It’s another Expert Briefs, where I ask really smart business owners to answer your burning questions.

If you've missed past Expert Briefs, you can click on the undies to see them all –>

I have been interesting in doing more webinars recently, so this week I asked our panel of experts …

What's your #1 tip for doing
successful (meaning profitable) webinars?

I think you'll find the answers this week interesting and hopefully motivating.

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Felicia Slattery of Credibility and Cash Flow says:

If you think of a webinar as a speech with pictures, make sure you focus on the principles of dynamic public speaking and presentations:

Begin with an attention-getter — something that will perk your audiences up and get them excited about what's coming next.

Provide a preview — what is the webinar about and what are the main points you plan to cover?

Deliver on your promise — if you tell people you're going to cover the top 3 ways to be a successful affiliate, make sure you share 3 ways. Be clear as you present that you're on way 1, way 2 and way 3. Don't be shy about presenting actual useful content!

Make it visually interesting— many webinars have all text on the screen & the presenters read the text word for word. BORING. On a webinar it's ok to have the main notes written to make it easy for your audience, but you also should make the slides visually interesting with charts, graphs, photos, images, varying (but consistent) fonts, colors, etc. Also– toss in something unexpected from time to time — a cartoon or surprising photo to keep people watching and cut back on the multi-tasking.

Have a call to action — After your webinar what's your goal? Do you want your audience to learn and implement something? Take a survey? Connect with you on social media? Do you want them to buy something? Tell them what to do next and how.

There are plenty other things to think about when it comes to good presenting skills, but I think these are the top things you want to consider when doing a webinar. Good luck!

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Shannon Cherry of The Business Building Live Intensive says:

Webinars are getting more and more popular because it allows more senses to be used in the learning process. (As a visual person, I personally get a lot more from webinars than just teleseminars.)

However, when done incorrectly, they are bad – really, really bad. Your audience will tune out, and never return.

And although I could give you several tips, Nicole has asked to narrow it down to one. So I've decided to share the one that's my biggest pet peeve. Ready?

Don't let the visuals do all the work.

Your webinar should reinforce the information you are sharing – not be the information you are sharing.

Let me share a similar example you may be familiar with: Remember when PowerPoint just came out and speakers were essentially putting all the bells and whistles in their presentations just because they could? The result was too many fonts, too many sounds and too many animations that distracted the listener.

Think of your webinar as if you were a TV anchor reporting the news. The visuals you use should help tell the story, but not be the story.

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Connie Ragen Green of ConnieGreen.com says:

Webinars have changed the way I conduct my online training. During my first years online, 2006 and 2007, teleseminars were the norm. In 2008 I saw the move to webinars, but I was reluctant to add them to my marketing because of the added technology.

At the end of 2008 I decided to give them a try, and suddenly my prospects and clients came alive! They could see my screen as I showed them what to do and exactly how to do it. It was like being back in the classroom again, and I'm sure my teaching improved.

My #1 tip for profitable webinars is to explain exactly what you are offering, and then take them to the page where it is spelled out in detail. Your visual learners will be drawn to the screen, while your auditory learners will listen to your words intently. The result will be more people joining you for whatever you have for them, because they can both see and hear your offer.

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Ronnie Nijmeh of PLR.me (< -click for a special free offer from Ronnie) says:

First, webinars can be FUN! I really enjoy doing them and I know my clients do as well 🙂

My #1 tip for webinars is to NEVER do them alone. You don't need a co-host, but you do need someone who answers the questions that flow into the question box. Trust me, you can't talk (coherently, at least), read the questions, AND type in answers, all at the same time. It's just crazy. C-R-A-Z-Y!!!

I did a webinar recently and had a trusted colleague answer the questions live. Well over 480 questions came in during the event… and he could barely keep up! At one point, he told me that he muted the audio so he can entirely focus on coherently answering the questions that came in. Ha ha 🙂

The other reason to have someone else on there is so he or she can tell you if something is wrong. For example, if your mic stops working or if your audio is too quiet, he can ping you and let you know to do something about it 🙂

At the beginning of the webinar, I just introduced the person who will be answering questions and encouraged attendees to ask questions throughout the webinar. It was great to have that level of interactivity, while also being able to focus on delivering great content.

Doing this keeps the webinar flowing and builds a whole lot of trust and respect!

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Kristen Eckstein of Finish Writing Your Book Fast: Book Writing for Procrastinators says:

I've done several webinars and I'm getting ready to do many more. My #1 tip would be to promote the heck out of it. You really can't promote too much on social media. Due to the refresh rate of newsstreams and how many friends your target audience may have, they will miss your announcement if you only announce it once… or twice… or three times.

We promoted my most recent webinar twice a day on Twitter, Facebook, my FB fan page (Writing) and sent several blasts to my e-mail list. As a result, this webinar had over twice the enrollment rate of my last one, and three times the number of those enrolled actually showed up.

And I know you didn't ask for it, but Tip #2 is to use a headset instead of a mic and speakers. Your audience will be able to hear you much clearer and it makes for a better recording.

And Tip #3 is to make sure you record it and use it as either a freebie or product later (with transcription, of course). And Tip #4 is… OK I'll stop now!

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Nicole Dean of .. here! .. says:

I just signed up with an account with GoToWebinar to do more webinars. In the past, I've only been the “featured” guest, but never the host. So, this is something that I'm learning as well.

So, while I have a bit of advice, most of the folks above stated what I would have –

1. Let your personality show. Otherwise, you're going to put people into a trance on their way to dozing off.

2. Make sure you have a purpose to your presentation. It doesn't have to be a hard sell, but you should have some way for people to take action at the end if they wish.

3. Be sure to save the recording and use it in additional ways when you're done.

Like I said, I'm learning more about being more profitable in the webinars that I do.

The course that I'm going through – because he's a webinar LEGEND is one by Jason Fladlien who I briefly met this past February. I have said this about only a few people in the years I've been online – Jason is FREAKY smart. Like freaky freaky smart. His ideas fly at a pace that makes you feel like you need to go on a walk or swim laps or a bike ride after you listen to him or read his stuff – just to process the ideas.

So my Recommended Resource is…

Webinar Sales Secrets. Actually that's not he name of it. It's called Webinar Pitch Secrets, but I don't like that name, so I'm not calling it that. 🙂

And, after getting into the course a bit, Jason talks a lot about adding VALUE to the webinars that you do with a natural transition to the action that you'd like people to take. It's not about “pitching” people to buy things that they really don't need through hypey language.

So grab it here: Webinar Sales Secrets. (I'm recommending you buy it through this reseller because that's where I bought it and because they take paypal -which is what 90% of my followers use to purchase products.)

If you're doing either teleseminars or webinars and would like to make more money – do check it out. 🙂

Warmly,
Nicole Dean

PS. If you'd like “Done for You” webinars that include scripts and powerpoint slides – be sure to check out PLR for Teleseminars and Webinars – all you have to do is read the scripts while playing the slides. Webinars couldn't get any easier.