I gave a webinar yesterday with attendees from Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore. We were covering the basics of webinars for first-timers, sponsored by Citrix GoToWebinar. I didn’t have a chance to answer all the questions submitted by the audience, so here are some of the ones I missed. I have taken the easy way out and given links to answers in previous columns in a few cases. I hope you’ll forgive me for not copying and pasting into this post!
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Lisette: What are your thoughts about holding a live physical presentation and adding a webinar element for those in remote areas?
Answer: This can work very well, but it involves some extra planning and technical considerations. You need a human camera operator who can follow the presenter as she moves in front of the room. You need a lavaliere microphone or other high quality sound source to feed the presenter’s voice to the webcast. You need to synchronize the slides shown on the screen in the room with slides shown in the webinar. And the presenter needs to remain conscious of both audiences, as it is easy to ignore the remote attendees in favor of the local attendees. Doing this kind of setup well usually involves a services provider with expertise in setting up the technology to make everything work together.
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Imogen: Can you comment on the effectiveness of the web medium to engender relationships with prospective clients, compared to face to face, or real seminars where sales reps can network with the audience?
Answer: A webinar is never going to be as effective as a personal meeting for creating a complete personal relationship with a new contact. But I have seen numerous examples of companies that do business exclusively by webinar and conference call. They are able to demonstrate their solutions, answer questions, provide support and responsiveness, and generally do everything for their contact other than shake hands. You have to make the commitment to spending the same time and effort on personal interaction via the remote technology as you would in a local setting. It’s much harder for large audience events to have this personal touch. While companies are willing to bring their sales reps in to mingle and network with an in-room crowd, they seem less willing to have them on hand during a large webinar to chat with attendees, answer questions, and have private chats about attendee interests. This is a pity, because in many ways, they could be even more effective, at less cost.
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Fiona: What if attendees want to see the speaker during the webinar?
Answer: Your web conferencing technology needs to support a live video feed – either from a webcam or higher quality digital camera. But do you want to do this? It is easy to look unprofessional on live camera. We have become used to business and professional video being of high quality, which means good focus, keeping the presenter in frame, good lighting, a professional background, and a presenter who knows how to appear on camera (blink rates, not shifting eyes, maintaining appropriate posture and facial expressions, etc.). Video also carries a higher data bandwidth burden, so your presenter and audience need fast internet connections. I usually recommend webcam video only in small interpersonal meetings where you already know the participants. Public web events should only use video in a highly controlled setup run by video professionals.
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Murray: What happens if you don’t get to answer all of the questions?
Answer: Hello! This is one option. Or you could send a document to attendees or post it in a public location. Or you can simply acknowledge the great response and ask people to contact you with questions after the event. It’s a question of how much extra work you are willing to put in.
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Rachel: How do you engage technophobes or people who are resistant to using online media?
Answer: Start by concentrating on their interests and the content, not the technology. Make sure you have a webinar technology that is easy for them to access and use. Communicate in clear, unambiguous instructions exactly how they access your event and have a support person on call to answer questions and provide assistance. Then make sure you give them value that takes precedence over the novelty of the communications medium. It can work… I help clients all the time with webinars targeted at audiences who have never seen a webinar.
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Graeme: Can webinars work for people in remote areas connecting via satellite?
Answer: Yes they can, but you need to be conscious of their experience and adjust your presentation style to match. Assume that your next slide may take a few seconds before they see it, so start talking about the concept of the slide before referring to specific items on it. Slow down requests for interaction such as typed in responses or polling. Your goal is to sound natural and engaging, while constantly giving the slower connections time to “catch up.”
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Robyn: What would you consider an average price for customers to attend webinars?
Answer: In the USA, web events commonly range from $50 USD up to $400. Your choice of what to charge is based upon the value you deliver and what that is worth to your customers.
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I’m going to close off this post and continue in another. We’re going a bit long for convenient reading!
