Webinar Wire

6 Weeks To A Great Webinar

Posted by Ken Molay October 20 2009 4:40 PM EST

Wayne Turmel of Greatwebmeetings.com has written a book called 6 Weeks To A Great Webinar (available on Amazon). It ships as a paperback, but I read the electronic version.

Wayne concentrates purely on public marketing / lead generation webinars. His approach is highly pragmatic, laying out specific tasks that need to be accomplished on a timeline, starting from six weeks before your scheduled webinar.

One of the most useful features in the book is his inclusion of checklists and templates that are ready for a webinar producer to copy, revise, and use. For instance, Wayne not only gives you tips on what types of things you should include in your invitation and follow-up emails, he actually writes out sample text, with fill-in-the-blank spots for your information.

This is a great way for business webinar producers to get organized and to make sure they don't overlook any of the myriad small details that can cause panic if forgotten during the planning and production process.

As far as the recommendations in the book, I can't think of any more flattering thing to say than it sounds like one of my own lectures on the topic! :)

As I read the book, I made a few mental notes about how I might flip the order of a few tasks, or in certain cases I would leave something out as unimportant, or I might change the timing on one item or another. Then at the end, I read Wayne's final note about his advice:

"This system is designed to be a living document, not written in stone. Our goal was to give you the basic skills and knowledge to put on a webinar event. To use a musical analogy, we’ve taught you the scales - it’s up to you to play jazz. Change it, ignore it, use your own best practices and continually get better at what you do."

So now what do I complain about?

All joking aside, this is a terrific resource for people just getting started with webinars, those seeking to add more organization and planning to their programs, or even experienced webinar producers who want to check their approach against industry best practices.

Nice job, Wayne!