Communicating big ideas to large groups of people has become more accessible to implement than ever. In 2020, webinars have become a vital tool for any type of business, big or small, niche or mainstream.

Webinars can be used to communicate with your clients, improve your online visibility, and are a great idea for ongoing training and support at every level.  

At SiteWyze, our team uses the Zoom Webinar add-on which allows us to live–stream up to 100 people at a time. For many small or medium–sized businesses, this should be sufficient. With Zoom or any webinar software, there are a variety of tips-and-tricks that help maximize your communication effectiveness. Below, we’ve categorized several of the ideas that we have taken up and utilized. These are “field–tested” and have benefitted our webinar presentations, so we want to share them with you.   

Let’s dive right in!  

When Creating Your Webinar

  • Remember to use a simple graphic for the webinar details page. This details page is the one that will be sent to your potential participants and you want to attract their attention to the subject of what they can expect during their time with you. 
  • Remember to restrict the number of attendees. When you restruct the number of attendees, it creates a sense of urgency for participants to remember to register in time, and allows you to keep the group small for manageable Q&A periods. Your clients will appreciate your attention. 
  • Remember to set guidelines around people’s images being seen. When you are hosting a professional webinar, you do not want unprofessional or too-casual images to be displayed from your participants. And since not everyone realizes that this visual information is available to the whole group, it is best to put a restriction in place. 
  • Remember to set the ability to a private or public Q&A session after the webinar is done. 
  • Zoom allows you to send automated feedback requests to people to register for the webinar. 
  • Remember to record/store your webinar for future viewing, especially if you are doing training or support webinars. 

When Promoting Your Webinar

  • Use a mail system like MailChimp to send out webinar notifications to all your contacts and include a registration button in the newsletter itself. A button ensures users don’t need to click the webinar page before they can register. 

Determine Your Visuals

If a person speaking, be mindful of things like: 

  • Lighting: always have the light in front, not behind, you. Avoid sitting in front of, or to the side, of windows. 
  • Camera positioning: never at chin level (i.e. your laptop’s webcam perspective); rather, have a webcam (preferably with stabilizing technology) up higher. 
  • Always practice on camera first. Be mindful of hygiene, your clothing, modesty, and distracting or unprofessional visuals in the background. 

If You’re Using a PowerPoint Presentation

  • Remember to show the presentation screen only. To make sure you’re only streaming the presentation (rather than your camera or desktop), login to the webinar on your phone or another device and check. 
  • Remember to show the PowerPoint title slide as people are entering the webinar. 
  • Just in case, ensure the desktop of your computer screen is “clean” with an appropriate and professional background image, and all personal desktop files/folders are removed (try moving them to your main hard drive). 
  • Ensure your PowerPoint graphics are professional and clear in their messaging. 
  • Ensure you have your website address in the lower portion of your PowerPoint, small and discrete, at all times. 

After Your Webinar

  • Upload your webinar (or link it) to a streaming service (like YouTube or Vimeo). Set restrictions around commenting – you don’t want to risk unprofessional commenting on your materials. 
  • Write a blog article summarizing your webinar and post to your website. 
  • Schedule a follow–up email via MailChimp (or your normal email service) to ALL contacts, inviting them to view your webinar (include social viewing link) in case they missed it. 
  • Offer a link to the blog post summary on your website. 

Sharing Is Caring

  • Post your webinar links to your social media platforms. 

Webinars can be an extremely helpful tool for your business. With these basic tips, you’ll be well on your way to getting your message out to your clients, your team, or both. We’re excited to learn if these tips have helped you, so send us a message to express how you were able to utilize some of these suggestions. 

If you have any other insights we should include in this article, if we missed something, or if you have an idea for a type of webinar SiteWyze should host, send us an email to let us know!