If you’ve ever worried about presenting a webinar, you’re not alone. The possibility of a deafening silence in the comments when you ask a question, is enough to discourage people from even considering running a webinar. Let’s cover how to make webinars more engaging!
Because webinars were created to be engaging to captivate, compel and convert. The best versions are a collection of like-minded people in a room on a topic they are all interested in. How could that NOT be engaging? Well, it all depends on the presenter. So let’s look at how to make webinars more engaging.
- You know EXACTLY what you don’t want to be.
- The boring lecture version of a webinar, mono-tone, sending everyone to sleep.
- The boss where presenter is the expert and everyone else better listen up, turn off the distractions, get your pen & paper ready.
- The crammer where you can barely keep you because they talk a million miles an hour and there are six hundred slides.
- Or maybe you don’t want to be the presenter who reads every comment and trying to follow their helpful content is like sticking a shredded piece of paper back together.
So with the three crucial elements we’ll cover in this blog, you’ll know exactly how to create a captivating webinar.
Because the most engaging webinar is the one where the presenter gets to shine, the audience and the presenter are connected and the examples are relevant, and everyone is invited to participate.
The least engaging webinar is one where the presenter feels they have to be something they aren’t. Where they think they need to follow a prescribed formula in order to achieve the outcome. A step-by-step, fill-in-the-blank version of a webinar (insert joke here, insert audience comment here, insert truth bomb here).
Let’s outline the crucial elements that define a great webinar.
Embracing Your Style
A webinar allows your audience to move closer to you, to deepen their level of know, like and trust. You want to present yourself in a way that is natural and authentic. It’s the same with videos, edited to within an inch of its life, no natural pauses, or ums and ahs is NOT how you work with people in real life. It’s not the real you.
We each have different styles when it comes to presenting that fall into five main categories; educator, influencers, engager, rebel and entertainer.
- Educators value knowledge and information and love sharing that, your webinar ideas focus around sharing what you know and what you’ve learnt – particularly information/strategy or concepts.
- Influencers love storytelling and inspiring others because if you can then they can too. Your webinars ideas focus on sharing your story, what and how you’ve achieved and overcome challenges.
- Engagers value community and building connection with people. Your webinars are focus around audience participation and engagement, reading the comments is mandatory.
- Rebels love the unconventional and being memorable and unique. Your webinars ideas focus on talking about subjects others might avoid or in ways that others don’t know.
- Entertainers value humour and a sense of fun and lightheartedness. Your webinars ideas take heavy and serious subjects and make them more approachable and focus on enjoyment.
Working with your natural style will help you to harness your natural strengths and shine during a webinar – which is engaging for you and your audience. But you need to make sure those strengths don’t become the sole focus of the webinar because that is it becomes too much of one thing and not enough variety.
Crafting Compelling Content
Engaging content is set at a level that your audience can understand. This starts with understanding your audience so you can make it relevant. There’s no point using dentistry examples if you have a room full of accountants. There’s no point talking about quantum physics in a room full of English teachers.
Your content needs to match your audience on two levels
- their level of understanding
- examples relevant to them
Their level of understanding is about knowing where they are in their understanding, avoiding jargon and using simple plain language. As the expert, your level of understanding in your service area is likely to be very high. But your audience might need the basic version. An arborist could ‘educate’ me on the three best growing structure models for a tree. Or could simply tell me it’s unbalanced and rebalancing would ensure a solid and healthy tree. If you don’t speak to them at their level of understanding you run the risk of them thinking your services are beyond their comprehension. When actually in working with you their level of understanding would rise.
Examples relevant to them are about using stories and examples that they can relate to, and that they could see themselves in. The best ones are those that they have already experienced. When you start your webinar invite people to share a relevant fact with you so you can tailor your examples. I always ask on webinars what people offer for sale. Then I can target social media coach examples or nutritionist examples to both make them more interesting to the audience. And also to specifically give them ideas on exactly how they can overcome challenges.
With the right level of education and examples, your audience will be certain that you REALLY understand them. Positioning you as the expert.
Engaging Engagement Strategies
Now there are specific strategies you can use to create engagement. An obvious example of how to make webinars more engaging! Ask questions and invite answers, use polls, ask people for feedback or to share, and use activities and exercises to create involvement. Engagement is how you create connections and relationships with your audience.
Webinars are also an amazing opportunity to ‘hear’ from your audience in a connected way about what they are struggling with, what they are experiencing, about their desires. It is a market research opportunity and the proximity creates a warmer space for them to be able to share (rather than sharing publicly on social media).
Finding a balance between engaging and delivering is key to creating connection AND value. When you are planning and preparing your webinar content allow time for comments and conversation. Don’t fill the whole time with education because it will feel rushed and overwhelming.
So how to make webinars more engaging?
Create a space where you can shine, engage with the audience, and talk about your topic in a way that is relevant and accessible to your audience.
Done well an engaging webinar converts, connects, and creates value for you and your audience. Done well an engaging webinar is an asset you can use repeatedly to generate leads and nurture your audience.
If you’ve never done a webinar before. Or never done one that you enjoyed. Then you might be wondering but what is my presenter style?!?! Then jump over to the quiz and find out your signature webinar presenter style.