Tips and Tricks about Free Webinars
Originally published at Free Webinars
Free webinars are powerful tools to prompt your business forward. Especially in the educational industry, they may become great support, if done in the right way. Thanks to webinars, you may
- Easily build a brand
- Establish and grow your authority in the specific industry niche
- Generate a significant amount of leads
- Be repurposed into blogs, videos, and other types of content
Webinars are online seminars that have hosts, presenters, presentations, and audiences. The main difference between these two is that unlike seminars, webinars are held only online and all the interaction between the presenter and the audience is online. The traditional scene of a webinar is inspirational beginning (story or quote in the niche), engaging presentation (video learning and slide share), discussions (all the questions are answered).
Why You Need to Use Free Webinars
These days, people, especially in the educational industry tend to attend different events, no matter it refers to online master classes or free webinars for teachers. Now let’s discuss some reasons why to use webinars.
#1 Wider Audience
As I have already mentioned, webinars are held online. Accordingly, more people will get an opportunity to join them from different locations. There will not be distance limitations.
#2 Direct Interaction
The participants of the webinar (the audience) will easily communicate to the presenter, share their concerns, and ask questions. This interaction is especially useful when you have authority in the industry and act as a trustworthy specialist.
#3 Evoke Trust
Organize webinars on required topics and share pieces of advice. Show or explain how to do things and help people. This way, you will earn trust and the audience will come back to you when they need your services.
#4 Gain Potential Leads
People who register for taking part in your webinar, provide their email addresses. So, you get a ton of contact info from people who are interested in the sphere and may become potential leads.
#5 Get an Inspiration
Webinars provide interaction with the target market. In this way, you get familiar with their concerns and get inspiration for your blog articles or video content. Webinars will also help to improve your services to meet the audience’s needs.
How to Succeed with Free Webinars
If you are worried about your webinars being ignored, then my research is right for you. Below I have presented some important tips and tricks that will help you to succeed with free webinars.
1. Know the Potential Attendees
Before starting any action, you should identify who it is for. Knowing your audience will help you provide the required and expected content they like. To make it work, ask yourself “Who they are?”, “What challenges do they face?”, “What goals they have?”, and so on.
Having the answers to these questions, you will realize how to organize the webinar and what topics to consider in order to meet the audience’s expectations. So, know your audience, identify the needs, set your objectives to meet these.
2. Pick a Topic
This is a very critical point. Learning the requirements in the market, you will have a general image of the webinar topic idea. However, you should consider this point in more detail.
Keep in mind that people attend webinars to learn something. So, make sure your heading arouses interest and they will find something worthy to join it. Do not choose a general topic, like “Digital marketing”. It won’t be interesting for the audience. To offer a powerful webinar, you need to narrow down the topic and focus on more specific points to discuss. Pick one aspect of the general idea.
To find a good topic for your webinar, you may organize different polls and ask the audience, or make use of various resources, such as FAQ pages, where you present the most common concerns among the people interested in the field. Another option is to consider the analytical reports and learn what pages (content) are much visited and have more value. Do not forget to check out the competitors and make sure you offer more than they do.
3. Get Help
Surely, you may organize the webinar on your own, but a little help will be a great support for you. Consider working with anybody (even several people) who will help you organize the process and everything will go more smoothly.
They don’t need to be aware of the topic or interact with the attendees but they may provide help in fixing issues and technical troubles.
You may even present the webinar with somebody else. This is sometimes even more interesting when the webinar becomes like a discussion. The attendees get more opinions and suggestions, as well as look to the point from different perspectives.
4. Choose a Catchy Title
The title of your webinar shapes the first impression people make. This is the first point of interaction that makes it obvious whether or not this interaction is going to go on. I’m sure, you want it to do.
Pay significant attention to the heading. Think about every word. Make the webinar title catchy and to the point. Reading this heading line, people should immediately realize that they are going to get a solution for their problem.
While choosing catchy words, pay attention to not becoming fancy. Instead, identify problems and provide solutions. Use “powerful words”. An example is the word “ease”. And, don’t mislead. You should never promise something the webinar does not cover. Be trustworthy and do not disappoint the attendees.
5. Trust a Great Speaker
If you are a good speaker who may take the responsibility to present the topic and confidently complete the process, then you have nothing to worry about. However, if you may need somebody else to fully manage the process and satisfy the attendees.
This person may be a college or somebody well known in your market niche — a person who the audience trusts. This person may also be an industry influencer. Make sure the speaker has all the required knowledge and experience in the industry to present a valuable speech worthy for the participants to join the webinar.
The person you rely on should be credible and demonstrate authority. And no matter this person is a guest or you do it on your own. Choose or be a reliable speaker.
6. Choose the Format of the Webinar
Having decided on the topic of your upcoming webinar, you should choose the format. Some of the most common webinar formats are:
Single Expert Presenter. An expert shares insight or tips on the chosen topic.
Dual Presenters. Two people act s speakers during the webinar. Accordingly, the level of engagement increases, and it becomes easier to educate the audience, sharing more information.
Panel. Like a live panel, you get a chance to host a group of experts discussing a specific topic.
Q&A Webinar. Such a format of the webinar is a great opportunity to maximize the engagement of attendees. An expert (or a panel) is reliable for answering the questions the audience asks through a chat or social media.
Interview Webinar. Having a popular influencer as a guest speaker is a great way to boost attendance and build your authority. All you need is to be ready for the extra work of influencer outreach, which can be time-consuming and tedious.
Product Demonstration. This is perfect for promoting a product.
7. Plan the Process
No kind of activity will perfectly implement without initial planning. Your webinar will go on in a natural way if you create a plan and organize the process according to it.
For instance, you may start the introduction of the topic, then highlight it with a presentation and go on answering the audience questions, etc. Whatever your topic or the format of the webinar is, plan the process in advance in order not to face troubles or mislead the attendees. Be prepared and follow the plan.
8. Prepare Presentation
If you are going to introduce a presentation, prepare it in advance. Include all the points from your topic that you want to highlight with this visual material.
Pay attention to the colors, style, and language. The SlideShare should follow your brand image, visual elements, colors, and style. You may make a slide with Google Slides, or any PowerPoint template you find appropriate.
9. Set the Date and Time
The date and time of the webinar should be set in advance when you publish information about the upcoming event. You should set it, taking into account the preferable days and time of the day for your target audience (at least the majority of the potential attendees).
This will help the interested people fix the time and consider whether or not they may join it. If there is a limited number of attendees, they should book the online seat in advance. So, you should decide on the date and time as well.
10. Award Certificates
You may decide on organizing free webinars for social workers or teachers. Whatever the topic or industry is, you are highly recommended to offer free webinars with certificates. These days people like to take part in events and get a certificate as proof of their participation.
Especially, if you are an authoritative figure people trust (and I’m sure you are) this will be appreciated by the audience. They would like to join your event, listen to your opinion, and explanations, share their concerns, get answers, and be awarded certificates. What may make them happier?
11. Consider Having Paid Webinars
Let’s imagine that from time to time you organize free webinars for teachers with certificates. Gradually, the number of people who are interested in your services will increase. So, you may think about coming up with paid webinars.
In this case, you may offer some additional services or support. You may offer different files of educational material or help from an expert. I’m sure your experience is enough to lead people and make them believe your valuable information and guidance. Even if it is not, you will get experienced and confident when completing free webinars and interacting with the target audience.
12. Create a Landing Page
When you have already decided on every aspect of the webinar, planed the process, created all the required material, and fixed the date and time, you should think about publishing a landing page.
This is a web page, where the visitors may find all the information related to the upcoming webinar. Make sure you define the reasons why they need to join the webinar. Highlight the benefits they will get and mention all the points that are going to be discussed.
Write information about the host, speaker(s), date and time, etc. Also, explain how to book an online seat and join the webinar. Do not forget to mention contact information, so that the visitors get in touch in case they have any questions.
The landing page will be more professional when you have your website and it is published on your own platform. Go on to the next tip.
13. Choose a Good Platform
In order to conduct the webinar successfully, you need to have a good platform. Of course, there are many tools created for online meetings, but you may like to have your own platform where you will get a chance not only to conduct webinars but also to sell online courses, organize live lessons, operate a blog, come up with tests, offer certificates, etc.
Uteach is such a platform where you may organize the overall process. If your webinars are continual, you may even create a timetable and all the separate events will be automatically scheduled at the fixed time.
Your personal platform will also help to track the website visitors and get data about their behavior on the platform. If you want try Uteach for free, or schedule a free demo and learn all the functionality of the platform.
14. Promote the Webinar on Different Platforms
When the landing page of the webinar is ready on your website, it is high time for you to share it on different channels to reach as many people as possible. Share the link on social media channels. Choose as many as you can or find appropriate for your niche. Focus on the platforms where your target audience is more likely to be found.
Do not forget to take into consideration various groups on social media channels, related forums, and discussions. Such platforms are also very useful for reaching the right people.
If you like, you may even run advertising campaigns on social media channels, as well as on search engines. Another option for promoting the webinar is email marketing. If you have an email base of interested people, write engaging email letters and let them know about this valuable event. I’m sure they will not like to miss it.
Make the right decision today!
