Through webinars, an opportunity is created to promote one’s business allowing for better communication to build prospects. In addition, it lets a company reach a wider demographic as more people are able to join webinars due to modern technology. In order to take advantage of its numerous benefits, it’s important to exert effort in webinar planning and execution. This is where webinar moderators come in.
A large amount of work goes into creating and conducting a successful webinar. There are multiple steps you have to follow such as getting the right webinar service, choosing the right presenters, along with the responsibility of a facilitating a live webinar presentation. Moreover, you must also take into consideration the technical difficulties that may arise mid-session. There are some that make the mistake of underestimating this workload, believing that with just the right webinar service, platform or technology, all of these are possible. However, this is far from the truth — if just one person does all of this responsibilities, other areas might be affected and things could go out of control.
Contrary to popular belief, a webinar moderator isn’t someone who just pushes a bunch of buttons and only respond to issues when prompted. Experienced moderators contribute a lot to the success of the webinar from the planning stage, the live presentation, and even post-presentation. They exist to handle everything in the background so the host could focus more on the presenters and audience.
If you’re a starter moderator who want to be an expert, here are some key tips that will help you facilitate a successful webinar.
5 Steps to Becoming a Great Moderator for a Successful Webinar
1. Ensure that everything is ready for the webinar ahead of time. - It’s not enough to check the status of everything the day before the event since certain issues might require more time to resolve. Make sure that the speakers are prepared and ready days before the event along with the presentation that will be used. It’s also important for the speaker to be familiar with the presentation software.
2. Do a tech-check before the webinar starts. - Test the phone and web components at least twenty minutes before the session is scheduled to start so that any technical issues can be dealt with before showtime.
3. Troubleshoot issues during the webinar. - Technical difficulties can occur mid-presentation so be attentive and troubleshoot any issue that may occur for individual attendees. They happen, and the presenter shouldn’t be distracted by trying to deal with issues that affect only one or two of the attendees.
4. Opening and closing the webinar. - This is usually scripted for the sake of uniformity. It must provide a professional air and not sound bland or dull. Having an engaging delivery can contribute a lot to the presentation.
5. Managing audience interaction. - To avoid distracting the speakers, the attendees are usually muted and can only interact at the end of the discussion through the question and answer session. This is managed by the moderator and if you want to gather two voices on a particular topic to help audience engagement, you can also utilize polls.
Keep in mind that a webinar moderator is an important job, so you have to take it seriously.