Nowadays, there are numerous tools available to the typical business owner for reaching out to a wider audience. Among the most effective tools to have been developed in the past several years are: ebooks, video guides, podcasts, teleconferences and, of course, webinars.
A webinar is just as the name suggests: a web-based seminar. These are basically presentations, workshops, training seminars or lectures conducted over the Internet with the use of remote web conferencing technology. This technology has proven to be particularly successful for numerous companies that routinely utilize it for conducting meetings with personnel located in different countries.
Webinars are quite different from podcasts and webcasts, in that it allows for 2-way communication. Unlike the podcast or webcast, webinars provide a means by which presenter and seminar participants can interact with each other. Webinars also provide a significant advantage over tele-seminars, in that it allows users to share image content in addition to the standard video of other conferencing technologies. In fact, one of the most significant advantages of webinars is the opportunity to share desktop contents between every participant.
Granting access to the contents of your desktop can be particularly useful for demonstration and/or training purposes. This is an effective way to instruct seminar attendees by example, rather than by spoken instructions alone. This will also give you more opportunities to provide information that would be difficult to incorporate without visual aids.
Webinars also allow the presenter to appear before the participants if he or she so wishes. This will help enhance the feel of the presentation and give the participants the sense that they are interacting with an actual human as opposed to simply listening and viewing a recording.
Getting your own webinar started is actually a simple matter, with the many websites that offer such services for free. The best webinar services even allow you to do a dry run before the event in order to minimize the risk of any potential problems. Some of the best webinar services also have paid options that unlock even more useful features and increased functionalities.
Using a webinar service is usually as simple as signing up for an account. This will allow you to set a schedule for your webinar, and give you the sign up information you can provide to prospective attendees on your website or via email. In order to generate even more interest in your webinar, you will want to put together quality content with plenty of useful and relevant information, and to promote your webinar via any number of marketing and promotional methods.
It would also help to present your webinar in as natural a manner as you can manage. By taking on an air of confidence, you will have a much better chance at delivering your message in an effective manner. Plus, this will help give your webinar attendees the impression that you have an important message to deliver, and that you can deliver it in as effective a way as possible.
