Webinar Wire

Video Clips In Webinars

Posted by Ken Molay January 14 2009 11:26 PM EST

It's time for another answer to our Top Webinar FAQs. Today's question concerns the use of video clips as part of your webinar content.

I'm referring here to playing a prerecorded video snippet for the audience rather than using webcam video of a presenter (that was FAQ number 4, answered previously).

Your first concern is whether your web conferencing technology supports videos as content. Some do, but many do not. Most of the technologies that identify themselves as focusing on "webcasting" (ON24, Stream57, and others) support video content, as they are designed for carrying high bandwidth data to large audiences. Some of the vendors concentrating on "webinars" also handle video. WebEx Event Center and Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro are two examples. Most of the technologies designed for "collaborative meetings" (such as DimDim) will not allow you to show video content.

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Getting A Webinar Audience

Posted by Ken Molay January 13 2009 4:57 PM EST

1 comment

I have been procrastinating on answering the next question in our webinars top ten FAQ list. The question comes through in different ways when asked by different people, but it boils down to a common theme -- "How do we get people to attend our webinar?" This is one of those things that can be asked succinctly, but can't be answered succinctly. I am overwhelmed trying to come up with an answer that has value, but doesn't come across as a college course on marketing.

First and most importantly, your content has to be worthy of an audience. You can't market your way to an audience if the subject matter isn't relevant or interesting to them. No company in the world has more money, resources, and expertise in marketing than Coca Cola. Yet we aren't sitting around drinking New Coke today. Marketing alone couldn't "get people to come."

You don't just need quality content. You need to promote that content in a way that gives people a reason to spend their time on your event. "New Regulations For 2009" may be incredibly valuable information for your audience. But they can't tell that from the title. It sounds like you could be regurgitating the same bullet point list of regulations they can get by looking up a government website. You need to continually emphasize the benefit and value that your audience will receive by attending. So the title should be something like "How New Regulations Impact Your Business." Make it personal, make it relevant, make it important.

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Live vs. Recorded Webinars

Posted by Ken Molay January 8 2009 5:03 PM EST

It's time for another topic in our top ten Webinar FAQs. Today I'll look at the question of whether live or recorded webinars are more effective.

I'll bet you know what's coming... Another wishy-washy answer. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages, and only you can judge which aspects are most important for you (or what constitutes "effective" for your goals).

Live webinars are usually better at establishing a psychological relationship between the presenter and the audience. A good presenter who "works the crowd" establishes rapport and credibility while adding interactive elements and responding directly to audience members' interests. Audience members also get a sense of exclusivity and being a part of an event. They are there with others who have similar interests at a one-time happening. All of this tends to make people a bit more receptive.

As a presenter, you have the opportunity to poll your audience, read their chat questions and comments, and respond accordingly. This can help you with focus, identifying places where the audience may be confused or disinterested and allowing you to adjust your emphasis.

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Phone vs. Keyboard Q&A

Posted by Ken Molay January 6 2009 10:23 AM EST

2 comments

Today's topic gets us to the halfway point on our top ten list of Webinar FAQs. "Does Q&A work better over the phone or through typed questions?"

The answer is going to look suspiciously similar to my answer about using video of the presenter. Letting the audience ask questions by voice adds immediacy and a sense of personal interactivity to your session. In small group meetings or small classroom settings this is definitely the way to go. You want to encourage a conversation with a small audience.

But I am not a fan of taking telephone questions in a large audience webinar or a presentation given to the general public. Here are the reasons:

1) Control over what gets asked. When looking at questions coming in via typed chat, you can pick and choose which questions to address in which order. If you see the same question coming from many different people, you can answer it first and elect to spend more time on it. If you see a question that is highly specific to one person or something that is counterproductive, you can elect to skip it.

2) Seed questions. If things are going slowly in a telephone Q&A, you can't pretend to have a caller. You have to be obvious about asking one of your own questions. And then you never know whether you still have a lot of interest or nobody waiting in the queue. You might be rambling on, filling time, while real questionners impatiently wait for their turn. When you see the list of questions in a chat queue, you know when the queue is empty and you can read off one of your seed questions as if it came from the audience -- no one is the wiser. Similarly, you can see when you start getting real questions again and can jump back to them more quickly.

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Using Presenter Video

Posted by Ken Molay January 5 2009 11:58 AM EST

2 comments

Welcome back from the holiday break! It's time to continue our series of responses to Webinar FAQs with a tricky one: "Should you use video of the speaker?"

Quite a few web conferencing software vendors promote their ability to show video feeds. It's marketing catnip and many companies get very turned on by the idea.

Showing video of the speaker adds psychological connection between the audience and the presenter. It's more personable, and it gives people something to look at when a static PowerPoint slide begins to lose interest (something that usually happens after 15 seconds or so). Humans are very good at reading facial expressions and subtle nonverbal cues, which a good speaker can use to facilitate communication.

I like adding "talking head" video in small team collaborative meetings... For instance, a departmental status meeting, a brainstorming session, or a round table. Presenter video can also be helpful in training and education, where the instructor can create a greater sense of cohesion and empathy with the students by appearing on camera.

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Webinar Days And Times

Posted by Ken Molay December 24 2008 9:54 AM EST

In response to the webinar FAQ on which days and times work best for webinars, I'll reference a detailed answer I gave on Webinar Wire earlier this year. I did a survey of webinar attendees and asked them to specify days and times as great, good, or bad for viewing webcasts. To nobody's surprise, the winners were Tuesday through Thursday mid-day to afternoon.

When asked which single day you would most like to attend a webinar, Tuesday won. But the surprise was that many people chose Friday! So don't be scared of scheduling an event for a Friday morning (Friday afternoon is another matter... Don't try it). And Mondays are always a bad idea.

You can see the raw survey data in the link given in the previous post.

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Recommended Webinar Length

Posted by Ken Molay December 23 2008 9:15 AM EST

3 comments

I'm continuing responses to Webinar FAQs with a look at "How long should a webinar be?"

The most common length for a public webinar is 60 minutes. It's easy to block out on a calendar and it "just seems natural." But there's nothing magical about 60 minutes. One of my favorite tricks is to schedule a webinar for 45 minutes (as suggested by Cece Salomon-Lee in her comment to the original post). This gives attendees time before their next meeting to prep, get coffee, go to the bathroom, or whatever. And in a case where your Q&A is going long because of great interest, people are often more willing to stay with you up to the next hour division.

By the way, people do NOT feel shortchanged if you give them some short, directed information in a 20 or 30 minute block. You might try doing a series of these shorter events. It can keep people coming back to your site and gives your audience a chance to spread the word to their colleagues to attend subsequent sessions (after they see what a great job you do). Shorter, targeted deliveries also work much better as recorded archives.

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Graphics For Slides

Posted by Ken Molay December 22 2008 11:55 AM EST

This post marks the first in a series of responses to Webinar FAQs, as culled from many public educational webcasts.

Today's question is "Where do you find good graphics for your slides?"

My personal favorite resources for graphics are www.istockphoto.com and www.dreamstime.com - Both these sites feature millions of photos that you can download for a small fee and then use in your presentations without further royalty payments. The big challenge is finding the right search terms to get to the photo you want.

The two sites are almost identical in operation. You purchase a pack of credits (around $1 per credit, with discounts for larger packs). Then each photo download costs you from 1-10 credits. Smaller photos or lower resolutions cost fewer credits than large, high resolution photos. Here's a tip... For on-screen viewing, a low resolution 96 dpi picture is all you need. And an image size of 800x600 is plenty. Be careful of saving money by buying a tiny picture and then trying to expand it to fill the slide. Blowing things up reduces image quality. You can always scale down a larger picture more safely.

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Webinar FAQ

Posted by Ken Molay December 18 2008 11:08 AM EST

4 comments

I just reviewed my calendar for this year. In 2008 I gave 21 free public educational sessions on webinar tips and best practices. I worked with vendors such as Adobe, Arkadin, Citrix, Glance, iLinc, ReadyTalk, and Vcall. Combined audiences numbered in the thousands.

In all those talks, certain audience questions came up time and again. These truly are "Frequently Asked Questions." To be honest, some of them surprise me. I didn't think these would be seen as the most important or the most confusing for business people, but that shows the importance of listening to the audience instead of making assumptions about what they want to hear.

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Marketinars or How webinars can help market your services

I am often asked the question, “How can web-conferencing help me generate business?” when I introduce myself and say what I do for a living. I don’t usually find enough time to explain it thoroughly in a couple of sentences. I know my “elevator pitch” about web conferencing in general and what omNovia does, but it takes a little more time to analyse the impact of webinars on your marketing results. So let me take a shot at it here. I hope others will relate their experiences and share their ideas.

I’d like to introduce here the notion of “active marketing” as opposed to the traditional ad-based “passive marketing”.

When you mass-mail or mass-email ads to thousands and millions of people or when you spend a fortune posting billboards or banners on different web sites, you are hoping that some will notice your message and will eventually call a number or click the mouse. This is a “passive” approach, as you have no way of interacting with your prospects. Once they do contact you, the “sales phase” begins, whereby you try to “close the deal”.  Here is why this process is inefficient:

• Supporting a large number of 1-on-1 phone calls is expensive and results vary based on the quality of the sales person; and
• Automated web-site sales processes (online brochure + shopping-cart) are not personal enough and do not lead to the same results as talking with a sales person

Typically a conversion rate of 3% is considered a successful outcome. Conversion rate is the number of people who actually end up buying your product over the number of people who saw the initial ad.

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