A webinar is a type of web conference. It can be either be one-way, from the speaker to the audience with little audience interaction expected; or two-way with full participation expected from the audience in terms of polls or question and answer sessions.

The first thing to do is find a service, such as GoToWebinar and review their detailed instructions. They offer a checklist:

1. Schedule (date, time, topic)
2. Customize settings (branding, registration, polling, survey)
3. Promote (registration report, reminders, follow-up)
4. Practice
5. Present
6. Follow-up

This is a good checklist and GoToWebinar has a lot of information for each step. What I want to add has to do with the topics of “practice” and “present”.

Your practice run should be an actual webinar where you invite someone else in your team to be your audience. This scenario will allow you to test every feature you intend to use. It’s not the same to launch the program and look at all of the buttons and think you know what you need to do. When your audience is waiting for you and you realize you don’t know how to perform a function—like un-mute their phone line, or answer their written question—you might get stressed and lose your control of your presentation.

If you are recording your webinar for future access, practice that as well. You want to see the quality of the video before you promise it will be available, specially if you intend to sell it. Typically, you want to start the recording once everyone has arrived and you start presenting. Write yourself a big note to do this… the first time I gave a webinar, I told the audience the recording would be available to them, and then forgot to turn that feature on!

Because it is easy to forget such things, I strongly recommend that you have a facilitator during your webinar. This should be someone technically savvy who is not responsible for the content of the presentation. Their job should be to make sure:

• everything is working properly,
• the features you want to use and indeed being used,
• participants are getting assistance as needed,
• participants are getting their questions answered,
• you are staying on time…

… and, finally, that you don’t end the webinar realizing you forgot something!

It really is too much for you, as the presenter, to keep track of the content, the technical aspect, and the audience’s participation at all once while trying to stay within your time frame. So, practice and get help.

What experiences have you had giving webinars that you would like to share? Any tips?