Are you multitasking during a webinar session?

I googled ‘engaging webinars’ and got plenty of advice on how to lead or host an engaging webinar. Now here’s my problem with this. The focus is on the webinar host not the participants.?

Engagement is not that difficult to create. If we want our audience to leave the webinar with something inspiring, a tangible outcome, we need to make them do the webinar. This is particularly true if we’re in the influencing business such as learning or community management.?

Appealing to their emotions, their intellect and their curiosity makes for a good starting point. Let’s say you want them to talk how the topic relates to their work: have them submit photos in advance and share them in the webinar. Let them explain how the topic in question relates to their work be it administering drugs to patients in an efficient manner, writing amazing code or creating interesting onboarding activities to new hires. This really only takes a few minutes but the visuals are compelling and appeal to their curious minds. This anchors the topic to their world of experiences and makes it all the more relevant to them. A subject matter expert’s time is put to optimal use when questions can be answered in a joint session.?

Another effective way to engage the webinar audience is to have them write the notes on slides with only titles in them and compare them in breakout rooms at the end. The host can always send their slides for further comparison. Making sense of the information together with others adds impact and builds connections in a natural way. There is no need to have stamped on warmup activities when these are in place.?

Finally, exit reflections on chat make learning visible and give everyone a chance to collect their thoughts at the end. What are the key take-aways? What was relevant and why?

Webinars are great tools for collective sense-making, dialogue, meaningful connections.?

Here is how a 45-minute webinar session can be divided into engaging activities that have an impact.

• The presenter introduces the topic and goals: 5 minutes
• The audience discusses in breakout rooms to see what they know about the topic:10 minutes
• The presenter discusses the topic with authentic materials from the audience: 20 minutes
• The audience writes their reflections on the chat or alternatively shares their take-aways: 10 minutes

The presenter can send an infographic to the audience with key points in the end. Shifting the mindset from hosting to engaging the audience is likely to lead to less multitasking, more learning impact, more connection, less strain on the brain.?

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