I gave a webinar for PRWeb today – THANKS, Jiyan Wei, Nida, Kate, and all you awesome people, for inviting me!
Things I learned from giving my first webinar:
1.) I got Keynotes, a slideshow program for Mac, I learned how to do fancy builds and all kinds of dazzling special effects…I needn’t have bothered. When I started checking around before doing this webinar, all the experts told me that special effects on slideshows are generally distracting and they slow down the slideshows for a lot of people.
2.) Always do a dry run several days before your webinar so if there are glitches you have plenty of time to fix them.
3.) Plan for every possible emergency. I took my dogs to the vet for the day so they wouldn’t bark in the background – yes I work from home! – and I had my charged up cell phone standing by in case my home phone battery died and I printed out my presentation in case my computer crashed.
4.) Use pictures from istockphoto to illustrate your slides. $1 each. Can’t beat that. Also Fotolia, Getty Images, Corbis, etc. – stock photos give a very professional touch.
5.) There’s free pie chart software on the web – pie charts are the awesomeness. http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createAgraph/default.aspx – That’s a good one.
6.) For branding purposes get someone to make a colored bar with your business name to go across the top of your webinar slides, and your website’s URL.
7.) Lists of bullet points are your friend, but break it up with some some slides with color.