5 mistakes you’re making when giving a wellbeing seminar
Webinars are increasingly used by businesses to inform, teach new skills and inspire change and reflection in their target market.
But, as with any kind of presentation, they are up against waning attention spans and audience cynicism. Here are some of the common traps businesses fall into when offering webinars - and how to avoid them.
1. Trying to cover too much in a short time
It’s important to have a handful of key objectives before you start planning a presentation. Be clear on what you want to achieve and how you’re hoping to achieve it.
Webinars come in different shapes and sizes, like training, thought leadership, lead nurturing and product demonstrations, to name a few. But, according to webinar experts WebinarCare, the most popular type of webinar is educational.
People are keen to learn, so make it easy for them by avoiding the temptation to bombard them with information in a short space of time. Present concise thoughts in engaging ways and use screengrabs to aid retention of key points. And stick to the ‘no more than six points per slide’ rule, too, with each slide clocking in at a minute or less.
2. Not engaging the audience
Holding attention spans for an entire webinar is an artform few people conquer, but 92% of webinar attendees say that they benefit from a Q&A session at the end. And you can gain insight from it, too. Or add it halfway through to break up the monotony.
A webinar without participation is just a monologue, so be sure to get people involved. It’s a great way to win people over by showing that you’re interested in their feedback. Just be sure to line up the first question-asker in advance so you can avoid an awkward lull in the webinar.
3. Making assumptions
Regardless of the topic that your webinar is centred on, it’s vital to be inclusive with information and language. People come from different backgrounds and have differing experiences and requirements. What fits one group may not fit another, so be sure to incorporate that into your framing of information.
At Claro Wellbeing, we send out pre-webinar questionnaires to all attendees to gauge common areas of interest regarding finances. Combining this with market research, we can target our content in a way that answers questions posed by participants to ensure that everyone feels included.
4. Running over-time
According to webinar hoster BigMarker, 44% of webinar attendees would prefer it to last 45 minutes. Use this as a guide. After three quarters of an hour, start to wrap up the presentation and introduce the Q&A section, if you’ve got one.
Time is precious. When you overrun, you create stress for people who have work to do, other meetings to attend and deadlines to hit. Always finish on or ahead of time. Even if you haven’t made every point by 45 minutes, send a follow-up email after with anything you’ve missed.
5. Not learning from each webinar
The best times to host a webinar are between 11am and 2pm. After each webinar, debrief your team. Make a list of what went well and what didn’t go quite so well. Maybe the Q&A discussion never quite took off, or the time slot of 9am on a Monday morning didn’t garner strong attendance, or the slides were in the wrong order due to a last-minute change. These are things you can fix for next time.
Be sure to follow up with attendees by sending a quick questionnaire. Their input will be vital in shaping future webinars, so listen closely.
In partnership with Claro Wellbeing
A financial wellbeing benefit to support your team where it matters most
