By deciding to host a webinar, you have already decided to put a large amount of effort into producing and generating an audience for it.
The basic assumption is that if someone is attending the webinar, they would be interested in it. However, there is one thing almost all marketers miss, i.e., thinking about how to engage your audience during the webinar. This is something that is taken for granted by all marketers.
However, planning anything over the web can throw in many surprises.
Consider this fact; we receive 5000 marketing messages daily on average. Many of these are in the form of notifications and messages, thereby acting as big distractors. Apart from that, we also have the urge to constantly check our messages, emails, and social media accounts or even read a piece of news.
This completely defeats the purpose of producing a webinar. Hence, planning for activities during the webinar that builds engagement and interaction with the attendees is imperative.
Here are 4 ways in which you can build interaction with your audience and hold their attention throughout the webinar:
Get to the content fast
You don’t want to spend a lot of time on your bio to see your audience waiting and exiting before you even start with the main content part.
You should have two key focuses, i.e., audience and content.
You should ignore any item that either interferes with your content or gives a bad experience to your audience.
Remember, your audience is there for what you have to share and not for who you are and what you do. They can research that part themselves.
Ask the audience about their experience or thoughts
Note: Everyone’s favorite topic is themselves
We love to share our stories. If you can get your audience to share how your content relates to them personally, they will be more likely to engage with it and remember it for longer.
You can use a poll or an open chat to ask your audience to share their experiences or thoughts on the topic at hand. It builds engagement and allows your attendees to interact with each other. This helps you get a diverse perspective on the topic, helping you understand your audience and their goals.
Plan an interaction every 5 to 7 minutes
Oneway passive communication can be tedious. It takes everyone back to the schooldays when we used to listen to the master’s teachings.
In current times, it is more about how you can get your audience to participate. This keeps the audience engaged and helps them retain the content for extended periods.
Hence, it is recommended that you include some emoticons, polls, chat, Q&As, or anything else every 5 to 7 minutes that changes the mode from passive listening to active engagement.
Pro tip: Answer questions and acknowledge comments as you go
Often, your audience asks you relevant questions on the slides that you are currently presenting. Answering these questions at that time helps your audience understand your content better.
For example, if someone needs clarification with an acronym in the presentation, you can do that instantly instead of waiting for the end of the presentation.
It would be best if you were mindful of the fact that the flow of your presentation is not ruined while answering that question. This could hamper the experience of other attendees.
Note: This is something that comes along as you start conducting more and more webinars, and hence isn’t advisable if you are starting out.
Conclusion
As discussed above, producing a webinar and generating an audience requires much hard work. This can lead to missing essential components that ensure engagement during the webinar. This ultimately leads to a bad user experience and an early exit of your attendees, thereby missing a significant opportunity to generate interest.
Hence, you must follow the above methods to ensure your webinars have great engagement and interaction levels with your audience. This increases the retention of your content, thereby building trust and credibility with your business.
Want to make your webinars more engaging? Explore these 4 effective ways to captivate your audience. Need help implementing these strategies? Join hands with HSV digital to elevate your webinar engagement.
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