4 Tips for Data Center Webinar Success

James Hilliard, Executive Webcast Producer, and Moderator at Hilly Productions, recently hosted an online seminar called “Webinar Bootcamp: Proven Steps to Success.” Within this online seminar, he shared four valuable tips for those who are looking to improve their webinar skills and gain the ability to reachout to a wider audience and generate more qualified leads.

When data centers are setting up for a webinar, make sure to prepare a checklist to stay organized; as you must account for time, make sure your audio and video are working properly, and engage with your audience to keep them tuned in.

Below are four tips recommended by James Hilliard, and additional resources that GoToWebinar provides to its users.

Time Efficiency

People do not like their time wasted, they want to receive valuable knowledge, but in a short and condensed way. James Hilliard says that today, “30 is the new 60”; people prefer shorter meetings, getting information quickly, no longer do they want to wait an hour. This means that when creating and sharing content with your personas, make sure that your information is short and relevant.  

When drafting a blog post or piece of content, create a three-part process on how you will communicate your topic to your audience. For instance: problem, resolution, outcome. By creating an outline, it is easier to construct your article.

To assist you in the future, remember that you want your content to be short, simple, and easy to digest, and you should only choose the three most important tips in your content.

Preparing for a Successful Webinar

There are many things to take into consideration when preparing for an online seminar. You must be set up in an appropriate location, be able to be heard and seen and to boost your confidence you should use mobile to join the online seminar as an attendee.

Prepare your Team

It’s best to have a team by your side to assist with the pre-webinar checklist and in-session, as you can get through the process more smoothly. However, if you are the sole host to an online event, be sure to be well organized and consider conducting a couple of test runs before going live.

Choose the Right Location

Location is critical. You want to be in an area that is quiet and where you have access to all necessary equipment like computer monitors, headsets, microphones, etc. Also, stay away from places that are busy and have a cluttered background; you want people to focus on you and the content you are sharing.

Set Up Audio and Video

Be sure you have either a headset or microphone available before starting the session and always test the sound quality before the session starts. Your sound must be clear for people to understand you. Hilliard does not recommend using a phone connection as the audio quality is terrible.

If you are in a group setting, the optimal way to get your team on the webcam is using a tripod. A tripod will let you move the camera to each person hosting the online seminar. If you are not in a group setting, you can use your computer’s webcam to connect, but be sure the frame of the video is only showing your head and shoulders.  

Register and Join Webinar

To build your confidence and see your event is going as planned, Erica Maki from GoToWebinar suggests you join your event as an attendee. This way you can see what participants see during your online seminar.

While in session, you want to see whether your attendees are experiencing a slow network connection or other technical issues. Additionally, it is optimal to have at least two monitors or a tablet when conducting an online seminar. You can use one device to hold the online seminar on and the other to attend the webinar.

Interact with your Audience

To keep your audience interested, you must interact with them throughout your event. Think about catchy words and taglines to keep them engaged. Hilliard says avoid terms such as cool, great, nice, etc. These words are emotionless, and people are less likely to be attracted to content that has a highly used and dull choice of words.

In order keep your audience engaged, create a webinar template that you can use every time. Hilliard suggests you have an opening hook, short introductions, interactions (such as polls), segments (sections of the presentation), and a type of visual design. Hilliard color coordinates his presentations to help him, along with his audience.

Furthermore, avoid talking about yourself and your achievements at the beginning of the event. If you want to mention anything about yourself, wait until the end and keep it to a minimum. People are not attending the event to hear all about you; they want to learn about the content you are providing them.

Create Great Marketing Assets

When you use GoToWebinar, the in-session control panel allows you to monitor poll responses, add and remove information or handouts, and orchestrate interactive conversation through their chat box.

A data center webinar is a great asset because you can reach a wide audience through online events, which generates more qualified leads and at a low cost. Webinars offer content for an interactive call-to-action (CTA).

You can share the recording with people who missed the live event, and you gain greater audience engagement. Lastly, you are building trust with your buyer personas, as people prefer to work with knowledgeable and trustworthy people.

Have you ever hosted a webinar? If so, what was your experience? And how did you prepare? Let us know in the Comments below.

To learn more tips on preparing for webinars, watch our webinar recording "How Data Centers and Cloud Service Providers Use Webinars to Educate and Build Trust at Scale."