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Webinar Polls and Engagement Tools

Make Your Webinars Better

Webinar polls and engagement tools can make your webinars better. Much better.

Have you ever been a teacher? Have you ever been gobsmacked by a comment from one of your students? I remember the day a student came in late to one of my classes in how to become a trainer. He explained to me that he was looking forward to becoming a trainer because he didn’d like people. Seriously. He figured that by becoming a trainer he could just stand up the front of a class and tell people what he knew. His class attendees would listen attentively to his every word then break into applause at the end in recognition of his efforts. He wouldn’t have to deal with any annoying or needy people and his life would be fully of wonder and classrooms of joy.

The reality is that classrooms are not like that. The best face-to-face teachers are those who actively engage their class participants and talk WITH them rather than AT them. It is the same for webinars. To engage the heart and soul of our webinar participants we need to talk with them, ask them questions and answer their questions too. The most successful training benefits from two-way flows of information through which our participants learn most effectively and the trainers do too. And for webinars, it is chat, polls and the other engagement strategies presented in this article and the accompanying video that create those successful exchanges of information.

My previous two articles and videos discussed the types of webinar chat and chat engagement strategies. In this article we focus on polls and other engagement tools. Today’s video presents 8 specific strategies you can use to improve the quality of your webinars. If you want to become a better webinar presenter these are simple strategies used by the best webinar presenters, and you can easily implement them too.

Webinar Polls and Engagement Tools – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-BxgvKQszM

1. Conduct webinar polls

Webinar polls are often underestimated in their ability to re-establish connection of participants with the webinar. If the poll is enthusiastically introduced this magically brings participants back to the webinar. People like having something to do especially in this era where multi-tasking and participating in online social activities is so popular. Unless you have a very compelling reason to the contrary, I recommend that you conduct at least 2-3 webinar polls each time you fire up your software.

2. Ask for hands up

Some (but not all) webinar software provides a “hands up” feature where the participants can raise their virtual hand to mimic what the well-behaved kids do in the classroom. In a webinar however, you do not need to raise your hand to go to the bathroom. Instead, skilled webinar presenters use this feature to solicit answers to Yes/No questions or to create a visual affirmative response to a question of value to them. If your participants have access to audio (through either a microphone or telephone line) that can be muted by the presenter then you are welcome to duplicate my approach of letting the participants know that if they want to go live during the webinar with a question or comment then they should raise their hands to get the presenter’s attention.

3. Plan activities

Before the webinar plan activities so that your participants can enjoy activities either before, during or after your webinar. Your ability to use this strategy is only limited by your creativity.

4. Split the participants into break-out rooms

Some webinar software, led by some of the corporate systems, have added break-out room options. This provides the opportunity for the presenter to build community and cooperation between the participants by dividing them into groups and then allocating the groups either the same or different tasks or mini-projects. Clear instructions are required by the presenter to make this work effectively, but it can have magical outcomes if planned carefully. It is important to debrief the break-out activities so that the participants obtain an understanding and maximum learning from the break-out activities.

5. Creatively use the offer button

Most webinar software does not have an offer button (yet), but if there is one it is a magical tool to be creatively employed. An offer button is a prominent button that can be clicked on by the participant to open another browser tab or window which takes them to a specific URL selected by the webinar organiser. Most typically, the webinar organiser sets up the offer button so that it provides prominent one-click access from the webinar to a product sales page. However, an offer button could be used to re-direct the webinar participant to any URL selected by the webinar organiser. If you do have an offer button in your webinar software I encourage you to be creative and use it to enhance your webinar’s objective.

6. Show a video

Some webinar software provides the option to show a video. This is not a widespread option yet, but in coming years I expect almost all webinar software programs to provide this functionality. Consider identifying a relevant video, crack open the virtual popcorn and show a video while you give your concentration and voice a few minutes of welcome respite.

7. Share a survey

Surveys are a great way of continuing engagement with your participants beyond the webinar whilst also enabling you to gather valuable feedback about whether or not you achieved your webinar objective.

8. Give your participants post-webinar tasks

You can keep your participants remembering the content and purpose of your webinar after the event has ended by pro-actively asking them to do something after the conclusion of the webinar. This might be a specific research project or give them resources or references to look at, perhaps even on your own website. These types of strategies can be very effective in maintaining engagement with your participant well after the webinar has ended, but they are not used by the majority of webinar presenters. Advance planning is required to identify these post-webinar tasks, and this ideally should be part of your webinar planning process.

It’s all about engagement

This training article is the 4th of 5 consecutive weekly articles dedicated to helping you create engaging webinars that your participants will love. Later this month I will release my new Webinar Engagement Checklist (which you can pre-order here). You will be able to use the checklist to self-assess your level of engagement when you present webinars and score yourself. If you are not yet presenting webinars then the Webinar Engagement Checklist will give you the chance to best practice engagement habits before you even start presenting webinars and avoid some bad habits.

How effective are your chat strategies?

You can register now to obtain my free Webinar Engagement Checklist to be released later this month. Put simply, it is your chance to identify lots of options for making your webinars engaging and interesting to your participants, including improving your chat strategies. It will help you identify:

  • What you are doing well
  • What you can do better
  • New ideas for improving engagement

If you want to be one of the first webinar presenters to get a copy click here and it will be automatically emailed to you when it becomes available.

What ways do you use polls and engagement strategies during your webinars?

What do YOU think? Please click here to share your thoughts with myself and others in the YouTube video comments.

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8 Best Webinar Chat Strategies

I love sport. Lots of sports. One of my favourites is soccer (or football, as the purists of the round ball game appropriately call it). To football players the ball is their tool and they use the ball to create value for others and income for themselves. Lionel Messi, the Argentinian legend from the Barcelona Football Club, is currently earning more than 445,000 US dollars every week. Myself, on the other hand, have a total lack of talent when using the soccer ball. In fact, at 7 years of age while I was practising by myself, I tripped over the ball and broke my leg. Yes, seriously, I am that bad.

It was essentially the same type of ball. Messi makes a miraculous amount of money. My Mum got a medical bill. Sorry Mum. It is not the quality of the tool that makes the difference. It is how we use the tool that really matters. For webinar presenters, the chat is a tool that is available to almost all of us. How we use the chat is what will help define the quality of our online presentations and our value as a webinar presenter.

Today’s video presents 8 chat strategies you can adopt to improve the quality of your webinars. If you want to become a better webinar presenter these are simple chat strategies used by the best webinar presenters, and you can easily implement them too.

8 Best Webinar Chat Strategies – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QvnMxhWwlc

1. Encourage participants to use the chat

If you don’t ask your webinar presenters to use the chat then they won’t. Ask. Ideally more than once. And make it easy. I usually include a slide that shows the participants where the chat is and I ask them to type in a specific thing to check that it is working for them. Once participants use it once they are much more likely to use it multiple times.

2. Use the chat yourself

“Monkey see. Monkey do.” OK, that is not a very flattering analogy for ourselves as webinar presenters or our participants. However, it is true. Take the opportunity early in the webinar to post a few messages, perhaps before you officially start. If you are worried about the time or potential distraction factor of you posting messages in the chat then strategies 3 and 4 will help you.

3. Pre-prepared list of chat comments

This is so easy to implement. I am unaware of anyone else doing this, but I doubt that I am the only one doing it. Create a new Microsoft Word document or text file. Take 5 minutes to type in several paragraphs of typical comments you might want to include in the chat during your next webinar. Save the file and then before the webinar starts open the file again. Then, when the timing is right, copy a paragraph and paste it into the chat. Each time you finish a webinar tweak your file contents and re-save it. After repeating this procedure for 3-5 webinars I expect you will not know how you delivered webinars without it.

4. Get help

If you are still nervous about contributing or managing the chat then grab a friend and ask them to help. If you are expecting a large number of participants this becomes really important. One option is to solicit one or two of the participants that you trust to make sure they contribute to the chat and help answer others’ questions.

5. Ask lots of questions

If you want people to get busy using the chat then ask questions and ask the participants to provide their answers in the chat. Ask often for the best results because it train your participants to anticipate your chat requests, which will motivate them to stay engaged with your webinar.

6. Invite participants to ask their questions

Never presume that your participants will ask questions unless you very deliberately ask them and convince them that you want them to ask questions and you will answer them. I am a big fan of answering questions during the webinar as opposed to waiting until the end. I recognise that it might not be feasible for presenters to answer every question during the webinar, but if you answer only some it can help your participants recognise that you are not like their despised teacher from day long gone who was there only to lecture. Instead, they will more readily accept that you are genuinely there to help them learn and respond to your participants’ needs and preferences.

7. Create a social environment in your chat

Humans are social creatures. The rise and rise and rise of social media is a testament to our basic nature that we like to interact with others. If you can assist your participants in interacting with the other participants then you may have created something more powerful than a webinar – A community. If your participants like the other participants on your webinar then some people may return to your future webinars primarily to hang out with their friends. You won’t mind that if it gives you the opportunity to help them again. Of course, this is really only possible to accomplish with Group Chats.

8. Thank your participants

Thank your participants for contributing to the chat in two important ways, which are to:

  • Thank them for their individual contributions by reading their messages and acknowledging their valuable contributions; AND
  • Thank your audience generally for their enthusiastic participation in the chat.

It’s all about engagement

This training article is the third of 5 consecutive weekly articles dedicated to helping you create engaging webinars that your participants will love. Later this month I will release my new Webinar Engagement Checklist (which you can pre-order here). You will be able to use the checklist to self-assess your level of engagement when you present webinars and score yourself. If you are not yet presenting webinars then the Webinar Engagement Checklist will give you the chance to best practice engagement habits before you even start presenting webinars and avoid some bad habits.

How effective are your chat strategies?

You can register now to obtain my free Webinar Engagement Checklist to be released later this month. Put simply, it is your chance to identify lots of options for making your webinars engaging and interesting to your participants, including improving your chat strategies. It will help you identify:

  • What you are doing well
  • What you can do better
  • New ideas for improving engagement

If you want to be one of the first webinar presenters to get a copy click here and it will be automatically emailed to you when it becomes available.

What ways do you use chat for maximum benefit during your webinars?

I seriously want to know what YOU think. Please click here to share your thoughts with myself and others in the YouTube video comments.

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Webinar Chat 101

What are the webinar chat basics that affect software choice

Webinar Chat 101 is all about choosing the right webinar software for you. This is because each type of webinar software normally only permits one type of chat. If you choose the wrong software your preferred type of chat engagement might not be available to you.

Today’s video identifies the three types of webinar chat so you can make sure your webinar software enables the type of chat you want.

Webinar Chat 101 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRZBX81cQbY

What are the 3 types of chat?

The three types of chat are:

  1. No chat – The name says it all. No chat is best suited to webinars used to present announcements or information only sessions where no questions or feedback from the participants is required.
  2. Individual chat – Each webinar participant can submit feedback or ask questions to the presenter (and moderators) and receive replies from the presenter. Individual chat is best suited to webinars where the presenter wants the participants to exclusively focus on the content without being distracted by the chatter and opinions of other participants. However, presenters should be aware that by using individual chat their ability to maintain the engagement of the participants with the webinar instead of checking email, using Facebook, browsing other websites or other distractions might be reduced.
  3. Group chat –  Every webinar participant can see the feedback and questions of the other participants so that in addition to communicating with the presenter (and moderators) they can chat with each other. Typically, there is an option for a participant to also send a private message to the presenter or another selected participant instead of making the comment visible to everyone. Group chat is best suited to webinars where the presenter wants to provide maximum opportunity for the participants to remain engaged with the webinar with less scope for distractions. Using group chat also provides more opportunity for the presenter to help nurture a feeling of community among the participants and provide a more enjoyable webinar experience. This can boost retention rates during the webinar and the likelihood that participants will want to attend future webinars by that presenter (or community).

It’s all about engagement

This training article is the second of 5 consecutive weekly articles dedicated to helping you create engaging webinars that your participants will love. Later this month I will release my new Webinar Engagement Checklist (which you can pre-order here). You will be able to use the checklist to self-assess your level of engagement when you present webinars and score yourself. If you are not yet presenting webinars then the Webinar Engagement Checklist will give you the chance to best practice engagement habits before you even start presenting webinars and avoid some bad habits.

How engaging are your webinars?

You can register now to obtain my free Webinar Engagement Checklist to be released later this month. Put simply, it is your chance to identify lots of options for making your webinars engaging and interesting to your participants. It will help you identify:

  • What you are doing well
  • What you can do better
  • New ideas for improving engagement

If you want to be one of the first webinar presenters to get a copy click here and it will be automatically emailed to you when it becomes available.

What do you think I should include in the Webinar Chat 101 syllabus?

I seriously want to know what YOU think. Please click here to share your thoughts with myself and others in the YouTube video comments.

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Webinar Engagement: Jerry Seinfeld Gets It

The one question you must ask if you are hiring a webinar presenter

If you are hiring a webinar presenter there is one question you must ask above all others. And if you are looking to become a webinar presenter then be ready to answer it. THE question is: “How do you create webinar engagement?”

If I am the employer I would not be primarily interested in the words the candidate uses to respond. Instead, I would focus on “how” they answer the question, particularly their non-verbals.

  • Are they excited to answer this question?
  • Are they passionate about engagement?
  • Is this something that is important to them?
  • Are they bursting at the seams to provide their answer to you?

I don’t want to hear a textbook answer. I want to hear the enthusiasm of a sixteen year old who is ready to attend their first stadium concert.

Today’s video is my reflections (and some frustrations) about webinar engagement. In some ways it is my answer to that job interview question. Click the video below and then please let me know how it makes you feel.

Webinar Engagement: Jerry Seinfeld Gets It – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkMwC5JL0LA

This month is all about webinar engagement. This training article is the first of 5 consecutive weekly articles dedicated to helping you create engaging webinars that your participants will love. Later this month I will release my new Webinar Engagement Checklist (which you can pre-order here). You will be able to use the checklist to self-assess your level of engagement when you present webinars and score yourself. If you are not yet presenting webinars then the Webinar Engagement Checklist will give you the chance to best practice engagement habits before you even start presenting webinars and avoid some bad habits.

Is webinar engagement important?

Creating engagement with your participants is critical to presenting effective webinars that help you achieve your goals. However, rather than ramble on about this myself I have gone into research mode. The following credible sources provide a wealth of explanations about webinar engagement.

 

“Engagement is the most important aspect of any webinar and is what makes them so effective.  Therefore, marketers need to find ways to quantify engagement throughout their program in order to gauge effectiveness and quality of content (which includes delivery).”

– Shelby Britton, Webinar Engagement by Numbers, The Adobe Connect Blog

 

“You need to know what you are trying to accomplish — in other words, how do you define engagement — and then track progress against that goal over time.”

– Kelly Barner, “Measuring Webinar Engagement“, Webinara Blog

 

“You’re speaking to them, looking for their responses to keep them engaged with your webinar, but they on the other hand look at you as someone that cares what they say. So it’s win-win.”

– Karen Yankovich, Episode 8, Webinar Skills Podcast

 

“This whole idea of an attention span is, I think, a misnomer. People have an infinite attention span if you are entertaining them.”

– Jerry Seinfeld quoted by Mike Delgado, Live Streaming: Strategies to Increase Audience Attention & Engagement Activity, Mike Delgado

 

I think Jerry Seinfeld is possibly the world’s best potential webinar presenter. If I am ever interviewing him for a role I cannot wait to ask him THE question.

How engaging are your webinars?

You can register now to obtain my free Webinar Engagement Checklist to be released later this month. Put simply, it is your chance to identify lots of options for making your webinars engaging and interesting to your participants. It will help you identify:

  • What you are doing well
  • What you can do better
  • New ideas for improving engagement

If you want to be one of the first webinar presenters to get a copy click here and it will be automatically emailed to you when it becomes available.

What do you think about creating webinar engagement?

I want to read what you think. Please click here to share your thoughts with myself and others in the YouTube video comments.

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Designing Effective Training

In 2015 I was invited to participate in a project coordinated by the Queensland College of Teachers. My challenge was to present a case study video about how I contribute to designing effective training. The project has been completed and here is the video.

Designing Effective Training – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE7qbxFm-ho

I have been working at MRWED Training and Assessment since October 2003. It is an awesome place to work because everyone regardless of their position has a commitment to delivering top class quality experiences for our students. Have you worked in or with an organisation where there was a clear genuine commitment to delivering quality service at every opportunity? If you have then you know how I feel about MRWED. I get to work with quality trainers and professionals every day and I teach and assess challenging programs with a diverse groups of students about topics that I find fascinating. I have been working there for 13 years and during that time I have never considered submitting an application to try and advance my career by working somewhere else. I think I have been very lucky.

When MRWED was asked to contribute to some videos that could be used as a resource to support and encourage Queensland teachers I was thrilled to participate. The above video was produced to focus on helping teachers visualise how they could satisfy number 3 of the Professional Standards for VET Practitioners, which is to “Plan, design and deliver effective teaching/training experiences”.

How do we design effective training?

The video describes the philosophies and approaches that I and others use at MRWED to design effective training. If there is a key takeaway I think it is to always encourage ourselves to do things better. How can we improve the resources we already have? Do they need updated information? Should we present the content using a different format? How can advances in technology positively impact the way we present and publish our resources?

Participate in the Webinars Survey

Today’s video doesn’t focus on webinars, but they are my thing. The Webinars Survey is currently available at the time this article was published. By participating in the survey you will get free gifts, have the opportunity to enter prize draws and find out the aggregated quantitative data from the survey. This last point means that by taking the survey you will find out what other webinar presenters prefer in terms of webinar software, webinar presenters and webinar training resources. This is valuable information that can help you, I and all webinar presenters figure out better ways to improve our webinar performance so in alignment with today’s training topic I enthusiastically commend participating in the survey to you. I cannot wait to share what you and others choose as your favourite software, presenters and resources. For detailed information visit http://webinarssurvey.com.

If you visit the Webinars Survey after the survey has concluded you will be able to join a waiting list to get notified when the survey is activated again.

What do you think is the key to designing effective training?

I am very interested in your opinion. Click here to share your thoughts in the YouTube video comments.

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What makes a Spectacular Webinar?

What makes a spectacular webinar? The following video answers this question.

What makes a spectacular webinar? – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEEgJOTcJmw

If you want your webinars to be “ho-hum” or dull or boring then please stop reading. However, if you want to create memorable learning experiences for your webinar participants then this article identifies the three factors that can make your webinar spectacular. To provide a “wow” experience for your attendees pay close attention to the following three items so that you can ACE your webinars: Advertising, Content and Engagement.

1. Advertising

A spectacular webinar requires attendees, usually lots of them. And to have a large number of participants requires you to successfully promote the webinar. Usually, we instinctively think of advertising as requiring a payment. Facebook marketing is very popular among the best webinar presenters who promote online products. If this is an area of interest, have a listen to Rick Mulready on Episode 2 of the Webinar Skills Podcast to secure advice for beginners about how to get started towards using Facebook marketing. Additionally, webinars can be advertised using Google AdWords, Twitter or other social media paid advertising options. Webinars can also be successfully advertised on niche sites relevant to your target market.

Alternatively, webinars can be promoted using “free” options, such as social media, your website or email broadcasts to your email list or perhaps providing your webinar details to someone else who promotes your webinar to their email list. I hesitate to write these as free options because there are real costs, most notably your time, required to attract followers, site visitors or email subscribers so that you can effectively utilise these options.

2. Content

A spectacular webinar delivers amazing content to the participants. This is critical because if the webinar content is not relevant or provides poor quality information to the participants they will leave and never return. During poor quality face-to-face training participants are inclined to “just sit there” because that’s what they learnt to do. In webinars poor quality training is reciprocated by decreasing attendance numbers. In the relative anonymity of the Internet attendees opt-out if they are not getting quality information.

Choose to deliver quality rather than quantity to your webinar participants. I write this because people are busy. They would almost always prefer you to dive deeper into fewer topics than skim across lots of topics. The deeper dive gives you more scope to provide actionable steps that can provide tangible benefit to your webinar participants, so be careful not to present a webinar on a broad topic. Focus your topic so that your participants finish the webinar impressed with the level of detail and valuable ideas they have acquired about that topic.

3. Engagement

Many websites use the word “attendees” to collectively describe the people who attend webinars. I do not. I prefer the term “participants”. This is a deliberate choice in order to identify that the best practice approach is to have your webinar guests engaged and participating. Never think of your webinar attendees as passive spectators who are there to watch you teach or put on a show. Instead, deliberately plan your webinar so that your participants have regular opportunities to be involved and interacting with you (and ideally each other).

Participate in the Webinars Survey

If you love webinars just a little bit then I have something exciting for you. The Webinars Survey is currently available at the time this article was published. By participating in the survey you will get free gifts, have the opportunity to enter prize draws and find out the aggregated quantitative data from the survey. This last point means that by taking the survey you will find out what other webinar presenters prefer in terms of webinar software, webinar presenters and webinar training resources. This is valuable information that can help you, I and all webinar presenters figure out better ways to improve our webinar performance so in alignment with today’s training topic I enthusiastically commend participating in the survey to you. I cannot wait to share what you and others choose as your favourite software, presenters and resources. For detailed information visit http://webinarssurvey.com.

If you visit the Webinars Survey after the survey has concluded you will be able to join a waiting list to get notified when the survey is activated again.

What do you think makes a spectacular webinar?

I am very interested in your opinion. Have I forgotten something? Click here to share your thoughts in the YouTube video comments.