To be successful in business, employees and employers need to be constantly educating themselves on changing technology and tools. A great way to keep up to date is through attending webinars. Webinars are also a great tool for informing your clients on new finds or topics. It is cost effective and interactive at the same time.
Love or hate them, you need to get used to them. It is estimated that the usage of virtual events will continue to grow 56% through 2015. Webinars allow you to reach a larger audience. Individuals can view them in real time or on their own time through recordings. They also eliminate the need for travel to participate in a live session or question and answer period.
Benefits:
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Able to offer a broader array of content and niche content
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Can monitor attendee engagement
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Helps with building your list of contacts
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Can use webinars for a variety of events: tradeshows, internal training, community building, education-based marketing, etc.
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Increase traffic to your website
If you are conducting a webinar, be sure to measure your success. You can do this by keeping track of the following: number of attendees, attendee engagement, qualified leads, number of new leads, or other metrics that relate to your business.
There are a few things to do before and after the webinar:
Prior to webinar:
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Prepare content
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Pre-record events and speakers
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Use many promotional channels-emails, social media, white papers
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Accommodate different time zones
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Encourage interaction
Post Webinar:
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Offer on-demand access
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Immediate follow up surveys
Different Mediums for Presenting:
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Lectures: Moving from the traditional classroom setting to the virtual world. If you are creating a virtual lecture make sure to make online education interactive, offer numerous opportunities for interaction between attendees, and be sure to display your offerings in an organized and navigable way.
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Open Discussion: These are used to discuss certain topics or questions. It can be a live discussion which is open to anyone around the world. It allows people to voice their opinions and learn from each other. These are often used in social media to learn more about your consumers or answer any consumer questions.
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Live Feed: This is a live presentation given at a scheduled date and time. It allows the presenter to react and respond to the audience. It also makes this more enjoyable for the audiences as they will be able to have their questions answered immediately.
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Slides: A slide presentation allows for the presenter to create this beforehand. It also allows the audience to view the content beforehand or send the deck out immediately following the presentation. While it is less interactive the slide focused webinar allows a lot of information to be shared in a minimal amount of time.
Mediaspace Solutions holds webinars/executive briefings to educate our marketplace on the current events in media. Many of our webinars focus on how strategic companies can model businesses that have been successful and how their marketing mix is contributing to that success. It helps create rapport and keeps our business top of the mind. It also allows the rest of our staff to stay up-to-date on our industry.
If you are new to webinars, this is a great video to help you get started:
Looking for a virtual meeting provider? Check out some of the options below:
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