Tips for Keeping Your Audience Engaged When Presenting your Webinar
Hosting a webinar online carries many perks, both for you and your audience. Unfortunately, certain distractions can mean a person’s attention is drawn away for a brief moment of time. Distractions can include the receiving of emails, social media alerts and telephones ringing. For a webinar to be successful, it has to deliver its message to its audience while ensuring they remain interested.
Engage With Your Audience by Telling Them a Story
When presenting a webinar, it can be very tempting to have a plan-of-action or a biography of the speaker as an opening act. However, you may find that you’re throwing your audience in at the deep end and that they quickly lose interest in what you have to say. There is nothing wrong with giving expectations of what will be covered during the webinar, but there is no real necessity to give them more time than is required. Why not come up with a story that revolves around the content you are about to deliver. It could be in relation to yourself, or to someone within the industry. Not only will it make the audience more interested in you as a person, but it will also leave them anticipating more from your webinar presentation.
Talk With Your Audience, Not at Them
It is vital that you keep your energy up when presenting a webinar. Think if you were watching your own webinar, what would you like to gain from the presentation? What features would you like included for you to keep a vested interest in what is being spoken about. These are points to consider when putting together plans for your webinar. Your energy levels should also be included in the tone of your voice, try and avoid a monotone voice.
Although you may have a voice that is both warm and charming, even the smoothest of voices can become a little tiresome after listening to it for over an hour. Fortunately, you can easily break up parts of your webinar by asking the audience to participate. You can also ensure that people are showing interest in your webinar by addressing them as individuals rather than as a group. You could ask a series of questions and direct them at singular audience members. Before you know it you will have a participating audience anticipating what piece of information you will deliver next. Lastly, don’t be scared of injecting some humor. Granted, you shouldn’t be filling your presentation with jokes, but a funny question or two not only breaks the ice, but it portrays you as a real person.
Make Your Webinar Aesthetically Pleasing