Webinars are a great way to connect with your employees and remote teams in real time. However, with technological innovations in the Internet age, the average attention span is getting shorter and shorter. There’s always something else out there competing for their attention, especially other video content.
Keeping your webinars interactive is the best way to keep your trainees engaged in your material, and not engaged in surfing the Internet. Continue reading to discover three ways you can make your webinar training more interactive.
Include Polls and Actively Respond to Your Chat Window
Administering polls during your webinar not only allows you to collect data from your audience, it’s also a good way to keep your webinar interactive and engaging. Ask multiple choice questions that require a specific response, and place them strategically throughout your presentation. You can use poll responses to guide your training session. You’ll know if the audience isn’t comprehending a topic before moving on to the next topic, based on their answers.
You can also use the chat window to encourage interaction with your audience. At the beginning of the webinar, tell them to post questions if they need you to clarify or expand on a topic. Think of the chat window as the virtual equivalent of a student raising his or her hand in a classroom to ask a question.
Leverage Social Media
Provide webinar attendees with a hashtag they can use on social media to discuss the topic you’re covering, especially if they’re from different departments or organizations. One of the best ways to keep your webinar attendees engaged, is to keep them talking with each other and other interested individuals inside your industry about the topic your training webinar is covering. It will be fascinating to see the conversations that start about the topic you’re covering.
Have a dedicated resource live tweet from your account during the webinar and reach out to those who are live tweeting about the webinar topic. You could also host your webinar on Facebook Live to see what kind of engagement your topic receives there.
Use Gamification Techniques
If you really want your webinar attendees to stay engaged, make it fun for them by devising games for them to play. For instance, you could offer a free gift card to whoever gets the most questions correct on short pop quizzes you give throughout your presentation. You could also have breakout sessions, where a smaller number of attendees huddle together. Encourage these breakout groups to come up with ideas and report back to the whole group, where everyone will decide on the best idea to implement.