Web conferencing is a forum for interactive presentations that span one-to-one meetings, internal conferences, team meetings and public seminars. Instead of jumping on a plane or driving across town, you can invite your audience to a web conference instead.
Over the last 5 years web conferencing has experienced explosive growth and the reason is clear: web conferencing not only reduces travel costs and hassles, but makes communication faster and more effective. In the aftermath of 9/11 companies are even more closely scrutinizing their travel requirements. Web conferencing can be used for a wide variety of applications including new product launches, sales presentations, training, software/product demonstrations, financial updates, marketing events and much more. The possibilities are virtually endless.
However, conducting a great web conference requires that you pay attention to the nuances of the medium. A good web conference brings people back and reduces costs while a blown web conference can be wildly expensive in terms of opportunity costs.
One of the best software which we have found is InterCall, which has been dominant in this field. You can find information and demos of it here…(see below).
To maximize the impact of your web conference, here are some guidelines to follow:
General Considerations
Be sure your audience members have access to an Internet connection and a computer with a sound card and speakers.
Be concise – a good rule of thumb is to limit your presentation to 30 minutes.
Most important – incorporate an interactive element every few slides or every few minutes to keep your audience interested – send a poll or ask for feedback via chat. This will help to prevent them from multi-tasking.
Develop Slides
A slide presentation is the core of most web conferences. There are some basic rules for developing a presentation that works well when presented in an online environment.
Write in brief, clear language.
Use “you” more often than you might otherwise in a written document – it will make your information resonate more with your audience.
Include a maximum of five bullet points per slide.
Use a large font that can be easily read – a minimum point size of 18 is recommended.
Use graphics with restraint in order to keep the file size manageable for those participants on dial-up connections.
Interact with the Audience
Interaction keeps virtual audiences engaged. Make sure you have a web conferencing platform with features that allow you to interact with your audience such as Polling, Q&A, Chat and a Whiteboard.
Polling is the most popular method of increasing interaction. Polling questions can be planned ahead of time or created on-the-fly during your web conference. Select pre-set multiple choice responses or create a customized question and answer set. Once participants respond to a Polling question, results can be shared with the entire group for even more interactivity.
A Q&A session is another way to increase interaction. Participants can send questions to you without interrupting the presentation. You can address them immediately or save them for later.
Emphasize the Main Points
Select a platform with features can help you emphasize the main points of your presentation. Use these tools to keep your audience focused. Remember when you are doing the leading and all they are doing is following along, it’s far too easy for a participant to “check out” without you ever knowing. Using tools to direct the user to moving or accented elements of the presentation is a good way to keep your audiences attention.
Annotation tools, including a pointer, an oval or a rectangular selection tool, are a great way to emphasize what you are talking about at any given time. These tools allow you to highlight areas within your slide presentation and keep your audience focused on the subject at hand.
Application Sharing that allows you the leader to share any document or software application on your hard drive with your audience. Not only can the audience view the document, you can pass control of it to any audience member who can then make changes to the document in real time. This is a great tool for training courses or working sessions.
Web Touring lets your audience follow along with your browser as you navigate the web. This feature is perfect for showing the audience updates to a company website, pointing out information on a competitor’s website and much more.
Measure Results
People love results! The score matters! They want to know their own performance. And they want to see how their performance and opinions stack up against others. Virtually anything that happens during a web conference can be viewed in a report. Your web conference platform should have good measurement and reporting functions that can be used to evaluate participants and gauge the success of the web conference.
Participant Lists determine the size of the audience. Participant details should track and include login/logout times, email address and company name and more. This information can be used as sales leads.
Chat/Q&A Reports can be used to follow up with participants and clarify any outstanding issues.
Polling Reports provide the leader with valuable feedback. Find a system that you to record individual results from the audience and generate easy to read charts and graphs for easy analysis and sharing. This is perhaps one of the best tools for keeping interest and involvement high.
Archive Presentations
Choose a web conference platform that will allow you to archive your presentation for replay via the Internet. This gives anyone who missed your presentation the opportunity to view it on their own time. This is also a helpful feature for audience members who want to review the presentation again – this is especially a good idea for new product introductions or training sessions. Consider the following archiving options:
A Record and Playback option that captures both the audio and web portions of the presentation allowing you to produce and archive an exact replica of the original web conference.
Document Archive so you can post reference documents along side your presentation allowing participants to quickly find them.
The use of web conferencing will only increase in popularity. By learning to use this medium and use it well, you can increase sales, improve training, and keep your customers and employees informed while keeping time and travel costs to a minimum.
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