I have recently attended a few webinars on creating webinars. Both were sponsored by GoToMeeting. I don’t have a lot of experience with webinars but I am planning one for next quarter and I hope to implement all that I learned.  Here are a few good tips I picked up:

• Always stick to the time frame
• Promote through partners – make it very easy for them to add a link to a landing page. Consider co-sponsoring a webinar for increased visibility.
• Know what your goal is and don’t misrepresent it to your attendees – Don’t make it a sales pitch if it has been promoted as educational.
• 2 Speakers can be better – different speaking styles and presentation skills will engage different listeners
• Give an incentive – publicize it in all communications, make it valuable (a compelling whitepaper is always good), Reward people who listened to the entire presentation by giving the incentive at the end
• Be sure to prepare ahead of time - check all audio and technology ahead of time
• Engage your audience with polls and Q&A
• Experiment to see what dates, times and length will work best for your audience
  • Maybe we have just been conditioned but both webinars said hour long webinars Tuesday-Thursday at 1 or 2PM EST work best.
• Profile your audience when they register so that the speaker can be more relevant to the audience
• Promote that the audience will get a chance to engage with the speaker(s) – “This is your chance to ask Seth Godin anything you want” (If this is a big part of the draw be sure to allow plenty of time for Q&A, possible ask for questions ahead of time. People will tune in to see if their question is answered)

For more tips on increasing webinar attendance check out 12 Ways to Turn 300 Webinar Attendees Into 3,000+ Part I - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #105 and 12 Ways to Turn 300 Webinar Attendees Into 3,000+ Part II - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #107