Communications Training: Best Practices for Webinars

Now that we are offering more webinars, I've discovered that very few Fellows have much experiece with delivering them.  That's to be expected since webinars are still very new in some fields.  Their use is increasing rapidly, however, so I want to offer a resource for learning more about planning, delivering, and following up after webinars to everyone in the network.

It's a guide from Adobe called "Best Practices for Webinars" and it is available for free as a PDF download.  The guide contains all of the important points for every stage of webinar development, so it's a good place to start learning or to polish your skills if you already do webinars on a regular basis. 

The guide covers the following topics:

• Addressing the audience's perspective
• Building attendance
• Preparing for the webinar (my quick tip: ALWAYS have a moderator separate from the presenter!)
• Presentation tips
• Post-event considerations

The delivery section covers Adobe's own Acrobat Connect Pro product, so that might not be relevant if you're using a different platform, but everything else is excellent for anyone delivering a webinar.

The upshot is that even if you are "only" the presenter at a webinar organized by another person or company, doing your part to ensure the webinar is well-attended and runs smoothly helps you in the long run.  Webinar recordings posted online often get many times more views than the original broadcast, and a great presentation can help cement your reputation as a leading expert on the topic.