Six Questions About Hosting Webinars

LiveWorld is hosting a webinar on Nov. 10th with noted social media analyst Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group and Jennifer Gordon, director of global advertising for Campbell's Soup, who will be discussing strategies and best practices in the new "social everywhere" marketing landscape.

You can still register for this free webinar if you're interested in attending.

Since webinars are growing in popularity and many folks might be considering hosting one of these too, I thought it would be interesting to have a chat with LiveWorld's Social Media Evangelist Bryan Person, about the process of organizing a webinar.  

Mark:  Why did you decide to do a webinar, and what do you hope to gain from it?

Bryan:  Webinars are something we've been talking about internally for a while. Here's why we're starting them now:

The "Social Everywhere" concept--where every web page is becoming social--is really gaining steam, and we think it's something that businesses and brands simply can't ignore.  By having a webinar this month, we're hoping to alert marketers to an important new trend, and hopefully in time for them to make some changes (if they need to) to their 2010 plans and budgets.

From a selfish point of view, of course, we're hoping the webinar will generate both actual business leads and increased awareness of what LiveWorld offers in the area of social strategy. That doesn't mean we're going to hammer attendees with a running commercial of our products and services; rather, we're hoping that a high-quality webinar program will reflect well on us.
 
And just from a professional-development and process angle, learning how to actually put on a webinar is a good new skill to add to our marketing arsenal.

Mark:  How did you go about selecting the webinar platform?  Are there different vendors?  What sold you on the one you chose?

I largely have to defer to Jenna Woodul, chief community officer at LiveWorld, on this one, since she did the comparative research. But what we do like about GoToWebinar--the platform we ultimately chose--is that we can host up to 1,000 attendees for the same price. We won't get that many folks this time, but it's certainly something to aim for!

Mark: You decided to bring in guests for this webinar rather than have your own company experts talk on the topic.  Isn't the point of a webinar to showcase how much you know about a topic?

My friend Mitch Joel likes to say that being a "champion for your industry" is one of the best forms of marketing, and that's what we're trying to do here. Holding a webinar that's only and all about LiveWorld wouldn't be nearly as interesting as providing a platform/forum for experts from outside to come in and share what they're seeing and experiencing in social media/brand marketing.

Now, to be fair, we are including Peter Friedman, CEO & chairman of LiveWorld, on the panel, but he'll "have the mic" for less time than our two primary panelists: the Altimeter Group's Jeremiah Owyang and Campbell Soup Company's Jennifer Gordon. Jeremiah and Jennifer are both in the trenches of "Social Everywhere" on a day-to-day basis with their clients and customers, so we know they'll offer good insights and analyses. (disclosure: Campbells is a LiveWorld client)

Mark: How long did it take you to set up this webinar?  Can you give an estimate of how many hours it takes to put one of these together?

Hmm ... wishing I'd been tallying up the time that we've all put into this over the last month or so. But if I had to guess, I'd say at least 40 hours. And that's not including any of the follow-up work!  I expect that we'll become more efficient with our time for future webinars, since we'll more or less know the ropes.

Mark: What didn't you know about hosting a webinar that you wished you did when you started to put this together?

What I'm learning is--or perhaps had intuitively known all along but had to have the lesson drilled home along the way--is what you do after the webinar is just as important--if not more so--than what you leading up to webinar and during the recording itself.

That means, we have to make sure we're diligent about following up with everyone who's registered for the webinar--both those who attended and those who couldn't make it. We'll also have to post a replay of the webinar in a timely fashion on our website, so that it's discoverable through search and by new visitors to LiveWorld.com.

If the webinar is good--and we sure hope it will be!--we want to make it drop-dead easy for more people to find out about it later, and also to share it with others.

Mark: Would you recommend other businesses hosting their own webinars?  Why should a brand do one of these?

I would normally start off with an "it depends" answer here, but I know you're not always so fond of such wishywashiness, Mark. So, let me say this: webinars are a great tool for brands and agencies to demonstrate their handle on the important discussions of their industry. And they also offer the promise of lead generation and increased awareness.

But as I've noted above, there's a lot of planning, research, and follow-up that needs to happen to ultimately make the webinars worth a company's time and money.

So there you have it--the inside skinny on setting up webinars.  Do you have any questions about organizing webinars? Or maybe some tips to share for others?