Posted on June 19, 2022

5 Best practices to host the most engaging webinars in 2022

While webinars, web conferencing, and live online events are becoming increasingly popular with businesses of all kinds, there’s still plenty of confusion about how to host one. When you make your decision about how to host your event, you must do your research on what the best practices are for hosting the best webinar possible. Here are some great ways to ensure you’re doing everything right when you host your next webinar.

What is a webinar?

A webinar is a virtual meeting in which participants interact with each other through a live stream and an online chat platform. They are often longer and more detailed than an online meeting or a conference call, with presentations, discussions, and visuals. More interactive than teleconferencing but more personal than videoconferencing, webinars are a valuable way to reach out to your customers or potential buyers.

Webinars are usually a lot longer and more detailed than online meetings or conference calls. Webinars often include presentations, discussions, and visuals. Compared to the teleconference, webinars are more interactive than videoconferences and are useful for getting the word out to potential customers.

Webinar best practices

Usually, creating a good webinar usually entails two things: good content and a good presentation. But how do you structure a good webinar? It’s actually pretty simple. Let’s start with structure:

1. Know Your Target Audience

When you know your target audience, it becomes easier to create an online meeting that will actually benefit them. To learn more about how you can ensure that your online meetings are worthwhile and productive. 

2. Pick a Topic That Is Specific And Precise

If you want your webinar to be a success, it’s crucial that you pick a topic that is specific and precise. It’s also essential that you spend time researching and planning before your webinar starts.

3. Create an outline for your webinar first

If you want to hold an online meeting or virtual meeting, first create an outline for your webinar. Your outline should include all of your webinar’s objectives and details about its goals, requirements, and intended audience. 

Outlining is essential because it can help you think through what you want to accomplish with your online meeting and will give potential attendees a clearer idea of what to expect when they attend your virtual meeting. It can also make organizing easier.

4. Invite the Right Choice of Speakers

In order to maximize the success of your webinar, it’s important to invite the right choice of speakers. If you’re hosting a webinar about how to build mobile apps for your business, it might be helpful to include a speaker who is an expert in mobile app development or UX design.

Invite 2-3 Speakers: Inviting just one speaker can make for a boring presentation, so it’s always best to invite two or three speakers if possible. This will give you more options and provide attendees with multiple perspectives on your topic.

5. Schedule Your Webinar Strategically

Webinars are a great way to host an online meeting, but they’re much more effective when strategically scheduled. The best time to schedule your webinar is on a Tuesday or Wednesday, from 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. This allows you to catch people who have finished work and are looking for something interesting to do in their downtime. If you don’t want to focus on business professionals only, consider hosting a webinar at 11:00 a.m.

Here are a few other ways you can structure your webinar correctly when you host your next webinar.

1. Create a Custom Webinar Landing Page
2. Spread the word
3. Assign a Moderator
4. Diversify your content.
5. Make Sure Your Webinar is Mobile-Friendly
6. Organized Engagement
7. Practice Till You’re Perfect.

What makes a successful webinar

When it comes to a webinar, less is definitely more. Make your webinar simple, relatable, and concise—you don’t want to overload participants with too much information or make them feel as if they have no idea what’s going on. You can achieve success by breaking down an overall complex process into smaller, digestible pieces that attendees can then easily follow along with.

Write about some tips for hosting a successful webinar: Be prepared. It’s easy to get caught up in excitement when hosting a webinar, but you should be fully prepared before even hitting the record. Know what you are going to say and how long each section will take so that you aren’t left scrambling when things go awry.

Preparations needed for webinars

Any good webinar requires advance planning, from choosing a relevant topic to finding speakers with something valuable to share. But before you can do that, you need to take care of practical details like creating an agenda and writing your presentation slides. This step-by-step guide will tell you everything you need to know about webinars – without getting bogged down in theory or technical jargon. By following these best practices for hosting your own webinars, you’ll be ready for any event.

1. Assign roles
2. Think about the format. 
3. Decide on the timing.
4. Choose the perfect webinar software.
5. Organize virtuals 
6. Write an agenda.
7. Practice the webinar. 
8. Prepare for a Q & A.

Qualities of a great webinar

Webinars are a great way to interact with your target audience. If you don’t know how to create a webinar or what good webinars look like, here’s some advice from someone who does: I’ve hosted and produced over 1,000 webinars for all types of clients on various topics. Here are my three key takeaways: 

1. Guests first; Every good webinar starts with a great list of qualified guests. Before building out an agenda, make sure you have enough qualified speakers lined up to make it worthwhile. 
2. Make sure that each speaker is clear about their role in promoting the event and has everything they need (and more) to promote it. 
3.  Keep it short. Your attendees want quality content but also value their time, so keep presentations under 60 minutes in length—ideally less than 30 minutes if possible.
4. A great webinar must be easily accessible. Getting interested is fantastic, but if the process of viewing the webinar is difficult, people will opt-out. 
5. It delivers on its promises. Make sure your webinar promises something to attendees—and then deliver on that promise! Your webinar should keep its audience’s attention and entice them to learn more about your business.
6. Good video/audio quality. If you’re going to invest time and money into hosting webinars, you want people to take it seriously. Poor video or audio quality will distract people from your message.
7. Audience interaction.
8. A simple call to action.

Do’s and don’ts of a webinar. 

When hosting a webinar, be sure to follow these do’s and don’ts to ensure a successful event. It’s easy to make mistakes that turn off your audience and prevent them from returning for future webinars.

DO’s

1. Try as much as you can to —interact with your audience.
2. You should always use storytelling to make your webinar presentations engaging.
3. Make good use of virtuals.
4. Do leave time for questions – and be prepared for them.
5. Follow up with a summary.

DON’Ts

1. Don’t think about webinar sales without considering your audience first.
2. Avoid text-heavy presentation slides.
3. Do not ignore your webinar’s technical aspects.
4. Do not wait until the last minute to schedule your webinar.
5. Do not speak from memory, but instead, write a narrative

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Why should you use a webinar?

It’s a great way to deliver your message to a large audience without having to travel. It’s also a cost-effective tool that will help you build your credibility and brand awareness. You can even use webinars as part of an email marketing campaign, adding links or calls-to-action (CTAs) in order to increase attendance, promote giveaways, generate leads, and boost sales. 

As mentioned above, it’s a very effective means of reaching many people at once. If you want to reach potential customers from around the world who are looking for information on a particular topic, then hosting a webinar is one of your best options. Not only is it effective, but it’s affordable too! For example, if you decide to host a webinar with Google Hangouts On Air—you can do so for free!

Conclusions

Planning and hosting a webinar is shown to be an incredibly valuable endeavor that is a solid investment. To follow these steps correctly, we’ve found you can increase lead generation, get your brand recognized as an authority, and drive revenue.