5 Creative Ideas to propel your webinars
Creatures of Habit
A great webinar drives leads, engages an audience and positions
your company as a thought leader. But too often marketers fall
into old habits, delivering dull webinars where the presenter just
talks and the attendees just listen. When there’s nothing to a
webinar but dry slides and a tired voice, there’s not much chance
for audience engagement. It’s a restrictive format that lulls
presenters into going over the same themes again and again—or,
even worse, into pitching products at their attendees. And no one
likes that.
We asked over 1,000 webinar attendees how they feel about their
webinars. Shockingly, only seven percent felt that they gave great
webinars:
• 7% They totally rock!
• 17% I think our audience might need resuscitation
• 21% We don’t currently deliver webinars
• 55% A bit dry but not bad
Most Marketers Think That Their Webinars Could Use a Little
Work. But Where to Begin?
Spicing up your webinar program is a lot like spicing up a tired
relationship. You need to break out of your routines, try new
things and be a little adventurous. Some of these ideas may
sound crazy, but sometimes crazy is just what you need to shake
up the status quo.
5 Creative Ideas to PROPEL YOUR WEBINARS
Change the Format
We see it again and again: marketers relying
on the same you-talk-they-listen webinars
every single time. There’s nothing wrong with
audio and slides, but why not mix it up once
in a while? Less formal formats are a fun way
to engage your audience in a conversation,
and they’re especially great for leveraging
third-party speakers and taking the pressure
off subject matter experts who are less
comfortable behind a microphone.
Here are a few formats you should try:
1:1 Interview
Pair your big-brained subject-matter expert
(internal or external) with a dynamic, engaging
host. That way the expert can focus on the
information, not on managing the flow of the
conversation.
Panel Discussion
Bring subject-matter experts, third-party
speakers or analysts together for a round-table
discussion on a pre-defined set of subjects.
Assign a host who can keep the conversation
moving and on-topic. These webinars can be
audio-only, but they really pop on video. If
your guests aren’t all in the same place, it’s
easy to run a panel discussion over webcam.
Coffee Talk
A chat format puts an informal spin on any
topic. Passionate subject matter experts
talking about their areas of expertise and
giving practical advice makes for a really fun
discussion.
Live Case Study
Invite a customer or three into your webinar
and let them talk about your product
from the client perspective. You can even
integrate videos that highlight your customer
relationships and then discuss them with
your guests as a part of the conversation.
While interviews and group discussions are
pretty forgiving when you have a stiff or
uncomfortable speaker, a great host really is
the key to a successful conversation-based
webinar. Find the people in your organization
who are the most comfortable with public
speaking—even if they’re not the deepest
subject experts—and let them guide the
conversation.
The Problems You Solve
• Subject matter experts who can’t
carry long presentations
• Webinars that feel too stiff
• Overly formal webinar tone
• Presenters who aren’t connecting
with the audiences
The Short-Form Webinar
Sometimes you just don’t have enough content
to put together a full 60-minute webinar. That
doesn’t mean you have to put your webinar
program on hold. It just means that it’s time to
mix up your run times.
5 Creative Ideas to PROPEL YOUR WEBINARS
Try these simple short-form webinars:
Best Practices
Run a short, pre-recorded video demonstrating
a best practice, then have a subject matter
expert deliver a 10-minute follow-up or
commentary.
Quick Tips
Record five-minute segments of subject matter
experts giving quick tips or best practices, then
edit them together and have a host introduce
each section. This is great for creating ondemand
content.
Syndicated Reruns
Break your most successful hour-long webinars
into short, single-topic chapters, and then
publish them to your on-demand portal,
YouTube or SlideShare. A 20 to 30-minute
webinar can be a refreshing way to deliver a
quick message, but the shorter format really
shines as curated content. Add your quick-hit
webinars to an on-demand channel or virtual
portal on your website, then syndicate them
to YouTube, Vimeo, partner sites or other web
sites. That way your audience can access them
as needed.
The Problems You Solve
• Brief content
• Lack of speakers
• Need for on-demand content
• Need for more middle-and bottomfunnel
webinars
The Crowdsourced Webinar
“We need more content!” It’s one of the
constant refrains of marketers everywhere.
Why not turn to your customers? They know
what they want and expect; all you have
to do is ask. And if you do ask, it’s easy to
crowdsource content themes, some webinar
content or even all the content for an entire
webinar.
Here are some tricks for crowdsourcing
webinar content:
Pre-Registration Surveys
Ask your audience what they want to learn
from your webinar on the registration form or
confirmation page. Maybe you’ve created a
general theme for your webinar, but this will
tell you what the audience expects before you
build all the content. Then you can customize
to make sure you address precisely the things
your audience cares about most.
Social Media
You have social followers and contacts. Why
not ask them what their interests are? Lean
on social networks to source content ideas
and requests. Facebook lets you run polls to
gauge interest in content or themes. And you
can always survey your customer and prospect
databases.
Post-Webinar Surveys
At the end of every webinar, ask attendees
what topics they would like to see in the future.
Make sure to use at least one open text field to
get as much insight as you can.
5 Creative Ideas to PROPEL YOUR WEBINARS
The Audience-Driven Webinar
Lose the presentation, collect a panel of
experts and use Q&A and polling to drive
conversation for an entire webinar. You can
have pre-set topic areas, but let the audience
guide the direction of the discussion. Create
slides on each topic area to provide visual cues
for where you are in the conversation.
It’s amazing how much your audience would
like to tell you, if only you would ask. And
when they say, “This is the content I want,”
what they’re actually saying is, “Here are my
interests, here are my pain points, here’s what
I’m really interested in knowing…” All you have
to do is listen and respond.
The Problems You Solve
• Trouble coming up with content
ideas
• Webinars that aren’t connecting
with your audience
• Questions about what matters to
your audience
• Issues qualifying leads
Game On
Gamification is the hot new buzzword. But
can you actually integrate gamification into
the webinar experience? You can, and it’s
happening now. Adventurous presenters
are running highly successful webinars that
turn existing content into interactive games,
engaging their audience in ways that a typical
webinar never could. It’s cool, it’s fun and it’s
easy to do.
Engage your audience with these gamification
tactics:
Quiz Show
Polls can turn your dry data into an interactive
quiz show. Before you share a piece of
information, use a poll to ask your audience
what they expect the result to be. When you
reveal the actual answer, they will either be
surprised at new information or delighted at
their accuracy. Either way, they will be more
engaged with your data and probably learn
something in the process.
Trivia
Pose open-ended trivia questions and then
use Q&A or chat to collect answers. The first
attendee to chime in with the right answer gets
the thrill of public recognition—or maybe an
additional prize shipped after the event.
Long Game
Keep the fun rolling by extending the game
to social media. Run your webinar polls on
Facebook to see how your followers stack up
against your webinar attendees. Or prime
the webinar audience before the event with
sample polls and trivia questions on their
favorite social networks.
With gamification, you can take a lot of very
complicated data and break it into digestible
pieces. Your audience will enjoy the chance
to test their knowledge, plus they get to
learn how their peers are voting, as well. And
everyone loves to see what their peers are
thinking.
5 Creative Ideas to PROPEL YOUR WEBINARS
The Problems You Solve
• Stagnant webinars
• Short viewing durations
• Content that could be considered
boring
• Low audience engagement
Get Out of the House
When you keep giving the same webinars in
the same way, you end up covering a lot of the
same ground—literally. If you want to shake
up your old routines, maybe what you need
is a change of scenery. These days, it’s not
that hard to use video to capture all kinds of
external presentations and events that would
make great webinar content.
Here are some options for adding video to your
webinars:
Off-Site Sessions
Are you already presenting at trade shows
and conferences? Don’t let that content go to
waste. Capture your off-site presentations and
training sessions with an inexpensive handheld
HD camera to create a series of mini-webinars
on demand.
Remote Reporting
A simple video camera lets you interview
customers, sales people and product experts
from any location, anytime. Video clips from
the field provide you with ready-made
content that can be dropped into any webinar
to expand the conversation and provide a
multimedia audience experience.
Streaming Video
You are constantly supporting live physical
events like seminars, trade shows, customer
briefing center presentations and more. Why
not stream these events as a live webinar
or use the footage to create on-demand
webinars? Streaming physical events as live
or on-demand webinars expands both the
reach of the content and the value of the
presentation. Webinars don’t always have to
happen in a single room. Think about all the
great content you’re already creating outside
of the office. Turn those into webinars, and
you’ll find yourself with a captivated audience.
The Problems You Solve
• Scarcity of webinar content ideas
• Webinars that could use a little
spice
• No budget for expensive video
production
• Partners/customers you want to
include in your webinars
• Great off-site presentations that you
want to capture
Spice up Your Webinars
There’s no limit to how creative you can get
with your webinars. As marketers, we want to
deliver on the expectation that we’re going to
give a great presentation. We’re asking people
to sit still and stare at a fixed spot for up to an
hour. Sure, that audience is going to get some
valuable information, but why not make it fun?
By mixing up your webinar formats,
crowdsourcing material, leveraging
gamification and using video in creative ways,
you can create new content, spice up old
content and get more value from your experts.
Best of all, you’ll have more fun with your
webinars and your audiences will, too.
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