I love the fact that some of the big players in the web conferencing / webcasting space are giving us real data on usage, trends, and preferences from their users. Today I thank TalkPoint for making available the results of their December 2012 Webcasting Usage Survey.
The company surveyed their clients to find out about behaviors and predilections in webcasting (with additional emphasis on mobile usage). The full survey results are downloadable in a PDF from http://lp.talkpoint.com/Survey.html
Unfortunately there are no indications of the sample size, respondent demographics, or response ratio reflected in the result percentages. Which makes the data statistically unreliable, but some insight is better than none at all, so let’s dive in!
TalkPoint asked attendees what type of webcasting event they attend most often. Some of the options overlapped a bit, but the highest response was for “Best practices” events. That goes along with a question on what is the biggest deciding factor in registering for an event. The results weren’t even close… Speakers, length, date, cost, and educational credits accounted for a combined 11.9% while “Content” was an overwhelming 82.8%. So if you are sweating over how to get more people to register for your events, you have your answer. Stop worrying so much about Tuesday vs. Wednesday and 45 minutes vs. 60 minutes. Give people relevant best practices that they can apply in their jobs.
My next favorite takeaway from the survey came from a question about what bothered attendees the most (top pet peeve). Late starts? Poor audio? Too long? Nope… 24% said “Webcast doesn’t teach me anything” but the winner at 54% of responses was “Presenters aren’t engaging.” This is why I give online presentation training. Delivery matters!
There are plenty of other interesting informational nuggets in the report, but I will leave it to you to download a copy and find your own area of interest. I hope other web collaboration vendors will follow TalkPoint’s example and bring us additional insights as well.
