Anyone who conducts training sessions, courses, and meetings, especially in an online format, knows well that live feedback is essential for building a relationship with the audience. Without feedback, the presenter sometimes feels like a child lost in the fog, because he/she cannot see the audience face-to-face.
It is obvious that in online meetings we naturally lack direct contact with the listeners. But, fortunately, there are various ways to find out what the participants expect and how they are perceiving our presentation.
In this blog post, we’ll explore various methods and tools to get live feedback during online presentations. This will help create a dynamic and interactive experience for everyone involved. So, read on, and get inspired!
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How to utilize live feedback tools
As we've already mentioned, there is a variety of live feedback tools available for webinar hosts that can be utilized at any time during the webinar. To help you find inspiration and broaden your options, we've prepared a list of the most commonly used tools and features to facilitate live feedback online.
If you use them wisely, your participants will feel they are given proper attention and that their opinions matter. This is crucial for establishing a good rapport with them and can significantly boost their overall satisfaction after the webinar. They will also leave the meeting richer in knowledge, as they will have many opportunities to ask additional questions and clear up any doubts or queries.
So, let's go down the list and see which tools you can use to make your interactive online presentation even more engaging.
#1 Polls and surveys
Instant polling during webinars is vital for several reasons. Polls provide immediate insights into the audience's opinions, understanding, and preferences. This allows the presenter to adjust content and delivery on the fly to better meet the audience's needs.
These tools can be pre-prepared and launched at any point during the webinar. It is good, then, to choose a webinar platform that enables easy and intuitive polls and surveys available for the host whenever they want. Such a platform is LiveWebinar.
Obviously, you need to prepare real time survey questions you are going to ask beforehand, before your webinar starts. Once it is in progress, you just need to load the survey and start it.
#2 Live Q&A sessions
A dedicated Q&A feature allows participants to ask questions at any time. The host can address these questions live during the session or after it. It all depends on the situation, sometimes it is better to divide the presentation into smaller parts followed by Q&A sessions, especially in the case of highly specialist webinars.
For example, during a medical webinar on the latest cancer treatments, attendees can ask technical questions to clarify complex medical terms or procedures.
#3 Live chat
Chat enables real-time audience response, fostering interaction and allowing for instant feedback. Continuous engagement with live chat helps keep the audience involved and attentive throughout the webinar.
While choosing a webinar platform you should pay attention to the features it offers, and live chat is one of the most important ones. Some platforms, e.g. LiveWebinar offer translated chat with many languages to choose from. This is important if your audience is international.
#4 Interactive whiteboards
These allow participants to draw, annotate, or highlight points on a shared screen, enabling collaborative feedback and interaction.
Moreover, many people grasp concepts better through visual means. Whiteboards allow presenters to illustrate complex ideas or processes in real time.
Example: In a mathematics webinar, the presenter can work through equations step-by-step on the whiteboard, making it easier for participants to follow along.
#5 Emojis
Quick feedback tools like emojis or reaction buttons let attendees express their emotions or opinions without interrupting the flow of the presentation.
Sometimes the presenter may decide to disable the chat function and rely only on emojis from the participants. This is an easy and efficient way to get instant feedback and check if everything is okay with the presentation.
#6 Quizzes and interactive games
They can be used as icebreaker activities to ease participants into the session, especially if the topic is complex or dense. Quizzes and games break the monotony, keeping participants alert and engaged throughout the session.
Moreover, you should try incorporating game elements like points, badges, and leaderboards. This can boost motivation through healthy competition. Some webinar platforms, e.g. LiveWebinar have special functionalities enabling hosts introduce gamification within the meeting and with the use of in-built options.
#7 Breakout rooms
Breakout rooms are important because they can enable the incorporation of a variety of interactive activities, such as role-playing, debates, and group projects.
Working in smaller groups helps minimize distractions and can improve focus, making it easier for participants to stay engaged and retain information.
To enable all of these functions, it is important to choose webinar software that offers a variety of options in-built in the tool.
Audience sentiment analysis
To specify audience opinions and reactions you can also introduce audience sentiment analysis.
Audience sentiment analysis is the process of evaluating and understanding the emotions, opinions, and attitudes that people express about a brand, product, or topic, particularly through online platforms such as social media, forums, and reviews.
By using various analytical tools and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, sentiment analysis can classify these expressions as positive, negative, or neutral.
Audience sentiment analysis entails e.g. gathering large volumes of text data from various sources where audiences voice their opinions, like social media posts, comments, reviews, forums, blogs, and news articles.
Therefore, it is good to collect all the opinions and reactions of your audience during the webinar.
LiveWebinar: An all-in-one solution
Platforms like LiveWebinar offer comprehensive tools for an interactive online presentation, packing features like live polling, surveys, and Q&A sessions into a single, user-friendly package. With these tools at your disposal, you can easily implement instant polling, enable real-time audience response, conduct live Q&A sessions, and perform audience sentiment analysis.
Sign up at LiveWebinar to access these powerful tools and elevate your online presentations to new heights. Join us today and transform the way you connect with your audience!