Use a webinar to present to a few – or a few thousand

• A webinar is an online seminar or presentation with interactive elements. You can interact with the audience, let people "raise their hand" to ask questions, take polls and more.
• A webcast is a presentation without the interaction, like watching a film rather than attending a workshop.

Whether you want to augment or replace your live presentations with webinars and webcasts, a bit of planning will help you get the most out of your online events. Get started now by watching a free webinar:

Top Ten Tips for Great Online Events
Learn the top ten tips for planning, promoting and delivering online events.

Or join one of many other free webinars for business professionals to see why web seminars and online events (and particularly WebEx Event Center) can help you deliver information to large audiences at a fraction of the cost of a traditional event.

Learn from our experience and best practices in delivering regular webinars and develop your own processes. See why web seminars and online events can help you deliver information to large audiences at a fraction of the cost of a traditional event. We recommend that you divide the process into 3 phases:

 A webinar allows you to "touch" people all around the world without having to endure travel schedules and expenses. Connect and collaborate with more people in less time. You can also record your webinar and play it back later, so that those who missed the live event can still watch and learn. Here are a few quick tips to get you started.

• Create useful content that answers a question or solves a problem. Don't create a webinar that is a thinly disguised infomercial for your services or products.
• Have a recognised expert deliver a portion of your webinar. Big-name presenters can help draw your attendees in, particularly if the expert is someone from outside your organisation.
• Pick the best days of the week and the best hour of the day to reach the most people. Midweek (Tuesday to Thursday) will generally draw the best but don't plan your webinar for the day before or after a bank holiday or industry event. If your target audience is across multiple time zones, this can be tricky and leads us to the final point.
• Offer repeat performances. If you can offer multiple chances to attend your webinar, you're more likely to get a bigger draw. If you can't offer multiple live presentations, consider recording the event and offering it as a webcast later.

Promote your webinars and webcasts through your regular channels, including newsletters and advertising. Make sure you begin at least 30 days before the event. Don't forget to include your existing customer base in these efforts. Personal invitations from your salesforce to existing customers, either through email or phone calls, can be very productive.

Make sure you have a quick and easy registration process. Send a confirmation email to all who register and follow up with reminders a week before the event and again an hour before the event to get the highest attendee rate.

Get immediate feedback about your event and the interests of your attendees by offering a survey as they exit the webinar. You might also want to follow up with those that registered but did not attend. If you're offering the webinar again, make sure to let that group know about it. If you've recorded it and will offer it as a webcast, be sure to include information about the webcast, of course.

To learn more about how WebEx Event Center can help you extend your reach through webinars and webcasts, read Unearthing the True Value of Web Seminars and On-Line Events, a white paper by Wainhouse Research.

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