How to Conduct a Webinar - The Ultimate Guide

Companies all across the globe hosted approximately 627,033 events in 2019. Those automated, on-demand, live webinars gathered an overall audience of 8,504,770.

Yes! That’s the popularity of Webinars. The massively on-demand webinars have been a vital part of the digital world, especially for the business and education industry. However, until recently, after the coronavirus pandemic, the webinar has become a go-to tool for everyone. It is becoming one of the crucial tools for online communication.

The sudden switch to remote work and video conferencing tools helps to increase the demand for this technology. Thanks to a webinar now, you don’t have to leave your home to organize an event, school classes, or international conference.

Before de-coding everything about webinars, let’s find out its definition fast.

What is a Webinar?

A seminar or event that you can host via the internet is widely known as a webinar. This online seminar or event can be business-related and educational. The main purpose of a webinar is to host an interactive session to share your knowledge virtually.

As an organizer of a webinar, you can meet your audience in a virtual conference room with useful tools to present your content to them in an engaging way.

What are The Features of Webinar?

The popularity of webinars has reached the sky-level after the pandemic. Every day probably thousands of virtual conferences with millions of audiences are being conducted all over the world.

According to 99Firms, 57% of marketers conduct 50 webinars per year, 60% of webinars can give you loyal customers. Wait, there’s more! A single webinar can give you around 1000 leads.

So, let’s take a look at the most important features of webinars:

• The webinar room is the place where the webinar or the online event will take place. A webinar room is a virtual conference room with a command center where you can meet your audience for an online event.
• Webinar offers real-time audio, text-based, and video communication.
• In the webinars room, you can show presentations or other files like spreadsheets, text-files graphics, or video materials.
• Here you can engage with the audience by conducting polls, surveys, exams, MCQs, and quizzes.
• You can share, download, or record the entire event and view them afterward.

If you’re looking for a tool with which you can instantly create fun polls and quizzes after your webinar, check out SurveySparrow. From QR codes to web links, there are so many ways you can share your quiz.

The best part? It’s free. Sign up to create your free account.

How to Conduct a Webinar: A Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide

If you are a business person, webinars are the magic tool for you. More than 73% of respondents consider webinars are highly effective to get quality leads.

A webinar is a cost-effective lead generating machine. But if you are still unaware of the power of it and probably living on the rock, then here is the beginner’s guide of how to conduct a webinar like a pro!

Brainstorm a Webinar Topic

Before conducting a webinar, you have to decide on a topic. The nature of your profession will help you to find the topic of your webinar. For example, if you are a restaurant owner, your webinar topic will be related to food.

A great way to brainstorm webinar topics is to ask yourself some questions related to your target audience. Grab a pen and paper or open an online notepad on your laptop to jot down these questions:

• What does your target audience want to learn more about?
• What are the knowledge gaps in your audience?
• What do you think will be valuable and useful to them?

Another easy way to brainstorm topic ideas is to use platforms like Keyword Researcher, Answer the Public, and Google Trends. These platforms will help you to get an idea about what people are talking about. This platform will tell you exactly what people are searching for or enquiring about online.

Select your Webinar Format

The format is super important when you host a webinar. Formats will help you to conduct a webinar according to your own aim and preferences. Do you want to organize an engaging online event with a small group of people or you want to host a webinar with a larger audience? The webinar formats will help you to decide everything.

Now a lot of people get stage fright thinking about giving a solo presentation. If you are one of them, the interview style format is your rescue force. In this format, you can conduct a quiz session with your colleague or host a small panel discussion with some experts in your area.

Here’s a heads up, if you are hosting a webinar with a larger audience it’s useful to have a moderator to handle the technical site, filter participant questions, and manage the webinar while you are presenting.

Create Your Webinar Content

When you are all set with the topic and format of the webinar, it’s time to plan the content. When you know the topic and the aim of your online seminar, it won’t consume much time to create a content outline.

While planning out, your webinar content, don’t forget to keep a visual presentation on your list. Your audience may feel bored if your online seminar is all about talking. Make sure to use graphics, pictures, charts, stats, and graphs to hook your audience and entice them.

Plan out the time limit and duration of each segment before hosting your webinar. Try not to cross the time limit and host a small question-answer session at the end of your webinar to clear the doubts of your audience. To help keep you organized in this stage, you can make use of a task management software like Asana or Airtable.

Choose a Perfect Platform

There are many webinar platforms available out there in the market. From Google+ Hangout to Zoom, you will get lots of free options to host a perfect webinar. Before choosing the perfect platform, make sure to check a few factors:

• Number of people it can accommodate
• It has a screen share function
• It has recording and slide sharing functionality
• It is able to ask questions to the participants
• The platform is cost-effective

If you are wondering how to conduct a free webinar, then Zoom is the perfect pick. It will enable you the doorway to your virtual event in minutes. With HD video interaction and HD dynamic voice detection Zoom offers both full screen and gallery display. The best part about Zoom is it offers some awesome features like Closed captions, Automatic transcriptions, Keyboard accessibility, and  Screen reader support.

Select Your Preferred Date & Time

Whether you are doing educational or business webinars, it’s important to select proper date and time. While most of the people prefer to host webinars during the working days, some people like to attend weekend webinars more.

Whatever time you choose, make sure the date and timings are matching with your audiences’ schedules.

Promote Your Webinar Effectively

It’s crucial to promote your webinar to enjoy all the benefits of it. You can set up an event page and online processing registration to promote your webinar. Also, leverage several social media platforms like Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter to invite the audience.

However, the best way to promote something is by giving real value. It’s important to provide something valuable to your audience, don’t try to sell something directly. Before promoting your webinar, write a clear event description or an agenda of topics to be discussed in your webinar.

If your webinar offers something valuable and useful, you can charge a minimal ticket fee from your audience. Charging a minimal fee will ensure the participants of some dedicated and serious audience.

Run A Practice Webinar Session

It’s always better to be ready beforehand, that’s why schedule a practice webinar session to ensure everything goes perfect on the day of the event. In this practice session, you can familiarize yourself with all the presentations and technologies.

A practice webinar session will help you to understand how the event will be visible to your audience. Also, you have to do is check your computer’s microphone to ensure everyone can hear you before going live.

How to Host a Webinar on Zoom

After the pandemic zoom webinar became a buzzword instantly, with access for up to 100 panelists and 10,000 attendees, Zoom became a household name. From branding, registration, Q7A, polls, chat, recording, and reporting Zoom offers some amazing features to its users.

If you are thinking about how to conduct a webinar on Zoom for the first time, then here’s an easy step-by-step guide for you.

Step 1. Sign in to Your Zoom Account and then select “My Webinars.”

Step 2. Click on the “Schedule My Webinar” option. First, fill up the webinar topic name and description box. In the description box, Include the subject matter, who will present the webinar, your company name, and any other information you want to add.

Then enter the date, time, and duration. Decide whether you want your webinar to be recurring or not. If it’s a recurring webinar, then mention the intervals.

Step 3. Next, select the registration option. Under the “Invite Attendees,” click on the edit option. The attendees can be “required to register” a form, or they “aren’t required to register” via a form.

You can choose the registration option according to your own preference. If you are planning to follow up with the attendees after the webinar “requiring them to register” is the best option for you. This will help you to learn more about your attendees.

Step 4. You can access the Q & A Settings by selecting the “Webinar Options” then “Q&A,” and finally select “Schedule.”

Q&A feature helps you to ask questions to your audience during the Zoom webinar. You can enable and disable this feature according to your own choice. Moreover, when the feature is enabled, you can make the Q&A anonymous.

Step 5. Next, you can select from a few webinar options. Zoom webinar allows you to record the webinar automatically, you can turn on or off the host’s and panelists’ video, make webinars available on-demand, etc.

Step 6. You can save your registration as a template for conducting the future online event. This feature is helpful for live roundtable webinar series and weekly product demos.

Step 7. Now you are all set to publish your webinar! Copy the URL and share it with your audiences through Email, Twitter, Linkedin, and various other social media platforms. If TikTok is your platform, create a short video to introduce the webinar topic and share the link. Get followers who can share your video to get more registrations

Once you are ready to go live with your audience, you can follow these smart tips to make the webinar successful.

•  Use social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and email to spread awareness about your Zoom webinar. Encourage your friends, colleagues, connections, and business network to promote the webinar. Linkedin Groups are another great platform to promote the webinar and invite audiences.
•  Before the main event, make sure you have set aside at least 15 minutes for a Q&A session.
• Before starting your webinar, arrange all the slides into one single file, so you don’t have to search for documents during the webinar.
• If you want to record the webinar, enable the option “Record the webinar automatically in the cloud” under the Webinar Settings.
• Before the webinar, determine whether you want to send reminder emails to all your attendees or not. You can set when and how many reminder emails you want to send to your attendees—for example, 1hr, one day, or one week before the main virtual event.
• Finally, no matter how perfectly planned your webinar, things could go wrong. You could lose the Wi-Fi connection, electricity, or maybe you face some technical errors. When things go wrong, just take it easy and remember the show must go on!

 What are the Advantages of Conducting a Webinar?

Already feeling overwhelmed and thinking about what advantages you will get after hosting a webinar? Well, here are some benefits to convince you why webinars are best for you:

No Need to Worry about the Costs: A webinar will save all the cost of a traditional seminar. Traditional seminars consume lots of money, time, and planning, while webinars are cost-effective. Most of the webinars are free of cost and provide loads of value to the audiences and businesses. Hosting a webinar can be a win-win situation for you and your audiences.

Webinars are Convenient: You can conduct a webinar online, it will allow you and your audience to enjoy the online event from the comfort of their home. The Gadgets and equipment required for a webinar are easy to get. All you need is a stable internet connection to connect with your audience and host the webinar.

Webinars are Engaging: Webinars are far more interactive and engaging than traditional seminars. From polls and surveys to questionnaires, there are several options to keep your audience glued to their computer screen. Webinars allow you to host a larger audience and personalize it accordingly.

Build Your Brand: Webinars are the best option to build your brand. You can promote your business’s brand image by conducting a quality webinar and providing value to audiences. If you can present a quality image of your business with the help of webinars, you will get recognition, new connections, and much more.

Reach a Worldwide Audience: You can easily reach a larger audience from all over the world with the help of a webinar. You don’t have to invest in travel costs to host a seminar in another country.

Lead Generating Tool: Webinars are known as one of the greatest lead generating tools. In order to participate in a webinar, an audience has to register first. This will help you to gather a long list of data about your potential customers or clients. You can also turn your audience into potential customers by selling your products while educating them about it.

 Final Thoughts

Webinars can be your go-to tool for all your marketing needs. From brand-building to generating leads, every business person and marketers take the advantages of webinars.

To host a super-effective webinar, always listen to your audience, play with your presentation strengths, follow up with the audience, and ask them for their feedback. For the same, you can send surveys or polls to your audience using SurveySparrow’s feedback tool. After collecting the feedback, make sure you close the loop by repurposing your webinar content accordingly. That will make all the difference!

If you follow this guide, you will increase the chance of hosting a webinar that everyone will love. For more inspiration for your webinar, you can check out our Webinars section here: surveysparrow.com/webinars

So, go on host your first webinar, and don’t forget to tell us how it goes in the comment section!