Webcasts don’t typically require as much interaction as webinars do, because they’re primarily a mode of one-way communication. However, don’t be fooled into thinking that you can slack off on engagement — you still have to make your webcasts as engaging as possible. While it’s infinitely trickier to engage a large webcast audience, we’re here to tell you that it’s entirely achievable.
Enhancing and finetuning your webcast engagement is what will distinguish your webcast experience from the hundreds of others out there. The engagement pipeline begins way before the actual webcast does and continues until after the event.
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Need some help brushing up your webcast engagement skills? Here are the six most common mistakes to avoid when trying to boost your webcast engagement.
- Lack of pre-webcast engagement
Pre-webcast engagement plays a vital role in determining how attentive your audience is on the day of the event. A lack of pre-webcast engagement can not only hamper sign-up rates, but also negatively impact your audience’s engagement with the main event.
The idea is to gradually draw the attention of your target demographic to your event and maintain their attention throughout the webcast. You can do this through email reminders or some pre-webcast polls and surveys.
- An uninteresting speaker
Since webcasts don’t involve interaction between the speaker and the audience, the speaker has to keep the audience interested single-handedly. An uninteresting speaker who doesn’t engage well or isn’t passionate about the subject will cause the audience’s attention to waver.
Find a speaker who knows the subject at hand inside out while also being a fantastic spokesperson. A charming and eloquent speaker will instantly earn you brownie points from your webcast attendees.
- Insufficient visual aid is a big no-no
Simply drawing on the screen or using walls of text and presentation as the only accompaniment to your presentation will lead to a distracted audience. Instead, use plenty of visual aid such as graphs, charts, images, video clips, and so on. Also, use a minimalistic and well-designed slide deck. Only list your main points in the slides and elaborate on these points verbally.
- No interactivity
Interactivity in webcasts, though difficult, isn’t impossible to attain. A complete lack of interactivity and audience participation may take a toll on your webcast engagement and your overall metrics. The easiest and most straightforward way of adding an interactive element to your webcast is through a Q&A session. Have someone off-camera take questions from participants for greater efficiency.
- Technical glitches
Internet connectivity issues or malfunctioning equipment could have disastrous consequences during a webcast. Since the unilateral flow of information is the central focus of these events, anything that disrupts this flow could potentially hamper webcast engagement.
Check and cross-check all your equipment several times and ensure that your internet connection is stable prior to the event to avoid such mishaps.
- Little to no post-webcast follow-up
Post-webcast engagement is just as important, if not more, as pre-webcast interaction. Send out thank you emails, ask for attendee feedback, send a recording of the event as well as relevant reference materials, and show your participants that they’re valued.
Build a loyal customer base with webcast engagement
Avoiding these common webcast engagement mistakes will ensure that you’re giving your attendees an enriching webcast experience. Putting on a quality webcast will yield higher conversion rates and help build an enduring rapport with your customers.
