As the threat of COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, many organizations lean on to take the critical decision of sending employees home to work remotely and rush to shift their businesses online — but implementing this plan and ‘social distancing’ among employees have opened the door to some crucial challenges such as communication issues and falling out of the loop. However, the question remains ‘how to deliver training virtually amid COVID-19’?
With the situation constantly evolving, it’s indispensable to be prepared for any disruption and webinars are ideal to make the most out of this crisis situation.
So, what is a webinar?
A webinar is a seminar conducted over the internet and offers a piece of comprehensive information or training on a topic. It usually includes a live video of the presenter as well as slides or screenshots. In a nutshell, webinars are the right platform for every business organization to demonstrate its competence in all fields.
Most of the people have attended a webinar at some point in their life, as it usually goes like this:
You receive an email about a particular subject.
On the day of the event, you ‘join’ the most recent reminder email.
There may be a chat window or perhaps a little interaction anyway. Towards the end, you get the shot to ask the right question to the presenter.
As novel COVID-19 outbreak takes its toll, millions of people around the world face unemployment and lean onto online training sessions. Most of them are preferring webinars to stay in touch with the development in their respective fields which will eventually help them as career counselors.
Webinars Offer Trainers a Wider Reach
If we consider webinars as interactive training sessions, albeit to a larger audience than in a traditional classroom – it is indeed, a blessing in disguise. They allow you to build relationships, help connect with the audience, and increase ROI.
Here it’s all about the blend!
Webinars provide us a look at the options available to us – all of the options! The webinar format enables training to be “chunked” or “bite-sized.” Also, once you’ve presented your webinar, you can easily reorient your script to provide extra value to those individuals who weren’t available at that time. Furthermore, you can benefit from hosting webinars if you convert your presentation into an eBook – it allows you to share your webinar content in a new and more engaging way.
World’s leading webinar platform “ON24” recently surveyed 22,922 webinars with at least 100 attendees. According to ON24, 89% of the hosts agreed that webinars are not only a gamechanger but also the best platform to showcase and advance their business.
Tips to Make Webinars More Enticing
A poorly run webinar that barely focuses on a particular subject can lose the interest of your audience. So, it’s essential to ensure that you choose an efficient and effective way to have a conversation with your audience and eventually inspire them to do great things!
The utmost important thing in hosting a webinar is to provide 99% content – webinar isn’t designed to be an infomercial but a persuasive piece of instruction to edify your audience to reach out and adopt the new idea. In short, a webinar is just another way of encouraging people to network and help them connect through virtual classrooms.
A good presenter invests a hefty amount of time in designing and delivering a webinar presentation to provide his audience not only great content but a wealth of experience; so if you’re a participant, it’s equally your responsibility to engage with the presenter with great enthusiasm if you seek any sort of benefit from the webinar.
Webinars are greatly engaging. Considering the average attendee rate for a webinar, 63% of respondents agreed that the Q&A session is the most engaging tool for the webinar. The Q&A session increases attendees’ interest and helps them stay more focused. Hence, it’s imperative to use this integration tool to make your webinar top-notch.
If you want to leverage the most out of your webinar, run it at 11 a.m. PST. Mid-morning or middle of the day is one of the best times to run a webinar. However, you can experiment on this one and choose what time suits you well.
Most used engaging tools on the webinar:
Conclusion
Considering the current stress due to the global pandemic, the situation demands for trainers and conferences to leverage webinars. Not only they help the organization in training the employees but they also provide individuals with the opportunity to learn, network, and grow. Webinars are powerful and can certainly boost your revenue, minimize your cost and develop lucrative relationships with your employees and clients.
