In the weeks leading up to the webinar you have been using social media to its fullest potential to promote the event. You have your audience and they are ready and waiting for that great content you’ve promised them. It is now time to take those social media networks from promotional powerhouses into engaging platforms that will keep the attendees involved in the conversation.
On the day of the webinar you will want to make one last promotional push. Have all those involved in the webinar, including the speaker and those who are monitoring the webinar, post an update to their facebook and linked in statuses or twitter accounts. Let the world know one last time about the great webinar that will be taking place today. Don’t forget to update the organization’s facebook page or linked in group as well.
During the webinar you most effective social media engagement tool will be twitter. This is where that twitter hash tag you set up and distributed to attendees will be used. Make sure you have let attendees know that this is how they can ask questions or post comments during the webinar. Assign one person on the team to monitor and respond to the twitter feed while the webinar is taking place. This tactic will make it easy to communicate with everyone at once, which is convenient if there are any technical issues or other problems with the webinar. By using this technique you will also be allowing the attendees to connect and interact with each other. This will make them feel like part of a community and bring that “live” conference spirit into the mix.
You may also choose to have someone live share the webinar. This is done by posting leading topics, ideas, commentary, or references via Twitter or Facebook and Linked In status updates. You can also set up the twitter feed automatically post to your organization’s facebook page. This technique is more time consuming, but it can add weight to the webinar content and give attendees a space in which they can further discuss the webinar’s topic.
At the end of the webinar make sure to use the twitter feed to thank the attendees for participating. Continue to answer questions or respond to comments for as long as you are able. Ask the speaker(s) to do the same if they are available and create an ask the experts panel. You will also want to thank attendees and respond to any questions or comments made to your other social media networks. Make the responses as specific as possible and thank attendees by name, or their twitter handle, for great questions or insightful comments.
Once the webinar has concluded you are not done with social media just yet! The last part of the equation is to extend the conversation and reinforce the message(s) of the webinar…
-Jessica Kleppang