When you’re first thinking of having a webinar, it can seem overwhelming. How do you decide what to cover? How much detail do you have time for? How can you possibly make this all from scratch?
Having started a weekly training webinar for Rosemark home care software, I know the challenges. But don’t let those challenges dissuade you. Webinars can be a great way to reach your potential customers. Actually, they’ll come and find you rather than you having to find them. You do that by being concerned with their concerns and creating your webinars to address those concerns.
Webinars are also a way to keep your customers in the know and happy about your product. For us, it’s home care software. For you it’s home care services. Know your audience, that’s important.
I’ll cover a few tips that can help when developing your webinars.
1. What information would be helpful for your audience?
If you want your webinar to be successful, you need to focus on what knowledge you have that would be most helpful to your homecare audience. Is your audience your clients? Your clients family? Various referral sources? Tailor your webinar to them. Ask yourself, what am I an expert on? Even if you don’t think you’re an expert on anything, chances are you have unique insight that will benefit that certain someone that you want to reach. Trying to make a webinar on something you have very little experience with will not only be difficult, but show through in your final product.
2. Prep! Prep! Prep!
Making an outline or a ‘cheat’ sheet of what you want to cover can be very helpful in keeping you on topic. You don’t need to have a strict script, but if your webinar includes any demonstrations, practice them a few times to make sure everything will run smoothly when you’re ready.
3. Keep it short.
Most of my webinars are under twenty minutes. Even the most dedicated audience has a thousand things on their minds, and at least a dozen things that need to be done that day, their attention is going to fade if your webinar drags on. Try to keep it short, tight and to the point.
4. Engage your audience
One of the benefits of a webinar is that the audience can participate. Whether through surveys, polls or asking questions, there are many ways to help each person get the most out of your webinar. It can be helpful to pause during your webinar to give people a chance to get questions down. Also consider having a poll at the beginning of your webinar to get your audience prepped for the topic and thinking about the issues.
Most importantly, remember that the more webinars you do, the better you’ll be at them! And your home care audience will be well informed by your expertise on care for the elderly and all of the ins and outs.
So dive in and WOW them with your webinars!