Some webinar technology allows audience members to speak up during the webinar. You usually have their microphones turned off (on “mute”), but they can “raise their hand” to ask a question, and you selectively turn on their microphone when they’re ready.

Even when this feature is available, many webinar presenters don’t use it – perhaps because they fear it will break the flow of the presentation, or raise awkward questions they can’t handle. But allowing questions out loud improves the experience for everybody – you, the person asking the question, and other participants. So let’s explore the benefits, drawbacks and strategies for making this work in your webinars.

Benefits

• This greatly increases the level of engagement and interactivity for your audience.
• Even people who don’t ask questions feel more comfortable when they hear somebody else’s voice.
• Some questions require a bit of back-and-forth conversation to clarify the exact question.
• If you don’t offer this option, some people just won’t bother typing out their question because it will take too long.
• You can use this not only for questions, but at any other time you want audience members to speak.

Drawbacks

• You can’t screen the questions in advance.
• You can’t control the order in which you answer the questions.
• Some participants will have low-quality microphones, strong accents or distracting background noises that make it difficult to hear and understand them.
• If they are listening to you through their computer speakers (not a headset), when you answer their question, your voice will be picked up by their microphone and fed back to the entire audience, creating a slightly distracting feedback effect.
• Invariably, some participants will have trouble getting their microphone to work at all!

Making it work

If you’d like to take advantage of this feature, while minimising the risks and drawbacks, here are some tips for your webinars.

• Tell them beforehand that you’ll be offering this feature, and remind them to get a headset and microphone.
• Log in early and test a few users’ microphones before the official start time. This makes them feel more comfortable and confident.
• During your presentation, alert the audience a few minutes before you’re stopping for questions (e.g. “After I finish this slide, I’m going to stop for questions.”). This helps the audience get their questions ready, and avoids the awkward silence that might otherwise occur.
• Before the webinar, ask a few people you know well to have a question ready, in case nobody else pipes up. You don’t need to know their questions in advance; but you do know you won’t get complete silence!
• Finally, start small. Practise with small groups and familiar audiences, so that you become comfortable with the technology.

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• The 3 biggest mistakes in a Webinar marketing plan (and how to avoid them)
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• How to Promote the Value of Online Training
• Live Online Training That Works: Strategies for High Impact Learning and Development

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When preparing a presentation, it’s important to understand your audience’s needs. And one of the best ways to understand your audience’s needs is to ask them! But it’s not enough to just ask your audience a question – you must ask the right question. The best question addresses their needs. And their needs vary depending on their knowledge of your topic area.

For example, a novice in this area will be evaluating whether it has any relevance. An expert, on the other hand, is already convinced of its value – they just need to know how to apply it.

More specifically, when somebody’s evaluating something, they generally go through four stages:

1. (Why) Is this right for me at all?
2. (What) If so, what specifically is the best option for me?
3. (Who) Who is the right person to offer this service?
4. (How) How do I work with them?

Make sure you match your survey question to their current level.

For example, if you’re a financial planner, your potential clients are asking these four questions:

1. Do I require financial planning?
2. If so, exactly what services does a financial planner offer that are right for me?
3. How do I choose the right financial planner?
4. How do I work with you?

So, when you’re doing your survey to discover their needs, focus on one of these four stages – the one you think applies to most people in your audience.

In the financial planner example, you might ask one of these questions, depending on where you think they are:

1. “What is your biggest concern about managing your money?”
2. “What is your biggest question about financial planning?”
3. “What is your biggest question about choosing a financial planner?”
4. “What is your biggest question about working with me?”

If you don’t pitch your question at the right level, you won’t get useful answers – or you might not get any answers at all!

For instance, if your audience is full of people who have never thought about managing their money – let alone engaging the services of a financial planner – there’s no point asking them what they would like to know about working with you! Similarly, if you’re presenting a new financial product to your existing clients, they just want to know the facts about the product – they don’t you to ask them about general money management questions.

This is important for all presentations, but especially so for webinars, where it takes more effort to capture and keep their attention.

The first few minutes of your webinar are among the most important. They can determine whether your audience will pay attention or will switch off. So put some careful thought into planning the very start of your webinar, and especially how you will engage your audience.

When your audience is in the same room, they know when a presentation is about to start. If they’re chatting, standing or otherwise distracted just before you begin, when they see others sitting and paying attention, they’ll stop what they are doing and follow. Although you still have to keep their attention right from the start, you don’t have to do much to get it in the first place.

You don’t have this luxury with a webinar. Your audience isn’t in the same room, they might be distracted by other things, and they can do other things without worrying they might be distracting others. Because of this, you have to work harder to get their attention initially.

One way to do this is to ask them to do something early in your presentation. This forces them to take notice, involves them right from the start, and demonstrates this isn’t just another boring presentation.

For example, you could:

• Conduct an on-line poll
• Ask them to draw or write something
• Leave part of your handout blank, and ask them to fill it in

The idea is to design something easy but engaging. It doesn’t have to involve them sharing anything personal – in fact, it shouldn’t, because that’s too early in the presentation for them to share with others – but it should involve them doing something.

Don’t ask your audience to do difficult things too early. Start with small low-risk activities, and build up gradually to the more difficult tasks. This is known as “ramping up” the interaction.

For example, in some face-to-face presentations, the presenter asks participants to introduce themselves and state what they would like to learn from the presentation. I generally recommend you don’t do this for a webinar. It’s asking too much from strangers who are uncomfortable with the technology to share personal details over a telephone line.

So when you’re designing your interactive activities, build them up during the presentation. For example, here’s a logical sequence for “ramping up” the interaction:

• Show some introductory slides before the webinar starts.
• When it starts, you start speaking but don’t ask others to speak.
• Ask the audience to write down their objectives for the webinar.
• Ask them to respond to a poll (low risk, because they just have to click a button).
• For the first Q&A segment, read out questions they’ve sent in advance, rather than opening up the webinar for live questions.

By going through this sequence, you help them become comfortable with the technology and the environment. This eases them into the interaction, so they are more likely to participate later.