How do you engage an audience during a webinar?

Another way to keep people engaged is to do a couple of polls during the webinar. This way you can get a better idea of how many people are paying attention!

A webinar, like any other presentation, takes a lot of planning.

First ask and answer these questions:
Who is my audience (age, gender, occupation, nationality, etc)
Why do they need the information I am presenting?
What do I want them to do with the information I am presenting?
How do I want to them to feel about the information I am presenting?
What questions will they have about my material?

Once you have answered these questions you can create an uniquely engaging presentation.

Use clean clear graphics for your slides (Slideology, by Nancy Duarte is a great resource)

Roseanne is right on about using stories, humor and questions.

Make sure your audience has to touch their keyboards at least every 10 minutes. You can have them answer questions, raise their hands with questions, or signal their agreement.

Webinars that allow to present on camera (even if you are in a little box) are more engaging. Here are some tips to keep in mind if you are using this method.

1. Keep your eye contact on the camera. The audience will perceive that you are looking at them when you do. When you are not focused on the camera, looking down or at the screen the audience will notice.

2.Keep your movements small. Big gestures will seem distracting.

3. Be well lit. The light from your room or worse from your computer, is not sufficient. Use a daylight balanced light source.

4. Sit with good posture.

5. Smile (unless you are presenting dire news)

6. Have fun.

Just because people aren't live doesn't mean you can't engage them during your presentation! Here are three ways to do that:

Distribute PDF files of worksheets to registered participants before the webinar. These could be note-taking versions of your slides for them to use during the webinar, or "quizzes" that ask them questions they'll need to answer and refer back to during the webinar. Or it may be a worksheet they'll need to complete during the webinar. That would all depend on your subject. But get them busy doing something that involves having them write something down, and they'll not only be paying closer attention to what you're saying, they'll remember it better.

Use a webinar host that has the capability for participants to enter questions for you; the ones I've seen have this as a sort of chat function on the screen to the side of the slides. Then encourage them to give you feedback and questions during the presentation. Keeping an eye on this will tell you if anyone's listening. Ask them a question every now & then that requires an answer there, then refer back to what some of them said a few minutes later. This will let participants know that you're paying attention to them.

Encourage people to tweet about the webinar, using a certain hashtag. Search Twitter on that hashtag to see how many actually are. You probably won't be able to concentrate on giving your presentation and doing all of this at the same time, so it may be helpful to have an assistant who's helping you monitor the feedback.

Lots of great suggestions. I've been guilty of violating all of these - and more - over the years.

I've found that in order to engage an audience (especially via a webinar) you have to connect with them emotionally. Charlie Plumb once said that "your facts will be better digested and longer remembered if your words touch the heart before the stimulate the mind". Using graphics to tell stories that relate to the concept you're trying to get across works wonders. If you don't do this, what do you think will happen? Precisely what we've all done: people will minimize the webinar windows, check their email, take phone calls or drop off entirely.

Another thing that helps is to speak like you're having a conversation at lunch or a networking event. There's no need to be so formal...just be yourself and speak from your heart. No reading bullet points verbatim!

One other thing that you have to remember is what's at stake. If you're presenting to 100 people in a half-hour webinar, you're expected to be skilled and informative enough to justify the 50 man hours involved. People are there to hear what you have to say, but you'd better make it good.

Great question. For any presentation, I do the following, not in any particular order:
1) Ask questions (that I already of course know the answers to) right from the beginning to engage the audience, either with a show of hands if live or by writing in if webinar.
2) Using stories I know people can relate to.
3) Encourage questions, comments, feedback, during and after the presentation.
4) Be sure to include appropriate humor so if live I see them laughing, smiling, or nodding their heads, and if by webinar I assume they are doing so from experience.
5) Last, I trust the process!

First, clean and clear slides. They WILL refer back to the slide printouts later so you want the thrust of the slide(s) to be concise and understandable.
-Be careful not to use too many different fonts/bold/italics/shadow/sizes/colors.
-Use color for emphasis of wording, not for background; one take-away phrase per slide in red or yellow.
-Use a black or dark backgound with light colored font.

Second, not too much graphics but some great. hi-rez pictures that reinforce your point. Be sure to cite the source or get permission if you do not own the rights to the graphic.

Third, anecdotes and real-life examples should be part of your oral presentation in the webinar. These are more memorable than the wording on your slides. If you can demonstrate the evolution of the story you are telling, do so in "build slides."

Fourth, use humor in the right places. You will never actually hear the attendees laugh so you can't take any cues but be personable, use inflection and wit in your verbal presentation.

There's a great blog called http://blog.brainshark.com/mybrainshark that focuses on presentations that I hope you will find helpful.

Please let me know if you need any other ideas or want to benchmark.

Lynn, I love the idea of distributing documents ahead of time.

For me the key is knowing my audience. I customize the presentation to the audience I am presenting to. For example, I once needed to have a sales webinar with someone I didn't know very well. I asked a few mutual friends what this person was like and their answers varied. What struck home is when someone said "she sure loves her dogs!"

I then added in pictures of my dogs to the presentation. From the moment she saw them, I was IN!

Use a minimum of one slide per minute--sometimes two slides per minute. The most boring sales presentations are when presenters have one or two slides on the screen for an entire hour. Clients are sometimes alarmed that I won't get through all my slides in the time allotted. That never happens. They are always amazed at the pace, and they monitor participation.

Use a lot of graphics. This is particularly helpful with an international audience. Use large font and no more than 5 bullets on a slide. Three is even better.

I learned this from Tom Drews at What Works. He has a great tool on his site for 28 Best Practices for Presenting Online. http://www.whatworks.biz/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/28-best-practices-for-...

Make it clear at the beginning your expectations of the audience and that that expect active participation. In advance, drop a few questions throughout the presentation maybe every 3rd or 4th slide. Ask direct questions that are meaningful to the topic of discussion. Relate the audience to the point of discussion by asking them to give examples.

Design of your presentation is also key to audience engagement. It sets the environment of the webinar much like setting atmosphere (i.e. signage and lighting) at a seminar. Selectively use imagery, animation, and charts to convey information. Keep design clean and copy concise. Contact your marketing department to come up with a branded look and copy layout.

Thanks to everyone for some really great answers! I truly appreciate your time and expertise.

Anthony

I answered a question here recently that was pretty much identical to this one. Am not going to re-hash here, but will add a thought. Great answers to date, but they pretty much are all after the fact. These won't help you when you're live and you see people dropping off. That's when you really need to go off-script a bit to jog the audience before they all leave.

The worst thing you can do is tell the audience you're worried nobody's listening. They don't know that other people are dropping off, so don't give them a reason to leave.

What you really need to do is liven up the dialog, esp if you've basically been reading off of slides. A seasoned presenter can do this intuitively, but if that's not happening, the moderator is your best hope. You need to start some banter there, and get him/her to engage the audience either with an ad hoc poll, or to encourage more Q&A. It might even be a good time to pause the preso and answer some questions. When you're presenting, the show must go on, and sometimes you have dance a bit to keep their interest.

Many of our customers are asking about attendee “engagement” lately. It’s great if you have lots of registrants, and even better if they actually show up. But many webcasting hosts are wondering if their participants are really paying attention. How do you make sure that they do?

The key to truly engaging attendees is to develop and offer interesting, compelling and educational content. If content is boring or does not bring relevant value, you will lose your attendees.
• Inviting an industry expert, customer or partner to present a case study or host a Q&A during a webcast can be highly effective.

Secondly, encourage interactivity and networking to drive attendee interest and engagement and to maximize attendee time at your event.
• Use social media such as Twitter and LinkedIn groups and your own community site.
• Offer giveaways and rewards and tools such as live chat and group chat to further encourage your audience’s full participation.
• Another recommended best practice is to include a Q&A session to encourage attendee participation and, as a result, engagement.

All great ideas, one that has not been mentioned is actually having a conversation with one or more of the participants. I've opened the line to a participant and coached them though applying an idea/concept from the session. Generally get much higher ratings from those webinars than when I do not engage them this way.

One of the benefits of using a web conference service to review the slides, rather than send them in advance, is that you (the presenter) control which slide your audience is viewing, without the need to constantly announce which slide you are on. However, too few presenters take the next step, which is to actually indicate which bullet (or area of the slide) they are speaking to. Most web conference services include a pointer tool, highlighter pen, and square/circle drawing tools that allow the presenter to indicate not only which bullet point they are speaking to, but to focus the audience's attention on the exact message they are trying to convey. By using these simple tools, presenters can not only do a better job of capturing and keeping their audience's attention, but can use the web conference service as it is intended - as a medium for more effective communication.

Great discussion about creating greater engagement and interactivity in your webinars. It starts with the design of the session and a willingness to get past the mindset that you intend to be a talking head streamed over the Internet as you display slides. That's just an invitation for your audience to multi-task. Instead adopt the rule of thumb that your participants need to be engaged every 3 to 5 minutes with a relevant poll, question, chat discussion, or request for feedback using emoticons or status icons. Incorporate their input into your session. Always present with a host whom you can engage in dialogue (much like a radio show includes banter), and take questions throughout your session, not just in a Q & A at the end. My book, Great Webinars, is focused on how to create interactive webinars that engage participants. www.netspeedlearning.com/greatwebinars.

I gave a webinar recently and later discovered one of my students is the training VP for a major US company. (oops!) He directed me to Adobe Connect, which they use. I was using ustream.watershed.tv. Adobe's features allow/insist upon engagement - this will be what I use in the future.

Entertain your audience.

The tactical tips shared in the comments above are great - polls, opening the lines for Q&A, quizzes, giveaways, etc, BUT...

The way to truly hold your audience's attention - without having to engage in coercion, bribery, or manipulation - is to entertain them. Not an easy task.

As a writer, I find that the easiest, most natural way to do this is to tell stories. Find ways to weave anecdotes and metaphors into your presentation. Your audience may be a room of C-level B2B execs, but they are still human beings and human beings thrive on story. It is easier to relate to than a pie chart, stays with us longer than a bunch of bullet points, is eminently more sharable than a mission statement, and it's easier than trying to tell jokes.

My fellow "Savvy Sister" Heather Rubesch and I gave a webinar on - drum roll please - how to give a great webinar. You can get the cliff's notes version in this blog post which includes a link to the archived webinar with the presentation: http://www.savvyb2bmarketing.com/blog/entry/533721/kickass-webinar-content-in...

For me, the golden rule of engaging an audience is to give a presentation that would keep you engaged. Do that, and you're home free.

This is a great question, and I'm afraid there are no perfect solutions for keeping virtual audiences engaged.

However, I posted a blog entry a couple months ago with some key concepts to keep in mind when conducting a webinar. It's titled, "Training and Presenting in a Virtual World: Turpin Communication’s Top 10 List of Best Practices (a Year in the Making)."

http://blog.turpin-ecoach.com/?p=534

Hope this helps.