2020 might turn out to be a breakthrough year for webinars, as companies started to go totally remote overnight. A lot of activities were moved into virtual space, including training, selling, meetings and general meetups. Webinars are now virtually everywhere: a special report on the influence of COVID-19 on webinars stated that the pandemic had led to a triple-digit increase in the overall number of webinars and their live attendance – all thanks to a huge growth in working from home.
As a result, this surge in popularity has created a great challenge and competition. With lots of webinars available, people have to make a good choice about which ones to attend. This is why hosts are having to find new ways to differentiate their webinars, and are then required to put more effort into delivering a flawless experience.
The topic of organizing webinars is very broad: starting from doing your research, through working on your delivery style, to choosing from one of the various webinar platforms available. In this article, we will talk about how to host a webinar presentation that will engage your audience and bring you great results.
Do you want to know webinar presentation tips? Or how to create a webinar presentation? Just stay with us!
How to run a webinar presentation?
So, here we are with the question of how to create a webinar presentation? The basis for each webinar is to create a clear thoughtful flow. Whether you’re going live with it or preparing an on-demand version, careful planning will save your time, effort, and nerves.
Introduce yourself
The first thing in your webinar presentation is introducing. For the right take-off, you should talk a little about yourself. The simple act of greeting your audience will help to establish more human contact.
Keep that part short and sweet though. Give your audience some insight into why you are leading this webinar, what your experience is, and what value you can provide. Don’t dwell on the details – if the audience needs to, they can reach out to you later or do their own research.
Talk about the agenda
Another tip on how to create a webinar presentation is about the agenda. After a brief introduction, you can move on to talking about the topic you’re going to tackle in the presentation. Make sure you inform the participants whether they can ask questions during the webinar, or if you will hold a Q&A session at the end instead.
Make sure that people are following the webinar presentation
As you talk about your subject, it’s sometimes easy to get absorbed in your own flow and not check if the audience is actually following you. That is why you should stop from time to time and reach out to the listeners.
If you go live, ask questions from time to time. Making sure everything is clear for the audience will definitely help them to follow the presentation. You can note some remarks on your most important points to help you remember about asking questions. They will also highlight the content for your audience, letting them evaluate which points are the most important.
If you have opted for an evergreen presentation, you can suggest some exercises to make, important points to note, or slides to screenshot. These activities will help listeners to absorb knowledge and get value from your webinar.
Encourage your audience to ask questions
In webinar presentations, questions from the audience are an incomparable source of information and value – not only for you, but also for other participants. That is why you should encourage your listeners to ask, discuss, and share their experiences.
If you opt for an evergreen webinar, you can prompt the listeners to reach out to you via a chosen channel. You can also create a community, such as a Facebook group, that is dedicated to the participants of your webinar.
Remember about engaging your listeners
When you plan your webinar to last for a relatively long time, make sure you find gaps for engaging your audience. Also, create catchy webinar slides and ask questions to boost interactions.
Mind your time
Out of all the best webinar presentation tip, this one is the most obvious – and yet the most commonly ignored. You should manage your webinar properly and not lose track of how you are doing for time. You should be able to adjust the timing, whether that means stopping to delve into more details or skipping some less important information.
But how do you spot timing issues? This is where a dry run comes in handy. As you gain experience in leading webinars, you will be able to define more precisely how much time a given part will take. Yet, even then, you should always practice with a dry run., which will also help you with spotting some technical issues.
Recap your thoughts
When you finish your webinar presentation, it is a good idea to make a quick recap of the most important ideas and conclusions. This works as a summary of what you have talked about during the last half hour or so and can make a good starting point for a question session.
Keep in mind that people usually best remember the beginning and end of webinar presentations, so make sure you pay extra attention to those two moments. They will strongly influence the overall impression that the audience will leave with.
Give your contact details
This is the last point that you should include in your webinar slides. After the meeting, people may wish to reach out to you for several reasons. The most common practice is to share your email address and social media profiles.
The 7 best webinar presentation tips
How to create a webinar presentation? At first glance, it seems simple: you just pick the topic, set the date, and get on with presenting it. Yet, as you can imagine, the results might not be astonishing by doing only this. Preparing a great webinar presentation requires a bit of skill, but it is not secret knowledge.
If you are wondering how to create a webinar presentation that will be great to deliver, here is a quick checklist.
Know your tool
The first webinar presentation tip is about tools. If you are running your first webinar or testing a new platform, make sure you learn the most important features of the tool before you jump in. This will help ensure that your webinar presentation goes smoothly, and there are no nasty surprises.
This is what a dry run is for. You can safely click on everything and look for required options. Playing around before the webinar means that you can be more confident when leading it.
Also, check how the interface looks from the users’ point of view. Some attendees might have problems with turning on various options, and you should be prepared to help them out.
Double-check your settings
When you lead the webinar for the first time in a given setting, you should definitely check it runs smoothly beforehand. If your camera doesn’t work, or the sound quality is weak, you will still have time to solve the problem.
If we were to choose one factor that causes nightmares before all webinars, it is the quality of your connection. The Internet is vital to be able to run your show, yet you can’t predict if you or your listeners will have problems or not.
Lighting is also important and it matters for the webinar presentation tips. Try to find a location where the light is subtle and doesn’t change a lot during the webinar. You don’t want to have to move or draw the curtains while presenting because the sun has started to shine on your face.
Make sure you check your surroundings. Of course, you won’t be able to predict if your neighbour will start to drill a wall or mow the lawn, but you can look for a seemingly quiet place to lead the webinar.
Engage your audience
The third webinar presentation tip is about the audience. Contrary to regular, offline meetings, webinars make it super easy for your audience to just leave or focus on other things. There’s no one to blame for this: we live in times when literally everything is fighting for our attention, and focusing on one thing for a long period of time has become a real challenge.
Which is why how you run a webinar presentation matters just as much as the material you prepare. Think about how you speak: do you tell stories or use funny examples? Are you going to do all of the talking yourself, or can you initiate a discussion?
In leading a more interactive webinar, the tool you’ve chosen can open new doors for you. LiveWebinar offers various features that can enhance your webinar. Let’s gather a few ideas about how to create a webinar presentation that your audience simply won’t be able to resist.
When you want to boost conversations and engage participants, you can make use of breakout rooms. At the moment of creating them, you are given options to divide people into groups as you wish or to randomize them.
You can also make use of Call-To-Action buttons. They don't always have to be a Buy Now button either. You can encourage people to fill in a survey or proceed to an exercise. The tool lets you prepare tests, polls and surveys to display throughout the meeting.
Get inspired
A good source of information about how to run a webinar presentation is to actually participate in them yourself. You can observe how the slides look or how the presenter engages with their audience. Analyzing what you like and what you would rather avoid will help to shape your own webinar delivery style.
Make it evergreen
Are you familiar with evergreen webinars? If not, it’s high time to become so. Basically, an evergreen webinar has a lot of similarities to a blog post. Your users can access it anytime, anywhere, and it brings you value over time.
Think about how to create a webinar presentation that can be displayed without your presence, no matter when and where the user connects. Its strongest point is flexibility, as users can watch the webinar presentation whenever it suits them. Also, they can pause the video or rewatch it later.
The weak point of this solution is that the audience doesn’t have direct, personal contact with you. It also impacts the way that your webinar slides will look like, as they should be more self-explanatory.
When looking for inspiration on how to run a webinar presentation that can be labelled as evergreen, our guide will come in handy.
Have a global context in mind
Webinars are accessible all over the world, which has various implications in the way they are organized. Make sure you include the time zone when giving schedule details.
Another important aspect is the language you use. When you target your webinar to an international audience, make sure you don’t overuse cultural references and idioms. Your participants may have a different level of the language or come from regions with different dialects.
Make it mobile-friendly
And the last webinar presentation tip talks about mobiles. Did you know that at least 25% of participants actually join your webinars from mobile devices? If you want to check the stats for your case, take a look at whether your webinar platform provider gives you this information. It’s certainly one of LiveWebinar’s extended analytics features.
What does it mean to have a mobile-friendly presentation? First, it should adjust to various screens and preserve quality on desktops, tablets and mobiles. Usually, this depends on the platform you use.
Keep mobile in mind when designing your slides. Avoid walls of texts, small fonts, or low-contrast color choices. Also, make sure you check the visibility on mobiles before you launch.
A few words to finish
Now you know how to create a webinar presentation. You also met our webinar presentation tips. Mastering the art of creating webinar presentations doesn’t happen overnight. Take your time and don’t be discouraged if your first results aren’t satisfactory. Make sure you analyze your performance and look at where there is room for improvement.
Webinars are a great tool to share your experience and tips, build your brand, and sell your products. Yet to get the most out of them, you should use a proper tool. LiveWebinar lets you use its platform without charge with up to five attendees in the room.
You have the great option to test our platform, as you can create a free account in LiveWebinar which is for a lifetime. But remember, it has some limits too.