From the course: Running a Professional Webinar
Welcome
- Hi, my name's Rich Harrington and today we're going to explore essential strategies that you need to put on a successful webinar. This will be a combination of technical and strategic information to help you put on a successful webinar. To start, we'll walk through the role of webinars and help you choose the right platform. You'll learn what a webinar is good for and what it's not so good for as well as some key features to look for in a webinar host. Next, I'll talk about organizing the webinar content. This is the pre-production stage where you get all of your content ready to present. I'll share with you some strategies about outlining your event, writing promotional copy, inviting people to be guests as well as some strategies for rehearsing and planning for audience participation. I'll then walk you through how to set up your computer whether it's a Mac or a PC, giving you things that you should adjust on the computer for a better webinar experience as well as talking about other things that you need to choose to improve the quality of the webinar. Audio is one of the most essential aspects of a webinar, clear audio that's easy to hear with minimal distortion. As such, we'll explore different options that you have for choosing a microphone, giving you some of the pros and cons of each, and talking about how to connect that to your computer. After audio, you might consider adding a video presence so the people participating in the webinar can see you. This level of human engagement often increases the time that people stay and can improve the feelings they have towards you as the presenter. We'll address how to use the built-in webcam as well as talk about adding optional things such as a USB webcam or using a professional video camera. I'll even show you software tools that you can use to adjust the quality of the video before sending it out. Your webinar will likely have some visuals as well so we'll talk about strategies for improving the slides and the overall content that you share. I'll then walk you through what it takes to get ready to give the webinar. I'll give you some essential steps to do during your rehearsal so that you have an effective presentation with no technical hiccups and give you a checklist to help you go live. Additionally, we'll take a look at two of the most popular free platforms. I'll give you a quick overview of the Facebook Live platform as well as the YouTube Live or Google Hangouts on Air platform that gives you the ability to connect with users. There are, of course, many other webinar platforms and in this course, we'll explore some of those tools and I'll share with you strategies that you can use to choose the best match. Now, we've got a lot of ground to cover, but I'd like to give you just a little bit about my background before we begin. I consider myself a visual storyteller and my personal areas of interest are photography and video, but I do run a media production company and we produce a lot of content for different corporate clients. I participate in webinars, host them, as well as produce them for other folks. I've used webinars to reach people. I've put together more than 40 books and 100 video classes as well as regularly publish websites. Webinars have been an important strategy for both promotion for books and to connect with the audiences for our websites. Through the years, I've also been an adjunct professor at university and I've had to teach online and I've participated in real-world conferences and virtual conferences. I've been producing content for the internet since 1994. I've been putting video up to the internet since 1995. So, I've got a long history with this and I'll try to share with you some practical things that you can do to improve the quality and minimize any headaches. Now, I find that I often have to use the logical side of my brain. I have a background as a Certified Project Management Professional. I own two companies and frequently serve as a technical consultant to those in the broadcast industry as well as marketing and communications, but I have been a regular publisher of both books and websites and webinars are an important part of our engagement strategy. I also enjoy the creative side. I work as a photographer and as a film and video producer and editor. And I find that I also regularly write content as a journalist and a podcaster. Today, I'll use both sides of my brain, helping you understand the technical aspects of putting on a successful webinar as well as sharing with you some of the creative strategies that you can use to make more engaging content. All right, we've got a lot of ground to cover today so let's jump in.
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