travel time and costs. You could use webinars to conduct a sales proposal.
How to use it: Just like a live presentation, your webinar audience need engagement and interaction every 4 minutes. Do this through: a show of hands (using polling option); ask for audience to text questions that you respond to; create a web-tour or show your audience a pre-prepared power-point slide. You can use webinars to teach content by sending out pre-reading material that you ask their opinion on – say the latest IFRS update and then respond to their comments during the webinar.
What to prepare: A webinar is usually 45 minutes long: 30 minutes of content; 15 minutes for Q&A. Take the time to prepare the flow to your webinar that focuses on your objective of the talk, whilst ensuring that the critical information is included. If you are using a power-point slide during your webinar, ensure that your slides are easy to read. Whilst with a verbal presentation, a presenter can speak to one slide for 2-3 minutes, in a webinar due to virtual nature of the presentation, you will need to incorporate a new slide every 20-40 seconds to maintain your audience’s attention. Graphics are another way to engage your audience and can include graphs, charts, images, audio and animation. Use collaboration tools like whiteboards to share documents or images and explain its purpose using annotation tools within the webinar software.
Post-webinars: You could re-purpose the recording: edit parts and upload as a podcast; edit the video for uploading as a You Tube video or package them as a series for downloading on your website.
Webinars is an ideal medium to deliver your message to small or large groups. Its use is limited to your imagination.
