How to host a webinar
Webinars can help organisations stay connected, upskill employees, win new business and more. Here's how to run a webinar like a pro.
Business webinars have long been useful for training and community building, but since the advent of mass remote working, they've come into their own. As of 2023, according to Forbes, over 12% of full-time employees work from home, while 28.2% are hybrid working.
And as the number of video streaming and webcasting platforms increases, webinars are an increasingly popular choice to boost skills and manage business development.
Why host a business webinar?
There are lots of reasons why you might choose to run a webinar. Companies organise them to educate customers, prospects or employees, to improve their position in the market, or to develop or hone new relationships.
Webinars can also be a good way to position yourself as experts in your field and to generate new leads.
To benefit from webinars, you need to make sure that you know what you're doing. Here are some tips for making webinar hosting run smoothly.
Eight webinar tips
1. Choose the webinar platform
In order to deliver a streamlined and effective webinar with far-flung clients or coworkers, you first need to make sure that you're using a reliable webinar platform. That's where Workplace from Meta can help. It includes a range of savvy integrations to help you get the most value from your webinar series – from planning to wrap-up to follow-up.
2. Choose your topic
What is it that your customers or clients need to know? Do you have important company information to share? Is there an area you want to educate others on?
Take time to choose your webinar topic – you can brainstorm ideas with different areas of the business. You'll be talking about your chosen topic for at least 40 minutes (if it's a 1-hour webinar, you'll want to keep 15 minutes free for questions at the end). So you need to make sure that the topic is something that your organisation has authority on, that interests others and that you've researched thoroughly.
3. Choose a format for your webinar
There's a range of popular webinar formats to choose from including:
Panel discussion: Choose your panellists carefully, making sure that they have something specific to contribute. Also, choose an experienced moderator.
Interview: Again, choice of expert is important here, as is using an experienced interviewer. Always prepare interview questions in advance.
Live Q&A session: This is a way of engaging and building up a rapport with your audience. It's a good idea to put together a list of potential questions so that your team can prepare.
Single-speaker webinar: The simplest approach can also be one of the most effective, provided that the speaker is knowledgeable and camera-confident.
4. Allocate roles
Team members will be needed to plan and organise the webinar and for technical assistance on the day in case there's a glitch. Someone will also need to moderate when handling questions from the audience, either during the webinar or at the end. You may also need to select a host, panel members and interviewees.
5. Build your content
Once the topic has been chosen, you need to start building content. Allocate aspects of the webinar to the relevant people and create a shared ideas document or slide deck that everyone can feed into.
Also think about what supporting content needs to be created. This might include social media graphics, notes, a web landing page for the webinar and handouts for attendees.
6. Promote the webinar
Once a date has been set, it's time to spread the word. Think about who you want to attend the webinar and how best to reach them.
Email campaigns, social media, paid ads and announcements on your website can all be good ways of promoting your webinar.
When promoting the webinar, don't forget to give as many details as possible. People want to know when the webinar is happening (date and time), which platform it's taking place on and whether they need to pay.
Start your promotion and allow people to register for your webinar at least two weeks in advance.
7. Rehearse
Rehearsal is essential to ensure the webinar runs smoothly. Timing is crucial when hosting a webinar, so thorough rehearsal will help you make sure that the session doesn't fall short or over-run.
Practise using any of the engagement functions on the platform that you want to feature in the webinar – for example, polls and break-out rooms. Be alert to any technical issues that arise and fix them ahead of your webinar.
8. Follow up
Finally, don't forget to follow up. Don't miss out on reinforcing client relationships because you haven't given them the extra push following the webinar.
You could begin by sending out a survey on how each participant found the session, using one of Workplace's survey integrations.
And don't forget to offer clients and coworkers a recorded version of the webinar so that they can check back and use it for reference.
Keep reading
Recent posts
Business communication | 10-minute read
Business communication strategies and why organisations need them.
Organisations had to rethink their communication strategies when people started working remotely during lockdown. Now, as some people begin returning to the workplace, businesses need to think again. Learn how to get started.
