Assembling and Fine-Tuning the Content for your Webinar

Now that we’ve developed the content and are recruiting our audience, it’s time to start to assembling the content from all of the speakers and contributors to your webinar presentation.

First and foremost, take a hard look to make sure that the overall content supports the messaging in the invitation and that the flow is of interest, relevant and something that, based on what you know about your audience, will engage them.

With this ensured, begin to render all of the discussions with, and supporting documents from, contributors into a presentation format, most typical of which is a slideware application. This will provide the basis for further engaging those contributors to assure that what you’re presenting is factual and logical.

From there, the next step is to create a “time line” or “time chart” that enables you to visualize the time it will take to deliver each section and to examine the flow and order of the presenters. Scheduled “table reads”, “dry runs” and “dress rehearsals” with your presenters then will begin to produce final iteration for the slides, and this same practicing together will enable you and the group to “take the rough edges off” and develop a natural, conversational interaction between the speakers. Once you have the flow and content down, then it’s time to insert transitions and cues so that, again, the flow is natural and so that any “dead or awkward air” is eliminated.

You should budget a minimum of 2-3 dress rehearsals to practice not only a crisp delivery, but to assure your transitions and cues are nailed down as well.

A professional moderator is also crucial as he/she can be the orchestra leader, keep the rhythm and energy moving in the right direction and, in some cases, manage the technical aspects of the webinar so that the speakers can focus on delivering their content without distraction. An experienced moderator, who must be present during the practice sessions anot just “walk on” for the live webinar, can also play the role of a coach to help and motivate presenters to “net it out” and be as engaging as possible. This is especially important with presenters who aren’t used to presenting and interacting with other speakers in this type of medium.

Remember, too, that how impactful the delivery of content is in a webinar is often driven, more than anything else, by the audio aspects of the event. You want to assure all background is eliminated, that cues and transitions are rigorously adheared to, that the speakers don’t speak in monotone, and so on. Audio is the “Achilles heel” of all webinars….VoIP, speakerphones, noisy headsets, etc., so control the elements that you aren’t able to control to mitigate less-than-stellar outcomes.

Oh yes, and as they say when you are about to take off on an airplane….in the unlikely event of an emergency landing….we’ll all of this webinar stuff is technology driven, and technology can surprise you when you least expect it, so have a back up plan if something goes south on you.