Getting a webinar up and running is all about planning, promoting, and presenting. Here is a quick reference guide through the process of scheduling and customising your webinars to engaging your audience that will help you stay on top of the game.

Delivering a successful webinar includes a lot of elements such as

Schedule your webinar

Knowing your audience

Engaging your audience

Customize Emails

Configure webinar preferences

Promoting the event

Analyzing the reports

Before Your Webinar

Schedule Your Webinar

Enter a topic, set the date, time, and duration of your webinar :

• As a more interactive content format, webinars let you connect with your audience better. Pick a narrow topic that curiosities the audience.

• Schedule the webinar in the organizer time zone. Attendees join time will vary by time zone.

Will you host this webinar again ?

Schedule a Recurring Webinar :

If you are hosting a series of webinars, fill in the webinar details and change the frequency of your webinar (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Custom) depending on your choice. View this helps doc to learn how to schedule a recurring webinar.

Know Your Audience

Invitations and Driving Registration :

• Understand who the webinar is for and communicate your event’s value so that the leads are inspired to register.
  
  

• Invite your team or guest speakers as co-organizers. Co-organizers are allowed to use their microphone and webcam as well as share content. They also have access to view and manage the Q&A during your event.
  
  

• Create a registration form that collects all of the information you'll need, and make sure to remove any questions that aren't necessary for your event analysis.
  
  

• Choose the registration moderation setting (automatic or manual approval mode).
  
  

• Send your attendees the Registration URL so that they may register to join your webinar.

Engaging your audience

Polls ,Q&A, Hand Raise, Allow to talk:

• Polling questions are a great way to get an audience engaged.  You will be able to launch the poll during your webinar and gather the responses from your attendees.

• Attendees can use the Raise Hand feature as a signal to get the attention of the organizer.
  
  

• Let attendees speak in a webinar using the Allow to talk feature. Attendees can also share their webcam video using the Allow to talk with video feature.
  
  

• Attendees will not be able to share their screen. To let attendees share their screen, please use the Make Presenter feature.
  
  

• Webinar attendees can ask questions and receive answers through the Q&A tab.

Customize Emails

Registration, Reminders and Follow-up :

• Registration Email: Confirmation email to registrants with the details to join the webinar.
  
  

• Reminder Emails: Send up to three reminder emails to registrants before the webinar starts.
  
  

• Follow Up Email to Attendees and Absentees: Customize these emails as needed. This is a good opportunity to reiterate your call-to-action and provide a link to the recording of the event.

Configure Webinar Preference

Webinar-specific settings let you choose how the webinar is recorded, enable or disable display of attendee list to all, allow attendees to ask Q&A, and more. You can also redirect attendees to a webpage of your choice at the end of your webinar. Learn more

Promoting the Event

• You can spread the word about your webinar among your target audience by sharing your webinar registration link, by embedding it on webpages and blogs, through social media platforms, or by sending webinar campaigns.
  
  

• Promoting across multiple communication channels like social media and email? Check out the Zoho Webinar Source Tracking URL feature. View the help doc for webinar registration source tracking here.
  
  

• You can stream a Webinar live on YouTube. This allows attendees to join your webinar via Zoho Webinar to view it and comment on it via YouTube.

Practice and Prepare for Your Webinar

Preparing for Your Live Event

Practicing and preparing beforehand will ensure your audience has the very best experience. Here are a couple of pro tips to ensure you have a successful online event:

• Pre-requisites: Zoho Webinar works with all modern browsers, operating systems and mobile devices. Refer to the system requirements help page for more details on supported browsers, compatible operating Systems, internet speed, and so on.
  
  

• Hardwire your internet connection: This will help you avoid any issues with an unstable wifi connection.
  
  

• Test the audio/video before your webinar begins: Start a test session to check your mic, speaker, and webcam are connected properly before the live event begins. Refer to the screenshot below to verify the audio and video connection.

• Choose Computer Audio in the audio devices. Once you select the audio, make sure a green line appears beside the microphone to ensure it's working properly.

• Similarly, choose video devices from the dropdown to ensure it is turned on.

• For Speaker, click the Play button, you will get a ping sound to indicate that the speaker is working properly.
  
  

• If you've followed all of the above procedures and are still having trouble connecting, check your system preferences/system settings for sound. You have to give permission at the system level for the apps which you are using. 

• Check Screen Sharing: Ensure the start screen sharing icon is in enable state which means no other organizer has shared their screen.

• Once you start the screen share, you will see the below image to stop sharing whenever you are done.

• If you are unable to share your screen, please check the below screen in the URL bar next to the URL, and make sure that you have allowed your screen to be shared with the audience.

• It is recommended to share Application Sharing mode to show the entire application to the audience in full screen mode.

During Your Webinar

In-session challenges

Start on time: 

• We recommend you start your event five minutes early to allow your attendees to join before the content kicks off. The host should let attendees know when the event will begin and if the content will be recorded and shared after ward.
  
  

• Establish proceedings for the Q&A section and let the audience know in the introduction how you’ll be answering their questions and other webinar engagement options available.   

Technical challenges : 

• Audio : If any one of the attendees reports about audio issues, immediately ask them to move to the phone dial-in option available in the settings for better clarity. If more attendees are reporting on the audio quality, check the connectivity in the Settings tab to get a clear picture. Audio packet loss (sent) refers to the audio sent from your end to attendee is getting lost. If the number is greater than 6%, please switch to Phone Dial-in mode for better audio clarity.
  
  

• Video : If any of the attendees reports on video breakage or choppiness, ask them to stop videos receiving in the Settings tab. If more attendees are reporting on the video, please check the connectivity in the Settings tab to get a clear picture. Video packet loss (sent) refers to the video sent from your end to attendee is getting lost, if the number is greater than 6%, please switch off video for some time to recover from the loss. Once your network becomes normal or working properly, please switch on the video back.

After Your Webinar

Analyzing the reports

• Once the webinar is over, take the time to go back and review your performance. Click here to learn more about Webinar Analytics.

• Analyze registration, attendance conversion and review engagement to figure out how you can improve next time.

• Publish your event recording for on-demand viewing and send the follow up emails to the attendees and absentees. Do this as soon as possible; a fast follow-up encourages attendees to convert or continue engaging with your company.