Webinars.....there has to be a better way!

Webinar, Webcast, Town Hall, Webisode, Video Seminars......regardless of what you call them within your organization, everyone does them!  The big question really is, do they work????  

Does conducting regular webinars provide any meaningful impact to your organization? How does your organization measure results and ROI? What does success look like?

I'm more and more surprised at the number of high level individuals that I ask those questions to and get responses like "We get good feedback from the employees" or "We have perfect attendance when we conduct one."  That last one is my favorite :)

Respectful of their answers, I typically follow up with a version of "just because people log in, how do you know they are participating and engaged in what's being delivered."  Hold on....can someone out there mute your mic, I'm receiving a lot of background noise.  LOL....sorry, a little webinar humor.

To my surprise, in one of my recent discussions I received the answer "well, do we really care if they are engaged?....we have them there and we are delivering the content, that's the best we can do."  Excuse me, WHAT????  The best you can do?  Sigh...

Webinar value is determined by three things in my opinion: 1) The Presenter/s 2) The Content 3) The Software

Sounds simple, right; but if one of these three is not the highest level, your webinar simply won't give you the maximum ROI for your efforts. Right about now, or likely earlier in this read, you're wondering what the heck is this guy's point, can we get to it already? Fine, here goes:

I can't help you with numbers one and two, but I can help you with number three. The right software you use for your webinars is CRITICAL to engaging your audience. Conducting and managing your webinars is a huge undertaking, not to mention how cumbersome it is to make that content available for your target audience after the live event is completed. Ask yourself why you wouldn't want a more efficient and engaging platform with an entire suite of analytics to tell you which participants are actually watching and participating in your event? Not to mention the ability to simulcast to multiple social media sites or LinkedIn Live at the same time.

Brandlive’s video-first communication platform makes it easy to conduct truly effective webinars for your employees, with all of the necessary interactive and collaborative features built in:

• Live video capture and on-demand archiving
• Moderated chat feed lets your employees chime in with questions, comments, and reactions that can be responded to on-air in real time
• Quizzes, surveys, and polls encourage participation from your team members
• Slideshows and tabs for posting content, agendas, important URLS, and more
• Video libraries to compile all of your prior meetings for long tail viewing
• Remote Presenter lets you feature your best experts, from anywhere
• Mobile capabilities let you broadcast the meeting from anywhere, and allow your team members to tune in from the road
• Brandlive Producer allows you to create professional-quality livestreams without any prior production experience
• Metrics helps to analyze the engagement of meeting participants

Don't believe me? Check out how eMarketer and Intuit Quickbooks are utilizing Brandlive to transform their webinars into effective, engaging and result oriented tools for their business. And while your at it, take a look at How to get Your Webcast Audience Talking and maybe I can help you with number 1 above after all!