11 Best Webinar Practices for Before, During & After (2024)

Webinars have changed from mere marketing tools to real game changers in modern communication and learning, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

How do you make them work for you? Since these are virtual events, your prospects will likely lose interest before delivering your final pitch. What you don't want to experience is customers leaving your event or a low sign-up rate.

To prevent such a situation from happening, it's crucial to develop a solid strategy involving webinar best practices to reap optimal results from your efforts. This article outlines best practices for webinars to leave a lasting mark.

What does it take to make a successful webinar that stands out?

Webinars can provide valuable information to a broader audience with less commitment from the participants. So, what makes a successful webinar stand out and go off without a hitch?

Generating a great webinar topic

One critical step towards successful webinars is brainstorming ideas. It starts with picking a topic that answers questions that is relevant to your target audience. For example, a topic such as email marketing could focus on subject lines. Make sure that your idea is as niche as possible. This way, you can deliver value to your audience and make your webinar stand out.

You'll use this to guide your webinar title. Make sure your title is searchable and includes keywords that your audience may look up.

Using a reputable webinar tool

To make an effective webinar, consider choosing a trustworthy hosting platform. The platform you select should be user-friendly and allow people to register quickly. You should choose your webinar platform based on the number of webinar attendees, cost, and type of event you wish to host.

Choosing a suitable webinar format

Webinar formats structure your event! If you want your webinar to be successful, ensure it's in the proper format that aligns with audience preferences. You can explore using an engaging format like a panel discussion, interviews, or questions and answers. Whatever form you choose, ensure it gives value to your audience and encourages them to sign up. 

Selecting the best time

Pick the best times for webinars to make your event stand out by considering where your target audience lives. Check out webinar analytics, using tools like Google Analytics can help you choose the best time zones for your event. Avoid days and times when most people commute or work to prevent conflicts. 

Webinar promotion 

After picking the right time for your webinar, promote it by developing a webinar landing page to entice people to sign up. Make sure this has a striking call to action button. Then, you can promote the landing page link by advertising via social media. Also, you can promote it freely on your website and send emails to your subscribers.

13 Top webinar best practices for a successful event

Before the webinar: Best practices for webinar planning and organization

1. Define specific webinar goals

Before you do anything else, set out what goals you have for your webinar. How many attendees do you hope will attend? Who is the right audience for you to target? This is key to a standout webinar. It'll help give you a direct vision of what you need to focus on when creating and promoting your webinar.

2. Write a script and use a teleprompter

One essential webinar strategy is writing a script. A webinar is a virtual event. As such, a script can spice it up because it provides a road map to keep your event on course. However, you don't need to feel confused and lose focus when presenting your event. Instead, you can use an online teleprompter to stay on track. If you’re recording on Riverside, our teleprompter feature lets you display your script in your choice of font size. Your script will be right in front of you on the screen — you don’t have to go searching for them elsewhere.

3. Rehearse your script

Many people often overlook or ignore crucial webinar presentation tips, including rehearsals. Despite having a perfect script, how you deliver your words and the tone of your voice can make or break your event. Practicing boosts confidence levels and helps people become better webinar presenters.

4. Send reminder emails

Days before the webinar, ensure that you email reminders at least two days before and possibly an hour before the event. This approach helps to establish trust and boost attendance. Fortunately, most webinar software can automatically deliver reminders to subscribed prospects. This simple tip may help you to increase the attendance of your webinar.

5. Create an effective webinar promotion strategy

As we mentioned above, promoting your webinar is crucial. Beyond creating a landing page, consider promoting your webinar through shareable videos. These videos should entice your videos to want to learn more, making them sign up for your webinar. You can also get your guest speakers to share promotional materials with their followers on various social media platforms.

During the webinar: Best practices for engaging webinars event

6. Encourage attendee engagement

Among the webinar best practices, fostering audience engagement is a key aspect of webinar events. Once you spark their interest, attendees can actively participate and even refer their colleagues to your webinars. Allocate enough time for interactive elements like Q&A sessions with your webinar attendees and promptly respond to questions to ensure you have an engaged audience. For example, with Riverside, you can host a live call-in with your webinar audience members. 

7. Present the information slowly

Don’t rush the process. Delivering information at a measured pace is one of the essential tips for webinars. Typically, your audience's capacity for sustained focus is limited. Since humans have an average attention span of about 8.25 seconds, there's a need for effective information delivery. Remember, understanding how long should a webinar be ensures that it runs smoothly and on schedule. 

8. Demonstrate the information

To break the monotony during the presentation, consider using video animations and slides that allow the audience to engage directly. This caters to more visual learners and significantly boosts engagement. 

If you’re using Riverside, you can easily share information with our screen sharing feature. We also have a presentation recorder so you can upload slides, control them and capture them in up to 4K. You can also use our Media Board feature for sharing videos live.

9. Unveil new information

When hosting a webinar, one of the best practices to follow is introducing unexpected insights. Sharing fresh data or industry findings can add value to your presentation and generate more engagement among attendees. You can also introduce guest speakers who are an industry leader in their field to add a fresh perspective.

Post-webinar: Best practices to take your event further

10. Ask for feedback from attendees

Immediately after concluding the event, it's crucial to capture attendee feedback when the content is still fresh in their minds. Send follow up emails and ask constructive questions that provide value, allowing participants to answer in their own words. Seek suggestions on improving the overall event and inquire about the topics they desire for future webinars.

11. Share snippets on social media platforms

Taking the engagement beyond your actual webinar platform is an excellent way of making it an evergreen event. You can use Riverside’s Magic Clips feature to effortlessly isolate and download the best snippets from your webinar. Share these online to reach a new audience and make them aware of the upcoming event you're hosting.

12. Gather testimonials and reviews

Once you've hosted your event, the next best webinar practice is collecting testimonials and participant reviews. This process helps you gauge the event's success and establishes credibility and trust for upcoming webinars. Leverage positive testimonials, you can enhance your social proof, which compels others to interact with your webinar content.

13. Contact those who did not attend

No matter how successful your webinar was, some people will register but fail to attend the live event for various reasons. Don't overlook these individuals. Instead, send them quick follow up emails acknowledging their absence and assuring them they will still get valuable information, as a recorded webinar link is available for their convenience. 

Creating impressive webinars with Riverside

Riverside is the answer if you want to create an impressive webinar for your audience. You can go live with up to 1000 audience members, and uplift your attendee engagement with our live audience calls. Thanks to our teleprompter feature, you can plan your presentation in advance and make sure that the information you share is always in front of you.

Record your webinars to repurpose later in up to 4K video quality and 48kHz audio resolution. The platform also uses AI technology to create shareable video clips of key points in your content. When you have finished recording, you can download these short marketing materials and share them with ease. You can also edit your recording with our text-based video editor, which works with AI transcriptions to make editing as easy as deleting text. When you choose to use Riverside, every step of the process is simple. 

Key features: 

• Create ultra high-quality recordings in 4K video and 48kHz audio resolution 
• Presentation recorder to share and capture slides effortlessly
• Record with 10 speakers and up to 1000 audience members
• Use Producer Mode to give technical control to someone behind the scenes
• Magic Clips creates shareable clips of your recordings’ key moments
• Teleprompter feature to make presenting a breeze
• Live call-ins for audience members during webinars
• Highly accurate AI transcription in 100+ languages so you can easily repurpose your webinar into a blog post
• Speaker detection so you can easily navigate through your transcript
• Includes a straightforward text-based editor where you can trim your recording by simply deleting text in a transcript
• Background noise removal and level normalization for crisp and clear audio
• Ideal for people of any skill level 

Start recording with Riverside

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Get Started

Now that you know the key features that Riverside has to offer, let’s take a look at a quick step-by-step below: 

Step 1: Join Riverside and launch a studio. Sign up to Riverside and click + New Studio to launch your virtual studio. 

Step 2: Set up your studio. Enter the name of the studio in the box provided. Choose Audio & Video and then select your transcription language. 

Step 3: Press Continue set up studio.  Scroll down where you can schedule your studio for a certain time. Click Schedule and then select a date, time, and your timezone. 

Step 4: Next, it’s time to invite your attendees. Scroll to Invite participants and click Add participant. Enter their details in the box that appears and whether they are a guest, audience, or host.

Step 5: When you are ready, click Create show.

Step 6: Before the scheduled time, click Go to studio. Use the dropdown menus to make sure that your camera, microphone, and speaker all have the right input or output. 

Note: If it is the first time you are using the software, you may have to give the site permission to access your mic and cam.

You can also click “I am not using headphones” or “I am using headphones” at this point. Then press Join studio. 

Step 7: Set up your teleprompter. Press the Script button at the bottom of the window and then type in your notes. (You can also copy and paste a script from elsewhere, if needed.) 

Step 8: Click the Record button to start recording. You can share your screen during the webinar to demonstrate things to your audience. 

Step 9: You can then Leave. You will leave the studio and enter the recordings page. Wait for your recording to upload successfully.

Step 10: Edit your webinar recording using the simple text-based editor. You may also choose to download some clips from Magic Clips and use them to promote your webinar content.

FAQs on Webinar Best Practices

How do you structure a good webinar?

A good webinar structure has a compelling introduction, a good flow of points, a captivating conclusion, and a call to action. This structure helps your event to stay on course. Plan your webinar in advance so that it has a solid structure throughout.

How do you conduct a perfect webinar?

The key to any successful business is focus. Ensure your webinar has a singular theme and a CTA. Your choice of topic should be clear and relevant to your audience before starting the event. Make sure that you offer actionable takeaways to your audience. It's also important to make sure your'e using the right webinar platform, offering you all the tools you need to ensure your webinar runs smoothly.

What is the best practice for webinar description?

The best practice for a webinar description is to focus on its essential elements, such as your guest speaker(s) and the benefits it offers attendees. If your event captures these valuable aspects, you can successfully motivate individuals to participate.

Hosting a webinar is a worthwhile investment that can yield significant returns. By using these best practices, you can facilitate meaningful connections and boost webinar engagement. Add these webinar tricks to your marketing and teaching arsenal and drive leads to increase your revenue.