How to Host a Webinar: Step-by-step Guide [2022]
Virtual events have long since overshadowed live, especially larger events. Webinars have become the primary way of holding cost-effective employee meetings, annual educational seminars, and much more.
Therefore, hosting webinars has become a necessary skill. In this article, you will learn all tips and tricks to have a successful webinar session that everyone will want to attend.
What is Webinar? Meaning & Definition
A webinar is a seminar, workshop, video presentation, or any typically live interactive event held online using the webinar software. The reason why webinars have become globally popular is that they are practical in a way live seminars could never be—starting with the fact that they don’t require presence in person, which results in no travel and accommodation expenses.
Next, gathering people in one place can be an organizational nightmare. On top of that, if you’re dealing with attendee limits because of the limited space, webinars are a superior solution. They can be held regarding time differences in various areas globally.
Even if the people can’t be present in real-time, a webinar has the option of sending the recording to attendees. Now, let’s take a look at some steps which you can take to improve your webinar hosting skills.
How to Host a Webinar Like a Professional
Hosting webinars doesn’t have to be intimidating or complicated. There are a few simple steps to follow if you want to host a webinar like a professional.
Choose a Webinar Platform
First of all, choose a user-friendly webinar platform like WebinarIgnition. When choosing the best platform, look for a variety of features. Video webinar capabilities, designs, viral sharing, and more must be a part of a good webinar platform. Choose the one that best suits your needs and budget.
Find a Presenter and a Topic To Discuss
An excellent presenter is equally essential as a great and relevant topic. When searching for a suitable speaker, look for experts in their field. Guest speakers are just as important. This way, your webinar will be engaging, interesting and won’t lack any authority.
Also, explore if the webinar platform offers a co-host option to share responsibility and facilitate technical matters.
Schedule a Date and Time For Your Webinar
Although perfect time and date are a bit less important when it comes to webinars regarding live seminars; they still have an impact. When dealing with the date and time matters, don’t forget to take time zones and differences into consideration.
Create Your Webinar Content
When creating content for webinars, the most crucial thing to think of is the potential webinar audience. Other than that, it’s also essential to match the content to your brands’ vision and design.
Type of webinar also plays a role when creating webinar content. For example, educational webinars won’t be the same as interactive webinars. Whatever the webinar, make sure you have a great script and think of all possible scenarios for your presentation.
Invite and Promote Potential Attendees
Once you make a possible attendee list with names of attendees, you can send invitations to attendees and promote your future webinars that way. You can also promote it via social media, guest posts, blog posts, and more to attract prospective attendees.
Expert Tips: Before Running and Hosting a Webinar
Practice Run
To have a successful webinar, it’s advisable to run your webinar before the actual webinar event. Check on the little event details like proper background, clear voice, and such. Some webinar platforms even have a practice session option, so everything goes smoothly in real-time.
Time to host your Webinar
When it’s time to host your webinar, send to invitation link. To avoid having boring webinars and instead of becoming famous for engaging webinars, make sure your audience participates. Find a way to make it amusing and engaging. And, of course, record the whole webinar.
Analyze Results
For an even more successful webinar in the future, you should analyze the results of your previous webinars. This refers to the metrics such as the number of people who filled the registration forms and were attendees to webinars against the absent attendees.
Make a Follow-Up
Once the webinar is done, you now have a new people base you have to attend to. Make a list of all the new contacts and email addresses to reach out to in the future.
How to Make a Final Conclusion After Hosting Webinar
After hosting a webinar it’s useful to make some final conclusions about the audience so you can improve attendance in the future.
Thank the audience
You can thank your audience for participating via email. While you’re at it, provide them with the direct link to record webinars. You can also include some interesting blog posts or videos in accordance with webinar content.
Measure their interest
When it comes to measuring the interest there are more ways to do it. A quick survey is usually the way to go, but if you want to measure the interest of your attendees in more dept, try a customized post-webinar survey.
Take note of the people who did not attend
Pay attention to the people that didn’t attend, even though they filled the registration for webinars. Make sure you send them a recorded webinar video with a friendly note like “In case you still want to watch”.
Why Hosting a Webinar is Essential & Their Benefits
There are plenty of benefits to hosting a webinar.
A few of the main ones include:
Remarkable Value Delivered
Face-to-face meetings such as business conferences in a global company can get quite expensive when you consider the travel and accommodations costs. With webinars, everyone can stay in their own city office, or even better, home.
Allows you to be an Expert in your field
With webinars, you can share your knowledge and create opportunities for attendees. If done right, this will position you as a leading expert in your field.
Higher Sales Less Work
An effective webinar can directly increase sales without a lot of work. You can use webinars as a strategy to present your product or services to people who aren’t in your area and are still skeptical about it.
Breaking Geographical Barriers
The main advantage of webinars is that they can connect people all over the world. For example, the Zoom platform can accommodate 10000 people and more. You’ll surely never reach your maximum meeting capacity.
Frequently Asked Questions About How To Host a Webinar
Can they see you during a webinar?
Depending if you turn on or off your camera, there is also a button that allows you to disable your camera at any moment.
How much does it cost to host a webinar?
Hosting a webinar can be free of charge. Still, if you want to use great webinar platform features you might have to pay some fee.
Can you participate with the speaker in a webinar?
Yes, you can.
Do I need to be on camera for a webinar?
If you do not find it necessary, then no. But, bear in mind that people love to see who’s talking.
What’s the difference between webinar and zoom?
A webinar is a seminar, workshop, video presentation, or any typically live interactive event that is held online using the webinar software. Zoom is just a web conferencing platform. You can use Zoom to host webinars.
What are the benefits of hosting a webinar?
There are multiple benefits to hosting a webinar such as remarkable value delivered, becoming an expert in your field, higher sales less work, breaking geographical barriers…
