Balance. That’s the main attribute of any successful webinar and the content within it.
Not to sound like a broken record, but any content you decide to include needs to be:
What’s the key ingredient that will ensure your webinar ticks all these boxes?
Video.
Why Video?
When you’ve viewed presentations in the past, what aspects of them peaked your attention/interest?
At the risk of being presumptuous, the chances are that videos were a welcome relief from slides with basic images and text.
Presenters aren’t miracle workers, unfortunately! Even the most inspiring speaker will struggle to capture people's attention for an entire webinar presentation.
They need some accompanying content to help add some variety to proceedings and keep the audience captivated!
Embedding videos within your webinar slides are an excellent way to:
- Illustrate an important point, in a visual way
- Break up long periods of dialogue and text
- Keep viewers interested/reinvigorate their interest
The Perfect Combination
Statistics back up this glowing praise of video;
55% of people who consume video content, view it thoroughly, as opposed to skimming through it (HubSpot, 2016).
Apply this statistic to your webinar audience, and you’re looking at engaging over half of your viewers if you decide to embed clips into your slide deck.
Additionally, think about this scenario;
Your audience has already made the commitment to view the Live showing of your webinar. That means they’re already somewhat interested to hear what’s being discussed.
Adding in video that is fresh and relevant will only make them more invested in your offering and will hopefully get others, who perhaps aren’t as enthusiastic, a little more involved.
Don't Overdo It!
However, don’t misunderstand us on this one, don’t include videos just for the sake of it.
Make sure they’re actually relevant to the webinar topic, or at least slightly relatable to what’s being discussed.
Embedding a funny cat video is all well and good, (granted, it’ll actually interest people for a short while!) but unless that’s what you’re discussing, or you can relate it to your topic, then it’s not going to add anything particularly important to your event.
Also, balancing the content of a webinar is equally as vital as relevancy. Two things to remember:
Don’t include videos that last any more than 2-3 minutes, as a rule of thumb. Remember, you are supposed to be giving a presentation at the end of the day.
If you’re going to include just videos and contribute little else, it would be more efficient to just send attendees a link to the clips you’re using.
You might even accidentally detach the audience from everything else you’ve discussed if a video takes over your webinar, so keep any multimedia content short and sweet.
And, don’t use video too often!
Splicing in a clip every 5 minutes of an hour-long presentation will undoubtedly fill up time, but it’s likely that the audience would be overloaded with video and forget about the verbal and written info.
Striking a good balance of verbal, visual and written content will engage your audience the most.
Looking To Your Future Webinars
Hopefully, we’ve made a convincing case to use video in webinars, the right way!
Moving forward, it should be a staple of all your future events, if it’s relevant, as this is now how most people consume content.
YouTube, Facebook Live, Snapchat stories, have revolutionized the way in which we view video content, on a daily basis.
This natural evolution should be at the forefront of your mind when curating a webinar slide deck!
