5. The Benefits of Interactivity Before, During and After Broadcasts
There is little more discouraging during a webinar than watching the number of attendees drop off during the session, or seeing the attentiveness reader decline. Attendees get distracted by their email boxes, other work and office activity and can tire of the webinar jf the content does not keep them engaged. Bringing more interactivity into the sessions may help keep attendees alert and interested. Study respondents are working on this, as 57.1% plan to make webinars more interactive in 2011.
There are several ways to approach webinar interactivity. Some consider O&As and surveys during the presentation as the beginning and end of interactivity. But industry look beyond the live presentation to bring interactivity to pre- and post- presentation.
“In the next generation of webinars it is going to be huge to be able to continue the conversation after the webinar,” McDonald said. For example, “A blog post could live on the page with the link to the recording, then the conversation can just continue on.” Businesses also could enable the blog pre- presentation, by beginning a conversation about some aspect of the webinar topic.
Bills added that interactivity can breed marketing leads. “When you offer opportunity for interaction you can capture that activity: for example, you can capture the specific answer someone gave to a poll question then the marketing department has information to help target a prospect’s needs. It can be a gold mine for marketing.”
Survey respondents cite interactive tools as some of the most important features of the webinar. Recording the webinar is most critical (83.1 %), then O&A (78.6%) and Chat (46.5%). Post-Session Surveys and Polling also are considered beneficial by many respondents.