Let Your Audience Ask Questions Out Loud

Some webinar technology allows audience members to speak up during the webinar. You usually have their microphones turned off (on "mute"), but they can "raise their hand" to ask a question, and you selectively turn on their microphone when they're ready.

Even when this feature is available, many webinar presenters don't use it - perhaps because they fear it will break the flow of the presentation, or raise awkward questions they can't handle. But allowing questions out loud improves the experience for everybody - you, the person asking the question, and other participants. So let's explore the benefits, drawbacks and strategies for making this work in your webinars.

Benefits

• This greatly increases the level of engagement and interactivity for your audience.
• Even people who don't ask questions feel more comfortable when they hear somebody else's voice.
• Some questions require a bit of back-and-forth conversation to clarify the exact question.
• If you don't offer this option, some people just won't bother typing out their question because it will take too long.
• You can use this not only for questions, but at any other time you want audience members to speak.

Drawbacks

• You can't screen the questions in advance.
• You can't control the order in which you answer the questions.
• Some participants will have low-quality microphones, strong accents or distracting background noises that make it difficult to hear and understand them.
• If they are listening to you through their computer speakers (not a headset), when you answer their question, your voice will be picked up by their microphone and fed back to the entire audience, creating a slightly distracting feedback effect.
• Invariably, some participants will have trouble getting their microphone to work at all!

Making it work

If you'd like to take advantage of this feature, while minimising the risks and drawbacks, here are some tips for your webinars.

• Tell them beforehand that you'll be offering this feature, and remind them to get a headset and microphone.
• Log in early and test a few users' microphones before the official start time. This makes them feel more comfortable and confident.
• During your presentation, alert the audience a few minutes before you're stopping for questions (e.g. "After I finish this slide, I'm going to stop for questions."). This helps the audience get their questions ready, and avoids the awkward silence that might otherwise occur.
• Before the webinar, ask a few people you know well to have a question ready, in case nobody else pipes up. You don't need to know their questions in advance; but you do know you won't get complete silence!
• Finally, start small. Practise with small groups and familiar audiences, so that you become comfortable with the technology.

What Not to Do During a Corporate Webinar

I'm not a big fan of showing the presenter's video during a webinar - it's usually unnecessary, distracting to the audience and difficult to get right.

But sometimes you do need it - for example, with a video conference call.

Check out this humorous video that highlights some of the things you need to keep in mind when working with video:

Prepare better - and faster-loading - webinar slides

Today I'm going to cover a subject that many presenters ask about ... Actually, that's not quite right. I should say this is a subject that many presenters get wrong. And they don't ask about it because they don't even realise they are getting it wrong!

What's the subject? Their visuals.

In most cases, this means their PowerPoint and Keynote slides. Depending on your webinar software, you can show other visuals as well. But let's stick with slides for now.

If you're an experienced presenter, you probably know how to create engaging slide shows as visual aids in your presentation. But did you know many of those slide shows just won't work on a webinar?

Why? Because everything you show in your webinar has to be sent across the Internet to your participants. Even though most of them will have broadband access, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll have very fast access (especially in Australia!)

Unfortunately, this means many of the things that first come to mind in enhancing your slide show simply won't work, because they will be too slow when viewed over the Internet:

• Full-size photographs
• Interesting transitions between slides
• Animated movement to illustrate a point on a slide
• Video in a slide

You have to work diligently to simplify your slides as much as possible so they are sent efficiently to your participants. If you don't, it will take a long time to load each slide, which will frustrate your audience and break up the flow of your presentation.

There's a whole chapter about this in the book.

My book Webinar Smarts has an entire chapter ("Prepare Your Slides") about designing good visuals. If you've got the book, I recommend you read it.

I'll highlight here the four most useful things I think you can do to dramatically improve the performance of your slides.

1. Eliminate waste

If something is on a slide purely for decorative purposes, remove it.

This applies especially to photographs, which are often used (appropriately and tastefully) to add impact to a message. But something that works well in a face-to-face presentation can be too slow in a webinar.

2. Shrink pictures

Photos are great! And of course, they are much better than just slides full of text and bullet points. But they are slow to transmit over the Internet.

It's a shame to lose these beautiful photos just because you're doing a webinar! Fortunately, there's a happy balance: The solution is to keep the pictures, but make them smaller so they are sent more quickly over the Internet.

So, if you've got a slide with just a photo and a caption, make the photo smaller, make the caption bigger, and leave a lot of blank space. You'll still get the message across, and it won't slow down the webinar technology.

3. Stop movement

Of course, you should remove any animation that's there purely for decorative purposes. But I assume you're experienced enough not to use this sort of animation anyway.

However, you should carefully examine all other animation, even if it's there for functional purposes, and consider how to remove it. The less animation you use, the faster your slides will load.

4. "Build" slides

There is one type of animation that is acceptable - and very useful - for webinar slides, and that is the idea of a "build" or a "reveal". This is simply where you keep adding bits to a slide as you talk about it.

Fortunately, this doesn't cause any problems at all for the webinar software. Because each step is simply adding to what's already there, the software only has to transmit the bits that have changed on the screen each time - and that's quite fast.

So go ahead and use these slide "builds" to your heart's content, without worrying about any adverse impact on your webinar. In fact, it helps your presentation, because - as with their use in face-to-face presentations - your audience only sees what's relevant to them at the time.

Watch this video tutorial

I also ran a webinar about effective webinar visuals for members of my eGurus Community. We talked about how to plan and build your visuals, and in particular some very cool PowerPoint features for creating attractive graphics quickly.

If you're a member of the eGurus Community, you can watch the recording here.

If you're not a member, you could buy the recording here for $47. But I reckon you should seriously consider joining the eGurus Community instead. For $55 a month, you get access to this and all of my other webinar recordings, as well as a heap of other useful resources for your business. Find out more at eGurus.info.

What to do when your technology fails

Webinar technology - like any technology - isn't 100% reliable. If your technology fails badly, it can be very difficult to continue with the webinar. So as much as possible, prevent this problem by double- and triple-checking the technology before you begin. Do the practice sessions, use a reliable headset, ensure you've got a good Internet connection, and so on.

It's also prudent to put measures in place to manage the problems that might arise - for example:

• If problems occur, do you have somebody else on the webinar who can take over as organiser/presenter?
• If you have a guest presenter, have you asked them for backup material you can present on their behalf if they drop out?
• Have you told your guest presenter to keep an eye on their chat window, so you can send them emergency messages if necessary?
• Do your guest presenters, panellists and even participants have your mobile phone number or your PA's number to call if they get stuck?
• If your visuals fail, do you have a PDF version of your slides you can e-mail to participants (or have already e-mailed to participants)?
• If your audio drops out, do you have an emergency slide to inform participants you're still on the webinar?

Some webinar technology like GoToWebinar also allows you to send chat messages to participants. However, you can't rely on them keeping an eye on their Chat window, whereas they will certainly see this emergency slide.

When THEIR technology fails

Even if you test your technology thoroughly, you can't predict how successful your participants will be when they connect to the webinar. This is less of a problem for the webinar overall, but of course it could be a disaster for those participants who miss out.

Clearly, you should try to minimise or prevent the problems, with things like this:

• Clear instructions before the webinar
• Reminder e-mails that help them prepare for the webinar
• Explaining how the technology works at the start of the webinar
• Multiple options for connecting to the webinar (for example, phone or Internet)

However, this won't eliminate all problems. In fact, no matter how hard you try to coach them, some participants won't read the instructions. This is not necessarily their fault; it could just be they're intimidated by the technology anyway, so they just do what's easiest for them and hope for the best.

So you still need to be able to manage the problems when they occur - for example:

• Record the webinar, and make sure participants know that ahead of time, so if they can't connect at all, at least they know they can watch the recording.
• Give them a phone number to call - yours or your PA's - if they have trouble connecting to the webinar.
• Encourage people to join the webinar at least 10 minutes ahead of time, in case they do have trouble.
• If their microphone isn't working, remind them they can type their question to you (or send it by SMS).

Whatever you do, some participants simply won't be able to get the technology right. So have some way of giving them value - whether it's through a recording, a transcript, a follow-up phone call, or whatever is appropriate.

Watch this video tutorial

Obviously, it's far better to prevent technology problems from happening, rather than having to deal with them when they do happen. So do everything you can to become more comfortable with the technology.

I conducted a webinar about GoToWebinar for members of my eGurus Community. We talked about how to schedule a webinar, how to set it up in GoToWebinar, and how to conduct the webinar itself.

If you're a member of the eGurus Community, you can watch the recording here.

If you're not a member, you could buy the recording here for $47. But I reckon you should seriously consider joining the eGurus Community instead. For $55 a month, you get access to this and all of my other webinar recordings, as well as a heap of other useful resources for your business. Find out more at eGurus.info.

Simple Ways to Survey Your Webinar Audience

I hope you undertstand the importance of understanding your audience's needs and objectives before planning your webinar. But how do you actually do this?

Simple: Ask them!

There are a number of methods you can use for actually doing this survey, depending on your audience and their preferred methods of communication.

First, remember that you don't have to ask the actual people who'll be attending your presentation (though that would be ideal). It's sufficient to survey people in the same sort of market.

Here are some ways to conduct your survey.

Talk to them directly

If you get the chance to talk to your audience members directly, do so! It could be face to face, by e-mail or over the phone. Plan your questions in advance and ask them. If you'll be talking to many of them, prepare the question carefully so you can ask it without stumbling over it.

Conduct an anonymous survey

If you're talking about a controversial topic, it might be difficult to get honest answers from your respondents unless you can assure them of anonymity. In this case, it's difficult to ask your questions by phone or face to face. Ask them to fill in a form and fax it to you, or direct them to a page on your Web site where they complete an anonymous survey.

Conduct a Google survey

If you've got a popular topic and you're willing to spend a small amount of money, you can very quickly get responses from people searching the Internet. You use Google AdWords to create a simple advertisement, which then leads people to a survey page on your Web site.

Run a newsletter survey

If you send a regular e-mail newsletter, use it to survey your readers. Ask your question and ask them to respond to you by hitting the Reply button.

If you have a large newsletter list, you might be overwhelmed by the number of responses. In this case, it might be better for them to click through to a survey page on your Web site. However, for a smaller list, if you think you can handle the replies yourself, just asking them to hit the Reply button makes their life easier - which makes it more likely you'll get a response.

Ask your on-line networks

If you're an active participant in discussions on LinkedIn, Twitter and other on-line communities, ask them for their opinion. This works best if you are an active participant already, because you will have earned the right to ask them for help.

Two Further Tips

It's worth reinforcing the point that you want to send your survey to the people who are like the people who will be attending the webinar. If you send it to the wrong sort of people, you can't rely on the responses, however well-meaning they might be. For example, if you ask a LinkedIn group of colleagues and peers, their responses might not match what your real audience members would say.

Finally, you can increase your response rate by offering an "ethical bribe" - that is, a small gift for people who respond. Some surveys offer only "the chance to win a prize", but it's much better if you can send everybody something - for example, an e-book, special report or MP3 audio program.

Engage Your Audience Early By Answering Their Four Nagging Questions

Today I want to talk about engaging your audience early in your webinar. But I'm not just talking about technical trickery like fancy slides and polls! I'm talking about understanding their frame of mind, so you can join the conversation in their head (as my marketing mentor, Mal Emery, used to say).

In brief, start by assuming everybody is asking these four questions at the start of your webinar:

• Why this? What are the benefits of your offering?
• Why you? What authority do you have for me to believe you?
• Why now? What is the urgency for me to take action?
• Why me? Why is this the right fit for me?

You must answer all four questions in your presentation. If you miss any one of them, at best they'll be distracted during your webinar; and at worst they won't tune in (mentally) at all.

In 2009, I made a presentation at the Thought Leaders conference in Sydney about framing - the importance of creating the right frame of mind in your audience before delivering your message.

You can watch this presentation here (it's only 9 minutes long):

I do talk about this more in the "Design The Flow" chapter in my book Webinar Smarts, so refer to that for more details.

Audience First!

Some presentation skills coaches say that you should speak about something you're passionate about. As important as it is to speak from your own passion, it's far more important to speak about something that matches the audience's passion.

Before you even think about designing your webinar, discover your audience's passion:

• What makes them tick?
• What keeps them awake at night?
• What are their wildest dreams?
• What are their biggest fears?

Then use that as the basis for your presentation.

This doesn't mean you bend like a reed in the wind to cater to every audience's whim. You might be presenting the same core message each time, but you tailor it to ensure you engage each audience.

For example, if you're passionate about saving the rain forests, how would you present that message to a group of fellow environmentalists? What about to a mining consortium? What about to a group of politicians? How about presenting it to a class of high school students? Primary school students? Your fellow workers? You can't just present the same message to everybody - no matter how passionate you are about it!

One of the advantages of webinars is that you can deliver them at low cost and to small audiences. So it is easy to deliver the same webinar over and over again, with minor changes for each audience.

If you know their questions, issues, challenges, problems and concerns before you start, you've got a much better chance of addressing them in your webinar. This doesn't mean you'll tell them what they want to hear. Rather, it means you know their viewpoint before you start.

Apart from simply being more engaging (which is important in itself!), understanding your audience has other benefits:

• You can structure your presentation to address their most important concerns;
• You can be ready for a hostile audience, and for presenting sensitive or controversial material;
• You know their main questions ahead of time, so you won't be caught by surprise with difficult questions;
• If you're not planning to address some of their concerns, you can set the agenda so they know the scope of your presentation;
• They know you've taken the time to understand them (As the saying goes, "They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care");
• Because they have participated in the preparation, they feel a stronger commitment to the presentation;
• Even if they haven't met you, they "know" you before you begin your presentation.

The other big advantage of this approach for webinars is that presenting a webinar can be an unnerving experience the first few times you do it. It can feel like you're speaking to an empty room! But if you've asked your audience beforehand about their needs and objectives, you'll give yourself a psychological head start because you'll "feel" like you're among friends.

More help with asking your market

I realise this might seem a bit theoretical to you, especially if you're not quite sure who specifically would be interested in your webinars. In fact, finding the right market can be half the battle won.

I've created an e-book/MP3 program "Find Your Market", which helps you identify and target key markets in your area of expertise.

If you're a member of the eGurus Community, you can get this in the Market Research section of the eGurus Vault.

If you're not a member, you could buy the program here for $67. But I reckon you should seriously consider joining the eGurus Community instead. For $55 a month, you get access to this and all of my other webinar recordings, as well as a heap of other useful resources for your business. Find out more at eGurus.info.

Webinars Give You a Competitive Marketing Edge

If you're a presenter, I'm guessing you're interested in webinars because you saw the potential to deliver some of your existing material by webinar? If so, great - that's a fabulous use of webinars! But I wonder whether you've considered how you can also use webinars for marketing purposes? Here are six ideas for using webinars to give your business a competitive edge.

1. Value-added loyalty

If you're looking for ways to reward your best and most loyal clients, put on a webinar for them. Webinars are a low-cost high-value way to keep in touch. You provide a valuable service (not just a "just keeping in touch" phone call, which can be an annoying intrusion more than a useful gesture) and demonstrate your on-going value to them.

You don't even have to put on a new webinar for them. If you're already conducting webinars for other reasons, it's easy to invite those loyal clients to attend.

2. Expose value in marketing

In a similar way to the previous point, webinars are an excellent tool for exposing prospective clients to the value you offer. Because they have such a low marginal cost (in other words, it costs nothing to have another attendee on the webinar), why not invite a few key prospective clients to attend every webinar you conduct?

3. Market research

Use webinars not only to deliver material, but also to discover what material is of most interest to your market.

For example, if you're planning to write a book on some area of your expertise, conduct a free webinar beforehand, where you present something of value on this topic, but also take the opportunity to ask your audience to tell you their most pressing questions. In this way, you do your market research before you write the book, which of course means the finished product will be more attractive and compelling to readers.

4. Vertical servicing

One of the keys of successful niche marketing is to stop looking for new clients for your services, and start looking for new services for your clients. For us as experts, this means finding other experts who have valuable information to share with our existing clients, audiences and members.

Put yourself in your client's shoes. Your business is just one small part of their life. What else do they need in their business and their life? When you know this, invite guest experts to present webinars for you. They get exposure to new clients, and you serve your clients better.

5. Joint venture opportunities

Taking this a step further, if you're currently involved in any joint venture partnerships, you can use a webinar to introduce your joint venture partners to your network, and vice versa.

This is an important step in the trust-building process. Unless your partners are hidden in the background and don't need to be known by your network, people will want to know who you're working with. They trust you, so that helps them trust your partners; but introducing the partners to them increases that trust level further.

To introduce your partners, conduct a webinar together with them. You could interview them, they could interview you, or you could make a presentation together. It doesn't have to be as slick and free-flowing as your normal presentations. People want to know they're dealing with real people.

6. Product support

Webinars are ideal for after-sales product support - especially for complex and sophisticated products.

For example, if you have a membership site, run a regular webinar teaching your members how to get the most out of the site. This gives them an overview, helps them focus on the value you've created for them, and allows you to answer their specific questions.

20 Ways to Use Webinars in Your Business

Many webinar presenters are trainers who want to deliver some of their training material by webinar. But there are plenty of other uses of webinars as well.

Here's a short presentation I put together with a number of other ways:

Is a Webinar the Right Tool?

I really do love using webinars in my business. But even I admit that webinars are just one of the tools of electronic communication in modern business life, and sometimes one of the other tools might be more appropriate for your purpose.

To understand where they fit with other electronic communication tools, consider these two criteria for grouping these tools:

• Interaction: How much do the participants get to contribute in the conversation? The level of interaction increases as the number of participants grows, and they have increasing ability to contribute. Books, for example, have low interaction (it's all one way, from the author to the reader); presentations have medium interaction; and discussion groups have high interaction.
• Bandwidth: How many different "channels" are used in the communication? The more senses you engage, the higher the bandwidth because we pick up different communication cues. Books have low bandwidth (just reading words and looking at pictures); telephone calls have medium bandwidth (audio); video has high bandwidth (audio and video).

On the interactive scale, a webinar is fairly interactive, but still has one presenter (you) controlling the environment. On the other scale (bandwidth), a webinar is very high. It's not just written or audio material; it also includes visuals (which don't have to be video, but are still visual).

Let's briefly compare the pros and cons of a webinar with similar communication techniques.

Skype video call

Video telephone calls - using technology such as Skype or NetMeeting - are certainly becoming more common now, for the same reason webinars are becoming more common (faster broadband and better software). However, unlike a webinar, a simple two-way video conference call isn't usually a presentation; it's more likely to be an equal conversation.

Telephone call

The humble telephone call is still one of the most important business communication tools. I won't say much more about it here, because I'm sure you're familiar with telephone calls!

Teleseminar

A teleseminar, like a webinar, also involves one presenter and a group of participants, but it doesn't have the visual component of a webinar. Just a few years ago, teleseminars were far more popular than webinars. But now, as Internet access gets faster and webinar technology improves rapidly, the gap is narrowing.

Video conference

Video conference calls are the group version of the one-to-one video call. Unlike a webinar, where one person (the presenter) does most of the talking, everybody participates equally in the conversation. In other words, it's a meeting rather than a presentation. Leading this call means chairing a meeting, and the skills required are very different from those for webinars.

Conference call

This is similar to the video conference call, except it has no visuals. These types of conference calls are very popular in many business environments, because they are easy to schedule and operate.

Like video conference calls, these are usually used for meetings rather than presentations.

What's right for you?

It depends on your needs! Although webinars are very powerful, and often include some of the features of the less sophisticated services, sometimes those other services might be better for your particular situation.