If you’ve gone to the effort of setting up a webinar, it’s crucial that it runs smoothly. There are a host of common webinar mistakes to avoid, from technical issues to problems of promotion and awareness. Any one of these 5 damaging webinar mistakes to avoid can hurt your webinar attendance. Thankfully, I’ve created this short guide to help you identify the critical aspects of hosting a successful webinar:

5 Webinar Mistakes to Avoid

1. Covering too many topics

Webinars are fantastic way to add value to your customer experience. They allow you to market your skills, knowledge and expertise; and educate and help people in the process. As a result, you’d be forgiven for trying to include as much helpful content into your webinar as possible. After all, the more content you can include, the more beneficial your webinar is… right?

In the effort to provide high content many webinar speakers deliver too much content. Too many points make webinars too hard to follow. Trying to include dozens of topics in one webinar is more likely to overload your audience than educate them.Instead of skimming over several areas, it’s far better to cover one topic in-depth – and make sure that your audience really understands your content.

2. Forgetting to promote the webinar

Webinars are extremely effective at attracting visitors to your website and business – but they aren’t a marketing panacea. As with every form of marketing, raising awareness and promoting your webinar is key to unlocking its benefits. Well before the day of your webinar, set the wheels of promotion in motion – and raise awareness across social media, industry publications, email lists, press releases, other webinars and through your industry connections.

3. Technical glitches

Webinars are, unsurprisingly, pretty reliant on technology. Whether it’s your audio and sound system, your video feed or even your internet connection, there are dozens of potential technical issues that could rear-up and ruin your webinar. These webinar mistakes to avoid are some of the most damaging; but they’re also the most preventable. Simply running through your setup prior to the live-event will highlight any technical gremlins that need remedying; and allow you to fine-tune your sound- and video-quality.

4. Not making the webinar interactive

Webinars should always be interactive, offering your audience a chance to engage with your expertise and have their burning questions answered.  Interactivity is what sets your webinar apart from a helpful blog post or online guide, and it’s the main reason the webinar community is so active and vibrant. Thankfully, you don’t need to overcomplicate matters. You can leverage Twitter for a live-action Q&A. Promote a unique #hashtag for your event and encourage your audience to tweet you their questions during the webinar.

5. Overcomplicating the login process

Most of these webinar mistakes to avoid focus on your presentation itself – but you can easily ruin your webinar before it’s even started.If you’re operating a paid- webinar, the login process becomes all important, allowing your audience to check-in, log-in and get involved. If this login process is particularly long-winded, requiring a ton of personal information and payment verification, your webinar attendance will likely take a sharp plunge. Plan ahead, and sort out registration and payment before the day of the webinar.

QUESTION: What steps do you take to make sure your webinars run smoothly? Let me know in the comments!

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