5 Surefire Ways To Screw Up Your Webinar

March 18, 2012 by

Webinars are a great way to develop a bond with a group of people that you want to connect with. It’s an efficient way to communicate complex concepts or to inspire people’s passions. It’s also a great platform for selling your products (so long as you provide a good education at the same time).

I’ve attended and presented at quite a few webinars, so I’m becoming pretty good at spotting the good, the bad and the ugly. I won’t claim complete innocence here because all webinar presenters end up with surprises, bumps and bruises.

Here are five surefire ways to screw up your next webinar.

1) Not covering what you promised (Bait and Switch)

I’ve actually seen bigger companies being the worst offenders here (for the accidental version). I think some companies plan webinars well in advance, including producing the marketing copy. Then the lucky stiff that gets to present wings it and creates what he or she thinks the audience might want to hear. Or their stock presentation has evolved and it no longer covers what it used to. Suddenly there’s a gap between the marketing and what actually gets delivered. This may be accidental bait and switch but it’s still a waste of an hour.

Of course, we all know about the marketers who tease us with the promise of exciting knowledge to come for an hour while they pitch their products the whole time. That’s an example of planned bait and switch and I hate that even more!

2) Having poor time management

In other cases, I’ve been to webinars where they spend most of an hour going through about 1/3 of a planned presentation. Then the presenter rushes to catch up in the last few minutes or skips most of the Q&A but finishes their presentation. Limiting Q&A can frustrate your audience who has patiently been waiting to clarify something or to ask that burning question.

Sometimes it’s best to skip some of your slides to get to the punchline and still save time for questions. Also, make sure you’ve practiced to check your timing. What do you think?

3) Forgetting to press record

Hey, it happens to all of us. But when it happens to you, you’re the schmuck for that day! You should record all of your webinars whether you’ve promised to make a replay available or not. It’s a great asset and replays allow you to get your message our repeatedly with very little additional effort.

My tip – put a bright sticky note right in the middle of your computer screen and don’t allow yourself to take it off until you’ve pressed record!

4) Spending 15 minutes to get rolling

We know that technology can cause issues. And we want to introduce our speakers (and possibly sponsors), but enough is enough! Make it your goal to get into the content as soon as humanly possible. Your attendees will thank you for it.

5) Reading your text-heavy slides

One of the worst experiences is to attend a webinar that has very dense, text-heavy slides that the presenter reads word-for-word. It feels like the world has gone in slow motion as you agonizingly read ahead and wait for the presenter to catch up!

Some ideas to help you fix this:

  • Make sure to include visuals that you use as places to add additional talking points.
  • For slides with mostly text, add additional interesting or helpful details and examples. Also, don’t read all of the text. For example, you can read the bullet point titles but not the explanations that follow.
  • Consider having a co-presenter and give them carte blanche to comment or ask questions.

Are you doing Webinars?

Webinars (or teleseminars) are great ways to communicate, share, sell or educate. I highly encourage you to take the leap and give it a try with your audience (see my webinar process and tools).  Make sure you do a couple of trial runs before going big-time and I hope these tips will help improve your webinars.

Also, to see an example of a webinar, don’t forget to sign up for my free Webinar at the Social Buzz Club this Thursday, July 26, 2012! I’ll be covering my webinar process in more detail then.

Are you doing webinars or just attending them? Share your worst webinar horror story in the comments below!

It’s okay to absolve your guilty conscience here.

Related posts:

Filed Under: Webinars and Public Speaking Tagged With: , ,

Comments

  1. Chris
    Twitter:
    says:
    March 18, 2012 at 12:13 pm

    Have not done a webinar for my blog, but have run them in the past for my J-O-B. The best and most successful ones are the ones we have practiced the most!

    We actually made the “forget to push record” mistake a few weeks ago. We usually run the webinar and then post the recording on our website and email our list with a link.

    I am hoping to very shortly start to use this for my blog. I read an article somewhere (it may have been here) about using webinars to grow your list! Great strategy!

    Chris
    Chris recently posted..How to start a blog that doesn’t dieMy Profile

    • Tom
      Twitter:
      says:
      March 19, 2012 at 12:09 am

      Chris. Yes, webinars are a great way to build up your list. That and guest blogging are two good ones. I recently had the didn’t record “issue” come up as well :) I ended up re-recording it right away afterward. That’s no fun. You should give webinars a shot when you’re ready. It takes some work setting them up but they can actually be fun.
      Tom recently posted..7 Essential Elements of a Blog Post (Video)My Profile

  2. Kimberly Newport
    Twitter:
    says:
    March 18, 2012 at 5:45 pm

    Re: #5. “Presentation Zen” (my communications bible) by Garr Reynolds http://ow.ly/9JhUw . ‘Nuf said. #chsocm

  3. Peter Sandeen from Marketing Ideas
    Twitter:
    says:
    March 19, 2012 at 5:45 am

    Hi Tom,

    Valuable pointers here :) For me the time management part is always the one that may cause some problems. Though I haven’t done any webinars so far, I intend to do so in the near future.

    I think the last point is the one to watch out for, it sends your listeners/watchers running for the hills :) If your slides have more than 50 words in them, there’s too many. It’s that simple. Preferably you’ll never have more than 20 words in a slide…
    Peter Sandeen recently posted..Potatoes – The Great Time Management TeachersMy Profile

  4. Kirsten Rourke
    Twitter:
    says:
    March 19, 2012 at 7:10 am

    Tom -
    I may make this required reading for a few of my clients :)
    The reading text of the slides issue is a big problem in live presentations too (what’s the point of having a person if you’re reading the slide?). Better than half of that list could be solved with one simple word… practice! I’m transitioning some of my in-person classes to online and the one things that is critical to success is practicing – not just the training, but also running a webinar.

    If you’re showing software or your computer screen to attendees as part of the class then see if you can beg, borrow, or steal a second computer and login on that as an attendee. You’ll be surprised how different some things look. This will give you the hint when you need to lower the screen resolution on your monitor or change your pace when moving items on the screen.

    Good post Tom – keep it up!
    Kirsten Rourke recently posted..Axiom’s Adobe News – Feb 7, 2012My Profile

    • Tom
      Twitter:
      says:
      March 19, 2012 at 1:57 pm

      Kirsten, please share it with your clients. Yes, I agree with the two computer thing. I actually have one computer as the slide computer (usually powerpoint on slideshow mode) and the second computer to manage things and watch the chat. I think that’s a key peice of advice for everyone if they can muster up a second one. Thanks for stopping by!
      Tom recently posted..7 Essential Elements of a Blog Post (Video)My Profile

  5. Ryan Hanley
    Twitter:
    says:
    March 19, 2012 at 7:28 am

    Tom,

    I would have to say that #2 and #5 are the most offensive to me… I was on a webinar of a prominent blogger a couple weeks ago. I was excited for the webinar and what it had to offer. Then I got on and it was just reading off the slides and he had to buzz through the end because he had gone so slow through the beginning and introduction.

    Very disappointed.

    Everybody has a bad day but that was tough to get through and a turn-off for attending future webinars from this guy.

    Thanks!!!

    Ryan H.
    Ryan Hanley recently posted..Why Offering a Free eBook Can Destroy Your Email ListMy Profile

  6. Faria says:
    March 19, 2012 at 10:51 am

    It is always a bad idea of not to deliver what your promise, even we will hate if some one don’t give us what they’ve promised us. So we should do our best to provide good.

    Next thing you mentioned good is time management, time is very important matter in all things, so we should take care regarding it.
    Faria recently posted..Get Free Domain and Hosting from 9xhost.infoMy Profile

  7. Tom says:
    March 19, 2012 at 12:02 pm

    My worst was once doing a webinar with a University group of about 20 faculty. Unfortunately they had a terrible firewall issue that wouldn’t allow them to access the meeting. We were allotted 30 minutes for the webinar and we spend 20 minutes getting them connected. It was finally resolved by getting an IT guy in with admin rights to allow the download. Left with 10 minutes and trying to rush through 30 minutes of material, you can only imagine how terrible it was.

    I learned:
    – Always have a backup plan, possibly back up webinar program
    – Test the connection first!

    This was with a software company I work for where webinars are crucial to demonstrating a product. What about a product that is tangible, like jewelry, clothing, etc. How do you run a webinar to sell these types of products? What type of content do you show and will anybody watch or join that type of webinar?

    Thanks,

    Tom W.

    • Tom
      Twitter:
      says:
      March 19, 2012 at 2:45 pm

      Tom. Yes, I had a similar experience at a live event once where the projector wouldn’t work. Basically I used the couple of printed copies I had and we went though the key points. It turns out they really wanted to ask a lot of specific questions so it really worked for them to have more time for questions and less presentation. You never know!

      I agree with you that having a back up plan is always key!
      Tom recently posted..7 Essential Elements of a Blog Post (Video)My Profile

  8. Chris Nadeau
    Twitter:
    says:
    March 19, 2012 at 12:03 pm

    Great post and great timing! I am planning to host my first webinar sometime very soon. I do a bunch of them for our company as one of’s or for training with our customers. The goal this year it to add these to our educating marketing mix very soon.

    Thanks Tom! Oh, point #3…Did you record the webinar you did with AnyMeeting? I wasn’t available to attend the live webinar and would love to see the recording. I hope you weren’t a schmuck that day. :-)
    Chris Nadeau recently posted..Zappos Is Not The Only Shoe Store Doing Cool Things OnlineMy Profile

  9. Denise Butchko says:
    March 19, 2012 at 1:44 pm

    I love doing webinars. And I really enjoying attending them – IF they give me some good info. I get super irritated when someone I trust promotes a webinar – takes over 17 minutes (yes – sometimes I get so annoyed I time it) before they even get to a good learning point – or never really share a learning point at all. They just tease me like a bad date and then promote their product. Grrrr! When done well – I often end up being a loyal client of the person/company who delivered the goods.

    • Tom
      Twitter:
      says:
      March 19, 2012 at 2:07 pm

      Denise, I agree. A great webinar can really change how you think or teach you something extremely valuable. A bad one can be unfulfilling. I like the bad date analogy – that’s perfect! Yes, I watch my clock too when things seem to start slow. There are definitely people who get impatient even after 5 minutes so advice for everyone is to get into the content as soon as you can and save the chit-chat! I appreciate the comment.
      Tom recently posted..6 Small Business Blogging Myths DebunkedMy Profile

  10. Ileane
    Twitter:
    says:
    March 19, 2012 at 4:38 pm

    Hi Tom. this post hits home because I’ve been attending a ton of webinars lately. Some of them are work related and others are related to blogging and social media. At work we use Webex but most of the others I attended used GoToWebinar or something very similar. Did you ever hear of a service called Lucid Meetings? I was offered a trial so I might test it out with a small group of blogging buddies. I’ll be sure you get an invite and I hope you can make it when the time comes. Thanks for the post Tom, love the image!
    Ileane recently posted..Blog Writing Checklist: Have You Covered These 8 Blogging Essentials?My Profile

    • Tom
      Twitter:
      says:
      March 19, 2012 at 5:32 pm

      Hi Ileane. Thanks for stopping by and for the offer about Lucid. I’ve used Gotowebinar, instantteleseminar, Fuze Meeting and AnyMeeting. They all have their own nuances. I also got an invite to trial Lucid and was considering trying it out as well. If you give it a shot and want attendees to test it out, let me know! It’s always good to have another option.
      Tom recently posted..7 Social Media Secrets Gleaned From The ExpertsMy Profile

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