5 Tips For Delivering a Great Webinar

Earlier this week I launched the 2013 Monthly Fuel series to the agents and managers from across the country at Atlantic & Pacific Real Estate. Each month I take 60 minutes to share updates and discuss various topics with our network. It is one of the favorite parts of my job.

Like most people who do regular presentations to large groups of people I’m always trying to find ways to make the webinars more interesting and informative. Delivering material via web conference offers a particular disadvantage over a live face to face audience because you don’t get that immediate feedback of looking at people. The visual clues that let you know your message is being received and even enjoyed are not available. It’s a little bit like presenting in a dark room.

One of the techniques I’ve learned for this type of broadcast is the importance of keeping the content quick paced and snappy! Keeping people’s attention on a webinar is a big task. There are just too many distractions. I know when I’m in “listen only mode” I’m usually just a second away from “tune out mode”.

So I’m experimenting with a new format. I called it 10 Things You Need to Know. Each month I’ll share 10 Things during the call. This makes it easy for the audience to follow along and know exactly where we are in terms on content. They start to do the countdown with me… thing #7, thing #8, etc. Another advantage of this format is that is allows me to do quick summaries of the overall session content.

Along the way I look for different opportunities to engage the listeners. I use the typical polling and chatting features that webinar tools offer and have added give aways and social media calls to action. My theory is the more engagement I can encourage the better the overall experience for the listener is likely to be.

I was delighted to get some great feedback from this call and I’m already planning my February broadcast!

If you hold webinars I’d recommend these 5 tips:

And my bonus tip would be to practice, practice, practice. I’m always complimented when people tell me how natural I sounded during a presentation. Sometimes they even tell me how lucky I am that I can speak publicly with such ease. What people don’t realize is that I prepare and practice and that’s what gives me the confidence to come across so naturally. But I’ll take the compliments and know that my hard work was worth it!