How to Execute an End of Webinar Survey

There are two generic ways to invite your audience to participate in a survey. If you have each users email address then you can just email them the link to the survey. If your webinar didn’t require registration, and therefore you don’t have email addresses for each participant; you can just give everyone the link as the ending piece of your webinar.

If you do send the link via email, its wise to warn each of the participants that they should be expecting a request to take a survey via email 5 minutes after the end of the session. Explain to your group that the survey is designed to help you develop even better presentation skills and content. From time to time change up how you ask participants to take the survey so as to see what the most effective request is in order to increase the ratio of users who take the survey.

What to Ask as Part of the Survey

I’ve always been a believer that a survey that lasts more than about 2-4 minutes is far too long. Keeping it short and sweet will allow you to insure maximum completion and high quality data. If you have far more to ask then you can fit into a 2 minute survey, relax. In time you will discover which questions always get the highest and most consistent response and you will be able to replace those with new questions.

As a started point I will suggest 10 questions as a great medium. You might split them 50/50 between inquiring over your content and your organization / moderation skills. Here are some suggestions:

1. Was This Your First Time Participating in a Webinar With _________.
2. How Would You Rate The Ease of Registering and Logging into the Webinar?
3. How Would You Rate The Timeline and Promptness of the Webinar?
4. How Would You Rate The Quality of the Audio / Video Streaming?
5. If there was one thing you could change about the technology or organization of this webinar what would it be?
6. Which of the following adjectives best describes the content of today’s webinar? (Concise, Lengthy, Spot On, Irrelevant, Other ______)
7. How would you rate the relevancy of the content in today’s webinar?
8. Based on the content of tonight’s webinar how likely would you be to recommend a friend to this same presentation?
9. How Would You Rate the Quality of the Moderator and Presenters?
10. If there was one thing you could change about tonight’s content what would it be?

Its your name and reputation on the line. How much are you willing to trust someone else to make your presentation fluid and flawless. Your name and picture are probably on the opening slide and how well the presentation flows and works is a direct reflection of YOU!
Its always awkward when you are doing a presentation and you have to ask someone else to advance each slide. Also because there can be a delay between the visual and the voice, you run the risk of talking about things before your participants see them. The risk is greatly increased when your moderator is somewhere else in the world advancing slides.

Take the time to be the expert in your technology and take responsibility for your own presentation!

Factors that Effect Willingness to Pay for Virtual Events

Recently eMarketer.com did a great study on the factors that influence the willingness of users to pay for a virtual event.

Some of the factors listed at the top of the priority list I find quite obvious but there are a few eye openers. As an example, “Easy Check-In and Out During Event.” What type of program do you use that allows users to enter, exit, and pause presentations at any given time? Convenience is the key here, and in addition to making it easy to need to advertise how easy it will be as part of all your marketing and registration materials online.

Also of great importance is cost. This should be a problem. You should be able to create a more economic experience without effecting your bottom line for two reasons. First, because your overhead is so much lower. Less for the “venue,” nothing for food/catering, and no cost for printed materials. Second because of sheer volume and capacity. You can sell a much larger number of attendees into your virtual events than you ever could have in your traditional events.

As you go down the list of factors to the left you will find a simple theme of three factors. In order of importance they are:

1. Content that I care about
2. Convenience of attending and participating virtually
3. Networking opportunities with other attendees.

Traditional events provide an opportunity for professionals to get out of the office, catch up with industry colleagues, and make new contacts. Studies show that the primary activity of traditional event attendees is networking.

Virtual events allow for much different interactions and because of the nature of the attendee, and the manner in which they attend, they have different goals and priorities within that event. eMarketer took a deeper look at the actions taken by virtual event attendees in America and I think you might be surprised.

Unlike traditional events, virtual attendees want to download materials and watch live webcasts. Very few chat with other attendees or exchange information with vendors in comparison to traditional events.

Quality content (specifically downloadable content) matters most in virtual events. White papers, resource guides, presentations, etc can be the fuel of quality interaction with your attendees.

Next time you plan a virtual event, put your traditional game plan aside and consider how you will better engage the audience.

Virtual events continue to offer a strong opportunity even if the interaction is different than you may be used to!

Decide ahead of time what the appropriate webcast rules will be. Webcasts with small teams should have different rules and strategies for moderation than large webcast presentations to large groups. Develop consistency so that users who rejoin you in ongoing webinar series or trainings will come to expect your guidelines and rules.

Housekeeping announcements. At the start of your presentation or training be sure to make some simple announcements to inform all of the attendees about your rules. Making a formal announcement about the chat box or audio controls will go a long way to keep the order. This is also a good time to give an orientation about your webcast technology such as explaining how private chats can be initiated and how recording can be done.

When available it is a good idea to ask someone who is familiar with the webinar service you are using to be your moderator. It can be a challenge to try to moderate the chat and the audio while you are engaged in your presentation.

Understand the way your webcast technology accesses your webcam. If you are not prepared to appear on video for your audience then you should take some precautions. Put something over the lens if you have a built-in webcam or unplug it otherwise. Also, consider that only one program on your computer can access the webcam at any given time so if you open up a different local program that accesses your webcam before you start the presentation, it will restrict access from your webcasting program.

Understand how your text chat works. Generally most software programs allow you to auto-mute/block users from using the text chat. If you have a 3rd party moderator working with you they can keep an eye on what is being said and mute individuals who are causing issues.

If you are using a conference call service that people call into a toll free number then you need to seek out a conference call service that allows you to mute other callers. There is nothing worse than trying to get all of the attendees to mute their phones. Its distracting and ultimately there will always be someone who doesn’t know how.

If you are using a built in VOIP system in your webinar software there should be an option to mute all or specific attendees.

Prepare well and make sure you are an expert on the software program that you are using!

Jac0b S Paulsen

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Jacob

Webcasting has become a strong part of any online marketing strategy. Companies use webcasts to present services and products, present industry trainings or findings, and present information to existing teams and clients. Webcasts have enabled businesses to spread the message faster, farther, and at a fraction of the previous cost.

Regardless the way you are using webcasting you need to design a system to capture the email addresses of your audience. Email marketing or Data capture is part of any internet marketing plan and webcasting is no different.

WHY:

Capturing the information of your audience will allow you to notify them about upcoming presentations which leverages your marketing efforts to build a stronger and larger audience base over time. You also enable your opportunity to send other marketing materials, ads, and even things as simple as the link to the recording of the presentation they participated in.

HOW:

The key to building your info database is in the registration. Putting a login form or login link to your presentation on your website allows for greater simplicity but prevents you from effectively capturing the information from visitors. Build instead a webcast registration page that requires users to enter their name and email address in order to receive login instructions in their email.

Learn more about Email Marketing Services.

Jacob S Paulsen

I’m assuming that you already know how to record and host your presentation. The purpose of today’s article is to show you the easiest way to set up a post/page in WordPress that will allow you to have a timer / countdown to the next playing of the webinar.

Here is an example of this plugin in use. I have set the date for Jan 1st 2012. I have customized the text around the timer and has specified a message to be displayed after the specified date and time are reached.

After the timer is finished counting down I can have a link to the prerecorded video displayed with a message such as “The Session has begun – Login Here.” If you like you could even have an embeded video appear at that designated time.

The WordPress plugin in use here is called “Easy Timer” and the configuration is relatively simple. There are an array of applications for this WordPress plugin and several ways to utilize it to promote an upcoming webinar or pre-recorded webinar/webcast.

Enjoy!

Jacob S Paulsen

Most online meeting services will assist you in setting up your own registration page. The problem is that there is a huge downside to utilizing their internal systems. GoToMeeting or Webex for example will generate a webcast registration form that you can populate with required fields, your logo, etc. Here are the two big problems. First, is the branding. Everytime you send a user to the registration page you are in fact giving GoToMeeting (or whatever your service provider) free advertising. They have it branded with their logo and links. They don’t pay you for this. Second, is the lost traffic. The URL itself is going to be serviceprovider.com/abcadk (Example: gotomeeting.com/webinar/1343495). As you promote that link and drive users to the page you are loosing out on website traffic that you deserve to capture on YOUR own website.

Think of the simplicity of what we are proposing. Setup your own webinar registration page and your users will visit your website. They will see your other links, articles, pages, and advertisements. Your business is about your brand so why wouldn’t you build it in place of the company whom you pay money to use their service?

For a simple outline of how you can setup your own webinar / webcast registration page click here.

Jacob S Paulsen

Some webinar services offer you a registration page as part of the software. This can make the process much easier but also has its drawbacks. For one you will be sending your clients and customers to a website that is not your own. Sending people to a gotomeeting.com page for example will only increase GoToMeeting’s brand. Sending your customer’s to your own website will further drive your site traffic and create a more cohesive brand.

Here are the basic steps to setting up your webinar registration page.

• Start with a blank page. If you are using WordPress this can be done within your admin Dashboard by clicking on “Add New Page.”
• There are a variety of ways to setup a form for attendees to fill out but I suggest you utilize an email opt-in form. Since you want to capture the information from your attendees it only makes sense to setup a new contact list and generate a sign up form to embed on your registration page. Depending on if you use iContact, ConstantContact, Aweber, etc this process is going to be different.
• Embed the signup form onto your new blank page. Also be sure to include a paragraph invitation to register along with webinar details such as date and time.
• Once you have the registration page content done you will need to setup an autoresponder or thank you email to be sent to those who register. This email should contain the link to login to the webinar or webcast room along with login instructions. If possible include a troubleshooting link for people who may have login problems.
• Be sure to schedule a new auto-responder to go out a few hours before your webinar begins. This will serve as a reminder and contain the same login information for those who have lost or misplaced the first email.

Jacob Paulsen