From the course: Learning to Run Webinars

Planning audience interactivity

From the course: Learning to Run Webinars

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Planning audience interactivity

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- It's a lot easier to keep your audience's attention during your webinar when you involve them. Try using interactive tools like polls, Q&A, whiteboards, and chat. Although webinar software features vary, many software solutions include interactivity tools for audience Q&A, chat, polling, and whiteboarding. Audience Q&A is the most commonly used form of webinar interaction. The Q&A tool is used to answer questions that attendees ask during the webinar. Attendees write their questions into the Q&A tool in the webinar software. With many software tools, written responses may be made visible to the whole audience or privately to the attendee who asked the question. Let me show you an example of how that Q&A might look. Presenters can also use the questions that come into their question or chat panel for a live Q&A session later in the webinar. One way to drive interactivity, in a controlled way, is to ask questions of your audience using polls. Ask a question in your poll, and give the audience multiple choice answers. Give verbal instructions to your audience, like, "Select your answers in the poll "that pops up on your screen, then click Submit." Here's how a poll might work in a webinar. Leave the poll up for a minute or two, while you present, and then show the results of the poll to the audience and discuss. It's a great way to get all the attendees involved and, often, the response could drive the focus of your presentation. Let's take a look at how poll results might look during the webinar. For a visual response to an audience question, use a whiteboard tool. Ask a question, and put the question on the top of a blank or whiteboard slide, then have the audience members use the drawing tools to write their answers on the whiteboard. I'll show you how this could look during a presentation. You can use the Q&A chat window to ask an open-ended question to attendees. Let me show you an example of how that would work. Prepare your polls, whiteboard slides, and interactive chat questions in advance. Rehearse where you will be inserting them into the presentation. Remember, insert interactivity, such as poll or whiteboard questions, about every 10 minutes or so to keep audience engagement high. Instead of presenting a one-way lecture, you can make a virtual connection with your audience by using interactivity tools provided by your webinar software. Make sure to prepare and practice your Q&A responses, your audience polls, and your whiteboard questions prior to the webinar so that the interactivity is a success.

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