What is it and how to organise a webinar from an association?
In the past few years, online training has become a fast, easy and flexible option for people. The word webinar is now a household word when talking about digital training, but what exactly is it?
Webinars are small sessions (around one hour) of live training over the Internet. Through a specific platform, webinar participants can watch the presentation and follow the speaker’s explanations, as well as interact through a chat and ask their own questions.
There are many ways to organise a good webinar, some of the most relevant points to keep in mind are:
- To make a good webinar, we have to be clear about its objective: what message do we want to transmit? who are we addressing? what do we want to achieve?
- Once we are clear about the result we are looking for, we must start by choosing a topic that is appropriate for the audience we are addressing and present it in an attractive way: through a powerful title and materials that have a visual impact on the reader.
- It is important to have a good marketing strategy and to choose the right dissemination channels.
- For an online action to be successful, it is essential to have a database. If we don’t have one, we must spend time to create it.
- A single webinar can be interesting, but the ideal is to maintain a regularity that allows you to reinforce your brand presence.
- Online training has many advantages, but it is up to us to take advantage of them and not lose the attention of an audience that has multiple stimuli around them: a good internet connection, a quality image and acoustics and a visual presentation that includes videos, images and infographics are some of the keys to obtaining a good result.
Moreover, we must not forget that a webinar does not end when the session is closed: a good thank you email or a survey to find out what our audience’s opinion is are actions that will take us hardly any time and will have an impact on a better result.
Case study
At Rabuso we organise and manage a multitude of online training courses. Each one of them is adapted to the characteristics of each association and the target audience.
However, they all share some common guidelines. Let’s look at the case of the European Water Jetting Institute, EWJI and the management of its webinars.
As we have already mentioned, the objective of the session must be established, in addition to finding a date and platform for it to take place.
Another element that can be the determining factor for the success of the webinar is the speakers. Choosing the right people is fundamental. From the association we have two profiles, contractors or suppliers, who wish to propose a topic of interest to the trade.
Now let’s move on to the development of the webinar itself.
- You need to find a title appropriate to the topic of the presentation so that the audience knows what they can learn.
- Then we make an outline of the content of the webinar, this step is essential to attract the attention of the audience and increase the number of registrations.
- All webinars are published on the association’s website where all the information, photos of the speakers, contact details, as well as all the above points are published.
- During the session a presentation is shown which has to be prepared. In our case we have a template adapted to the platform where the webinar takes place, although it is adapted with the logos and information of each training.
- Once all the previous steps have been taken, it is advisable to carry out a rehearsal, so that any unforeseen events can be solved and any doubts can be answered.
- In addition, on the day of the presentation, the speakers connect in advance to make the final checks. In order to avoid noise, it is advisable to deactivate the microphones and cameras of the attendees, so that the chat will be available for any questions.
