How to Keep Your Audience Engaged in Webinars!

Hosting a webinar is a fantastic way of generating content, building your brand, and engaging with your audience on a deeper level. What’s more it costs almost nothing to run. But for a webinar to be successful you need engagement. I spoke to Martin Probst CEO of PROfound Leadership who shared his insights on how to keep your audience engaged in webinars.

Know Your Why Behind a Webinar

Knowing your why – having a clear vision for your webinar must be your first step. Without this you can’t expect to get engagement. Your webinar will be all over the place. Knowing your why will help you structure your webinar and provide your viewers with a clear outcome. Every single webinar you run must have a purpose behind it. Don’t just do a webinar for the sake of exposure. Always come back to your why!

Present Yourself Well in the Webinar

You want to show up for your viewers in the best possible way. Your energy comes through on screen. So, make sure it’s great. Be authentic by showing your personality. Don’t be robotic and dry and run off a script. This will bore your viewers. Add emotion to it. Nothing wrong with having prepared notes but it’s important to sound natural. Please don’t forget to have FUN. If you don’t have fun, your viewers won’t either. Don’t make it too serious. Even if your content is serious a little joke won’t ruin the content.

Conduct a Survey or Run a Poll in the Webinar

Conducting a survey or a poll is a great way to get participation amongst your viewers and hence engagement. Doing this early – at the start of the webinar is often the best strategy as your ‘hooking’ them right in. Be sure though to make it nice and quick for your viewers. Their time is precious and attention spans are short so keep this in mind. Think outside the box and have interesting questions that get them thinking and make it relatable to them.

Ask Questions During Your Webinar

Checking in with your viewers throughout your webinar and asking them questions to see where they are at builds and sustains engagement. Don’t go too fast with your content or people will just drop off. Take pauses and check in with your audience before moving forward. Help them connect the dots if they are struggling to understand something. Be willing to adjust some of the content to suit participants.

Incorporate Different Learning Styles in Your Webinar

According to psychology everyone has different learning styles (the way people learn). In a webinar you want to incorporate these to connect with a wider range of people. It’s easy to just think about your learning style and focus on the delivery of content. But a great presenter can go back and forth and use these learning styles which are essentially four languages:

• Visual (learn by sight)
• Auditory (learn by hearing)
• Audio digital (learn by listening & mentally going through steps, processes etc)
• Kinaesthetic (learn by doing an activity but also a combination of visual & audio)

Tell a Story or Use a Metaphor in Your Webinar

Telling a story or using a metaphor is both entertaining and educational. It helps with learning and can help to simplify something complex. Humans naturally engage with stories and metaphors. Consider using a story from your personal experience. This lets your viewers into your life which fosters engagement. You could do a ‘starter story’ in the beginning and go back to it in the end. It keeps people guessing and wanting to know more.

Deliver Great Webinar Content

Content is king and this applies not just to written content but also webinar content. Viewers want great content that adds value to them so give it to them. It’s a win-win for both. They get value and you get engagement. But don’t forget to deliver it in a great way. After all the delivery of your content makes a huge difference. This is where your personality comes in. It’s this mix of content and delivery that is crucial for the success of your webinar so you must get it right.

There are a few strategies to getting engagement in your webinars. If you would like to get more tips on how to start with your Live Webinars, join one of my next webinars 😉