ureadit

Step 1: Decide on Your Message

It may be tempting to overlook this step in your enthusiasm to just put something on the air, but don’t short-change yourself. You need to be clear on the message you are going to convey as well as your target audience.

The message may be something simple, such as, “Establish our Company as a Thought Leader in Web Security.” Having decided upon this bold statement as your message, you can now take steps to identify the following:

1. Who is my audience? In this example, your audience is the web security industry. Understand that you’re going to be addressing experts in this field, so don’t plan your content around simple concepts like, “How to enable a Windows Firewall.” No, instead you will want to discuss deep subjects such as the latest algorithms for detecting intrusion attempts. The bottom line is that you need to know your target audience and make sure that your content is appropriate.
2. What industry experts can I feature in my webinar? Having an industry-recognized expert featured in your webinar will go a long way toward establishing your credibility with your audience. You should, in fact, have two experts featured: one external to your company and one internal. An external expert may be extracted from one of your customers, a book author or a committee member on an industry panel. You may have to pay this person to attend, or you may be able to convince her that the webinar serves a common interest. Don’t forget to promote your own company as an expert. You can do this by pairing up a company presenter along with the industry expert.
3. Don’t use the webinar to hawk your products. Yes, ultimately you need to sell products, but people don’t want to attend an hour-long infomercial. They want to learn something. Deliver faithfully on the promise of the message without proselytizing. Your internal industry expert can mention your company’s products, but she should not use a heavy hand. Your viewers will smell a rat and run away. A light-subtle approach is sufficient to get the message across.

 

Step 2: Secure a commitment from your presenters.

You’ll need material for the webinar, and you cannot do everything yourself. Contact the presenters and get a commitment from them. This commitment will probably involve something like this:

1. Create a 20-minute pre-recorded presentation of material.
2. Provide a picture (still-shot) to be used to help promote the event.
3. Be available during the webinar to answer questions during a Live Q&A session.
4. Reach an agreement regarding the ownership of the production. Your company will want to retain all rights to rebroadcast the material.

Generally, the most difficult part about getting a commitment is obtaining the pre-recorded presentation material. As the due-date for the material approaches, you’ll have to make daily (sometimes twice daily) phone calls to your presenters asking for progress.

Step 3: Create a Playlist

Like any regular TV or radio show, a playlist is an essential component that strings the show together. Write out the playlist as a time-sequence list of events, identifying minutes and seconds from the beginning of the show. Create your playlist at least four weeks in advance of the event. Sure, it may change before the actual date of the webinar, but you need to have a working playlist to help you focus on the deliverables that are required. For example, in the sample playlist below, you’ll need your industry expert presenter to create about 20 minutes of pre-recorded content. You’ll need to relay this requirement to your presenters well ahead of the delivery date so they have time to prepare the materials.

Example:

• -15:00 – 0:00 Pre-show advertising. Feature a static placard that welcomes people to this site and asks them to stay tuned for the webinar. You may want to feature a “count-down” timer that informs the audience of the minutes and seconds until the webinar begins. For entertainment purposes, consider showing movie trailers. I highly advise against showing company ads at this time, as you do not want your message to look like a big infomercial. People will tune-out.
• 0:00 – 1:00 Introduction. A voice-over or perhaps a live video that welcomes viewers to the show and provides a brief introduction to the agenda. My advice is that unless you’ve hired a professional actor or actress, just do a voiceover and skip the video. You want your first impression to be good, or viewers will tune out. Be sure to include still-shots of the presenters as you introduce their names.
• 1:00 – 20:00 Presentation from the industry expert. A pre-recorded presentation of the featured industry expert. I highly advise using a pre-recorded presentation at this point, as you cannot afford to look amateurish.
• 20:00 – 21:00 Transition to the in-house expert. A brief voiceover that acts as a transition between the industry expert and the in-house expert.
• 21:00 – 40:00 Presentation from the in-house expert. Again, a pre-recorded presentation from the in-house expert.
• 40:00 – 41:00 Transition to a live Q&A session
• 41:00 – 59:00 Live Q&A session, featuring the presenters and, possibly, other experts, where they take questions from the viewing audience and discuss them among each other.
• 59:00 – 60:00 Thank the audience for attending and, if appropriate, mention where the taped version of the show can be found.

Step 4: Contact Your Audience

This step must be taken at least four weeks in advance of the actual webinar air-time. Your objective is to put out the word and create a groundswell of enthusiasm. Some of the avenues you can pursue are:

1. Website – Create an advertisement banner and feature it on the front page of your website. Provide a link to the sign-up form.
2. Email – Either your own email list or a combination of your own and a purchased list may be used to directly contact your potential audience. Be careful to observe proper “netiquette” and not spam the world. Carefully target your audience and send them a tactfully short email, pointing them to a place where they can sign up to attend.
3. Advertise – Contact pertinent trade publications and get their advertising rates. However you advertise, make sure you are able to capture the contact information of your attendees.
4. Blog – If you have a corporate blog with lots of followers, then make the announcement on that blog. If you don’t have a corporate blog, begin tracking other blog sites (if you’re not doing so already) and mention your webinar at the appropriate places. It is important to be very tactful and not make your posting sound like an advertisement. Go back to the message you created in step 1 and emphasize the benefits without making it sound like you’re hawking your products.
5. RSS Feeds – If you’re using RSS feeds to keep your customers informed of your company’s activities, mention your webinar.
6. Organic – Encourage interested people to inform their friends by forwarding a link to the sign-up form.

In all cases, make sure that you have put some sort of tracking mechanism in place so that you can track your attendees. You’ll want to capture this information for sales purposes.

Step 5: Acquire Broadcast Materials

This step can be difficult because you need to acquire all pre-recorded content for the production. This material must be acquired at least three days prior to the broadcast so that the material can be edited and formatted correctly for the broadcast medium. Sometimes the material can arrive in horrible shape, where the speaker meanders in his/her speech, the audio levels are too low, or the demonstrations have unwanted results. You will need at least three days to edit and/or re-record material before it’s ready to go live.

My own experience is that a little bit of coaching can go a long way. For example, when your presenters are given the task of creating a 20 minute presentation, don’t just throw it over the wall and expect good results to flow into your production. Give your presenters a set of guidelines on how to present material, what tools to use, and what practices to follow. For example,

1. Get a good microphone for recording. Headset mikes are notoriously bad for picking up true intonations of the human voice. They tend to be so highly directional so as to pick up the voice but without the nasal intonations. I know this sounds a bit pedantic, but such microphones often make it sound as if the presenter is holding his nose while talking. Headset mikes CAN be used correctly, but they must be placed in front of the upper lip; not too close to the mouth and not too close to the nose. It must pick up balanced sound from both sources in order to be effective. Generally, I prefer to not deal with headset microphones; rather, I’ll use a good Sennheiser studio microphone with a sound board. The sound board allows me to play a bit with the frequency balance of my voice as well as add a very small amount of “room reverb” to fill out the sound. If your presenters do not have access to such equipment, consider loaning it to them for the duration and training them on how to use it.
2. Read from a script. Even Abe Lincoln wrote out his great speeches before taking the podium. Like many professional orators, Abe knew that virtually all people are incapable of assembling a clear speech contemporaneously. Leave your contemporaneous moments for the live Q&A session, where rambling is acceptable, but don’t allow rambling in the presentations. You owe your audience the best, and if you fail to deliver, they will tune out. Either have your presenters create their own scripts or create scripts for them. In either case, the presenter will have the final authority on what is actually said, but if it is scripted, it will sound professional and well thought-out. The scripts should be edited and vetted to ensure accuracy and clearness.
3. Should your presenters appear in video, make sure to coach them on proper video lighting and background. Webcams may be used, but they need help to create a good video. Usually, lighting is the key, and the more, the better. Avoid harsh shadows by dispersing the light. Sometimes bouncing light off the ceiling and walls (provided they’re white) can work fairly well in creating an image that is well-lit without deep shadows. You can often create a good makeshift studio by using shop-lights and shining them against a white bed sheet. (Shop-lights are very hot, so be careful not to start any fires!) Background is equally important. Sometimes a plain white wall will look okay, but it doesn’t hurt to have a more colorful background. Book shelves can add a sense of intellectualism to the presentation; however, if the bookshelf has a potted plant with flowers, and the flowers are located directly behind the presenter’s head, the results can look embarrassingly comical.
4. Don’t worry about editing. The presenters can leave the editing to you. Unless your presenters are good at editing, it’s better if they just leave the editing to you, the expert. Tell your presenters that if they make a mistake while reading the script, just start again at the previous sentence. During your three days of editing prior to the actual air-time, you’ll have an opportunity to compare the script with the presenter’s presentation and make all necessary edits.

Step 6: Prepare the Broadcast Medium

What medium should you use to broadcast your webinar? This is a tricky question that does not have a straightforward answer. It is unfortunate, but I have yet to find a good solution that allows me to broadcast pre-recorded content mixed with live content. You may want to check out LiveStream; I went with their solution for a while, but had a lot of trouble with their broadcast quality. Currently, I am using a mixture of homegrown software and a video mixer board, and broadcasting through Akamai. (I am available to answer specific questions in this area if you care to leave me a comment.)

Whatever solution you decide upon, keep in mind that it must satisfy the following criteria:

1. It must support the easy transition between pre-recorded and live content.
2. The broadcast medium must be globally accessible. There are many CDN (Content Delivery Network) companies competing for your business, including Akamai, Limelight, Internap and Level 3, to name just a few. In any case, make sure they have the ability to transmit into your target audience’s geographical area with at least 500kbps bandwidth.
3. It must render onto any browser. The two most popular video rendering formats are Microsoft and Adobe. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Personally, I have been going with Adobe Flash because of Flash’s ubiquitous presence on the web, though I confess to not sufficiently researching Microsoft’s Silverlight solution yet. Also, I use Flash because my latest homegrown solution involves a bit of ActionScript programming so that I can get a Live Q&A session integrated into my solution.
4. Questions and Answers will take place via a “chat” between each viewer and the moderator. Viewers must be isolated from each other, as often viewers will be competitors and do not want their chats to be read by others.

Along with preparing the broadcast medium, make sure that you coordinate your broadcast channel with the email tracking service. In other words, your audience will be given a link to click upon to view the webinar. Make sure that the mechanics of this link are now in place and tested. Do all your debugging at this point, ensuring you do not have to debug during the live broadcast.

Step 7: Prepare Broadcast Materials

It’s now crunch time, and you need to edit all your materials and lay in the pieces of the playlist you created in step 3. The actual lengths of the pieces may not fit into your playlist’s original format, so you’ll have to edit the playlist appropriately.

At this step, you’ll need to encode the videos and any other material as appropriate for your broadcast media. Since I use Adobe Flash, I will encode all videos using the VP6 video encoder from On2 (now owned by Google). If you’re using a video mixer board, then you’ll have to encode the materials in a format that is appropriate for that board. For example, we sometimes use a board that mixes NTSC/PAL video signals; during those webinar sessions, I’ll encode the materials onto a DVD. In fact, I’ll record the entire playlist – except for the Q&A session – on to a DVD. When air-time approaches, I’ll just pop in the DVD, use the video mixer board to source the DVD and send its output to the Flash Live Encoder, where it then goes to Akamai.

It is beneficial at this point to create a test broadcast channel and stage a dry-run. You need not have the real presenters available for this test; rather, you can just ask any colleague to sit in front of the camera and pretend to be the presenter. Go ahead and broadcast the show through the test channel, and ask your colleagues to tune in and give their feedback. If you have colleagues in other countries, have them tune in as well. It will be a good test to determine how well your CDN broadcasts into different territories.

Step 8: Delivery

If you’ve done all your work up to this point, the actual delivery will be easy. As the show starts, monitor its progress on another PC that is tuned to the broadcast channel. Expect that there will be 20 to 40 seconds of delay, so don’t focus too much on the monitored channel or you’ll miss your queues in the real-time outgoing channel.

If your presenters cannot be there live, then place a microphone next to a speakerphone. This works very well.

Have a moderator on-camera to read the incoming questions and pitch them to the panel of presenters.