Potomac Webinars

Andy Goodman—Webinar Survey Results

Back on March 16 2009 I posted a link to Andy Goodman's and The Goodman Center's survey on teleconferences, videoconferences & webinars. The results are in their new report: Dialing In, Logging On, Nodding Off: The True Costs of Teleconferences, Videoconferences and Webinars.

 

Over the course of about 22 days last spring, 1218 people took the survey (representing Non-profit 58%; Government 14%; Foundations 13%; Education 7%; Other 9%) The top 5 issues the respondents represented were: Education, Health, Children/Youth, Environment. Click here for a full report.

There are lots of ways to slice and dice the data. I'll focus on the items that jumped out at me the most. Below is the gist of the webinar section, with a few comments.

First, usage rates:

• 25% (about 300) of respondents participate frequently or very frequently in Webinars
• 56% (about 700) believe usage will increase
• 72% (about 800-900) have no training in how to use (when conducting) a webinar effectively.

The next issue noted was a report card. It's worth looking at the results from all of the types of meetings because it shows that even with 72% of respondents having no training in how to conduct an effective webinar, it's clearly a better medium for communicating a meeting or training. I found these results very encouraging for webinar usage.

	Telecon	Videocon	Webinar
Accomplish objective of meeting (or training)	B -	B -	B
Involve all the participants	C +	C +	B
Skill of Meeting (or training) leader	B -	B -	B

The survey listed common webinar problems ranked by FREQUENCY of occurrence:

1. Boring visuals (see my blog posts on Engaging Webinars and Creating a Great Presentation: Nancy Duarte's approach for some tips to combat this)

1. Lack of participant participation
2. Poor leadership/facilitation

Common webinar problems ranked by SIGNIFICANCE of negative impact:

1. Poor leadership/facilitation
2. Lack of agenda or clear objective
3. Boring visuals

So, boring visuals happen more often but are not as big of a problem as poor leadership/facilitation. I found some of the comments about creating interactive webinars noteworthy.  There is a clear link between the leadership/facilitation issue and the participant interaction component.

Overall, when asked to respond in an open-ended format, the respondents listed the issues of poor leadership/facilitation (24%); technical problems/background noise (20%); Misleading description of topic (18%); Too much information for allotted time (16%) and Boring/uninteresting/irrelevant topic (14%) This just echoes previous sentiment.

The webinar section closed with the following 'Meetings are meetings no matter what kind' and that "If you don't know how to run a good meeting in person, adding the prefix tele-isn't going to help you and, in fact, will probably make life even more difficult."  --'nuf said!

I was encouraged for the webinar consulting prospects of Potomac Webinars. As you can tell from the title of his report, there is definitely a need for webinar training and help in developing effective webinars. With growth expected in this medium (56% expected slight to significant increases that they would be logging on for more webinars in the future) the future looks bright.

Stay tuned for blog posts with suggestions on how to combat the issues listed. Additionally, The Goodman Center will be will be offering a free webinar based on this study on July 17^th.

Andy, thanks for the shout out in the acknowledgements section. I was (and am) grateful for the opportunity to speak with you regarding my experience with webinars and hope that I was able to help you spread the word.

Creating a great presenation - Nancy Duarte's approach

I've just watched a webinar by Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design called Creating Powerful Presentations with Nancy Duarte.  She gave it to the vizthink group.  It had so many great components, including don't abandon powerpoint, but innovate it.  Before developing your presentation don't go straight to the powerpoint tool...instead, walk away and think of your audience.  Sketch it out on paper, go to another location to change your perspective a bit.  She recommends getting to a more tactile environment and doing things like mind maps (i am a huge word map fan...if you don't do it try it for the next project you are working on.  The site I linked to is just one that popped up on google...i don't even get this fancy with it.  Just put your main idea that you are thinking about in the middle of the page and draw lines out with the ideas...more off of each spoke.  When one gets too big, it can become it's own page.  It really helps to get all of your thoughts out of your head onto paper prior to starting an outline.)    

Now, back to Nancy's presentation.  She started by talking about the importance of telling a story which truly helps with your presentation skills. (This reminds me of the webinar audit I had done for Andy Goodman...who also preaches about Story Telling Best Practices.) 

She is a HUGE proponent of scrapping the powerpoint template system.  Instead start the slide with a blank space...get creative.  Use one point per slide.  This idea speaks directly to webinars.  It keeps the attendee engaged and the continual movement of slides is just one of many hooks to be used to keep them paying attention.   Don't fool yourself into thinking that the bullets are to help the audience...they don't, they only help you.  Your presentation shouldn't be a teleprompter.   

Don't miss the question/answer session at the end.  There are a few good topics discussed there after her presentation.  I love the analysis that they use that a presentation is like theatre.  The slides are just the set design.  There are many other "devices" that can be effectively used.  Get creative and become memorable.  This holds true for presentations given via webinar.  I feel like this can be an entirely different post so stay tuned!      

She mentions Tufte (the guru of giving analytical presentations) and highly recommends the often referenced Garr Reynolds' Presentation Zen. 

I look forward to reading her book Slide:ology.  It has gotten great reviews and looks like it will have a lot of good tips. 

Andy Goodman's Survey

Andy Goodman, of The Goodman Center, and a goodman communications consulting is conducting a survey on webinars and teleconferences.  Please check it out and/or send it on if you know if someone who might fit the profile. 

http://budurl.com/AGoodman

** This survey is intended only for those in the following sectors:  non-profits, foundations, government agencies, educational and cultural institutions.  If you aren't in one of these groups, but know someone who is, please send it on.  Thanks **

Here's a bit more from the survey creators:  

If you'll take a new survey on teleconferences, videoconferences and webinars, you'll receive a full report on what works, what doesn't and why.  Here's the scoop:

Given the current economic climate, everyone's looking for ways to cut costs and work smarter.  And that means more organizations may turn to teleconferences, videoconferences and webinars instead of in-person meetings.  Makes sense in theory, but will this really be a good thing?  

You've probably endured enough badly-run "long distance meetings" to agree that these can be serious time-wasters.  On the other hand, there are some organizations that are learning how to master these technologies.  Andy Goodman (author of Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes) wants to find and share those best practices (as well as the common mistakes we should all avoid), but first he needs your help.

His online survey takes only about 10 minutes to complete, and in return for your time, he'll send you a complete report with all the results in April.  So give him just a few minutes now, and hopefully  he can save you from countless borning hours in the months to come!  Click on this link to take the survey:  

http://budurl.com/AGoodman

And then forward this to a colleague and help make this study even more comprehensive.  Thanks for your help!  

I imagine Andy has a "Why Bad Webinars Happen to Good Causes" publication in the works.  As a webinar consultant in the DC area, I think it will be another great tool.  Thanks for helping Andy out.

Webinar Audit

Friday afternoon I had the great honor of auditing a webinar for Andy Goodman.  If you don't know Andy, he's a communications guru.  His company, a goodman, "is a communications consulting firm that helps public interest groups, foundations, and progressive businesses reach more people more effectively."  He also runs The Goodman Center ("where do-gooders learn to do better") which is the home of his online classes.  Andy has written a few different publications, including

  Why Bad Ads Happen to Good Causes

and

 Storytelling as Best Practice

and

Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes

Auditing Andy's webinar helped me to identify a new Potomac Webinars service:  Webinar Audit.  Andy had asked me to view his webinar in order to get a feel for my skill set and what types of his clients may have a need for my services.  I've been creating webinar plans geared toward individuals and companies but webinar audits seem like a great way to help a company who already has a webinar and are looking for a little (or a big) tweak.  Rather than helping some to construct a good webinar, I'm reverse engineering their current webinar and offering constructive comments on how to improve (as well as pats on the back on where they are doing it right)  Of course, Andy Goodman already does a great webinar and has thought through many of the key concepts that I advise clients but I still gave him honest feedback and made some suggestions. 

Andy mentioned that he sees me as a critical thinker and that I also looked at things at a granular level as I gave him feedback on his webinar.   We also talked a bit about his strategy in terms of how this group (on the webinar training session) networks and communicates.  It was a lot of fun and I look forward to doing it for many clients in the future. 

Stay tuned for a separate post in the next couple of days about a survey Andy is conducting on webinars and their effectiveness (or not) within the non-profit, foundation, government agency, educational and cultural institutions worlds.

Engaging Webinars

If you are creating a webinar, whatever you do, don't focus on the bullets! Think about the presentations you have been to in the past. What makes you think? The presentations I remember are the ones that got me engaged and working on a solution that I could start implementing when I got back to my office. Typically, it was something out of the ordinary.

So what happens when you are faced with a presentation created in the format of A bold headline and a series of bullets? You know the ones…found on Powerpoint templates the world over. Microsoft might as well fill in the content for you.

The importance of Blah Blah Blah

• Minutae you will never remember
• Pocket lint is more important than this
• You are now bored beyond measure

These are brutal. Lots has been written on this but somehow they still persist. Usually I would make sure I kept enough attention to get the key items, made sure I had a phone #, email address etc in case I needed it, and asked for a hardcopy for reference. Because face it, it's a reference book, not a presentation. Then I paid ½ attention while completing my expense report, made a to-do list, read over items that had been sitting in my "to read" folder for oh so long, probably would have thought about what's in the fridge for my kids' lunches for the next day... Basically, unless I received an urgent client call, I was still sitting there at the end of the presentation.

Now think of this in terms of a webinar. The second one of the blah, blah blah slides comes up, I am toggling over to my inbox, thinking about my next blog, wondering how this presenter was chosen, Ok, yes, I'm thinking it's a lead for Potomac Webinars. Seriously, what I am NOT doing is learning the content. Perhaps I'll consider getting the link to the webinar if it has good content, but usually I get so annoyed and know I can find the info somewhere else that I just…END THE SESSION.

There are lots of tips, tricks, etc for creating engaging webinars. One that everyone can start with—that can apply to their onsite presentations as well—is creating visually interesting slides. Use the whole slide, put your information in a new format. For example, use WORDLE. From the Wordle site: "Wordle is a toy for generating "word clouds" from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends." Below is a Wordle I created about Webinars.

.

My notes are where the bullets happen. I might say when presenting this slide, something like "Creating a webinar requires a lot of planning, It can get daunting and seems to start cluttering up your thinking. Among other things, there's timing to consider, technology, communication planning, managing audience feedback, getting a presentation webinar-ready, cost, registration process, even voice issues" Then the next slide would offer some tips on setting up stages of a webinar plan.

I love Wordle. It is such a cool little tool. I'd like to use one in every presentation I give (but yes, that might get boring). You don't need to use it, but it will be in your best interest to make sure you are creating an engaging webinar. Otherwise, it's just not worth the effort.

Google Trends: Webinar

   

One of my favorite little web tricks is Google Trends. In their own words, "with Google Trends, you can compare the world's interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they've been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most." Additionally, it also tells you what was going on around the time the spikes happened. It's not perfect (what was happening in the 4th quarter of 2007 to show such a big spike and then a downward drop) but you can also look over time to come up with your own conclusions (perhaps the downward time is just the holiday lull of research/planning types of business.

 

Check out the Google trends for the word "webinar" below. India beats the US in google searches on webinar, Washington DC is the biggest US City to search on the term. Look at how there was no mention of it on Google (search volume index) just a mere 4 ½ years ago. From the looks of it, my kindergartner has been around longer than the word webinar! This is a great example of a visual interpretation of a lot of data. (In fact, that's a great reminder for a good webinar. Avoid bullets…go for graphics to make your point and you will hold on to your audience.)

   

Hmmm, do you think I can take credit for DC being the webinar capital of the US? I am on Google a lot looking for webinar info! OK, I doubt that's the case. However, it is very encouraging to me to know that I am in the right place at the right time doing the right thing.

   

   

Pasted from <file:///C:\Users\Maryann\Potomac%20Webinars\blog\Google%20Trends%20WEBINAR.docx>

   

   

   

Google Trends: webinar

http://www.google.com/trends?q=webinar

Screen clipping taken: 2/28/2009, 6:41 PM

   

“Webinar” in the toolbar

Most sites that are offering product information webinars have some sort of link on their main page or their product page. <a href="http://www.wrike.com">WRIKE</a> , a provider of project management software, has gone a few steps further. Check this out:

   

 Not only do they offer webinars, but the word "webinar" is in their navigation bar. Once you click on it you are given a brief survey so that when you sign up for their webinar they can try to customize it for the attendees. In other words, if the main interest is for Marketing and PR as opposed to Software development, they will steer the webinar in that direction.

I love so much about this. First, it shows the importance of the webinar in their marketing mix. Second, it shows that they really do want to use a webinar to meet the needs of the attendees by customizing it and not just present like a firehose at the attendees. Third, it looks like they are doing so many webinars (see schedule at the bottom of the page) that attendees have some flexibility as to when to attend

   

   

Present Globally, Speak Locally

Evolution of Potomac Webinars. 

I’ve been a “stay at home MBA” for the last 7 years.  In 2002 after the birth of my first son, I off-ramped from a big corporate job.  Looking back, it happened in phases, but ultimately I went from a nice office in a Fortune 100 HQ to happily creating the excel spreadsheet for the playgroup.  I have had many moments of wanting to go back to work, but needed to do it on my own terms—which is why I have chosen to work for myself.  In addition to creating flexibility I wanted to make sure that the time I am spending away from my family--now 3 children--is not only helping our bottom line but helping others.  

I didn’t want to waste my experience but also wasn’t quite ready to just jump back into the corporate world with two feet (for many reasons).  I knew that if I was going to spend time away from my family, I wanted something to show for it—more than a paycheck. (Don’t get me wrong…the paycheck helps.)  Anyway, choosing one “cause” or group to work for seemed a little too intense.  Yes, we try to make our own little patch of the planet better for the next generation…we walk to school, we recycle and we compost.  But does that make me a great staffer for an environmental group?  Perhaps, but it would be a tough sell.  Additionally, while I know deep inside that I can transition my skills from corporate to non-profit, I was having a hard time convincing myself that I could convince others of this.  Perhaps I’m wrong, but I didn’t know if I’d be accepted in the non-profit arena straight up.  Had I ever officially done fundraising?  No.  Yes, I’ve been very involved at a corporate business development level in multimillion dollar deals, but fundraised?  I think I’d have to check the “no” box on that form.  Sure I’ve trained National Account managers across the country on Service Parts Logistics, but would a community organizer see that as a plus? 

Still, I know that I have some solid skills that can help others.  I have experience in corporate business development, marketing, communications and e-commerce.  My positions include Sales & Marketing Director for a product in the UPS Logistics Group.  Additionally, I was a UPS e-commerce manager evaluating clients' supply chains. 

As I was evaluating my options, I noticed a convergence of web technology with increased pressure to train and communicate across great distances, with reduced resources, has sparked a dramatic increase in online meetings and collaboration—especially webinars.  These opportunities are larger and an ever more important part of training, coalition building, public relations and business development.  I kept hearing about people conducting webinars and other people who were complaining about them.  Boring! Waste of time!  Just today an acquaintance told me about a webinar she attended by a major marketing group that was done very poorly. 

Hmmmm, an opportunity.  A golden moment.  My skills mesh perfectly with helping others to develop good Webinars.  My e-commerce background, corporate business development experience (presentation development and delivery) and overall interest in communications converged as well.  Once I convinced myself that yes I can launch my own business, my next step became developing the framework for Potomac Webinars:    

Potomac Webinars crafts strategies for speakers in the DC area, helping to create better online meetings and deliver powerful online presentations.  We manage the unique dynamics of participant interaction with a virtual podium allowing the speaker to concentrate on the content. 

Bottom line—I hope to use my corporate experience to help good DC groups get their message out.  Sure, I’ll be helping all types of organizations--both non-profit and for profit, but I will really look forward to those spunky groups out there trying to save the world.  I will enjoy having a little role in it.  In the spirit of David Brower, I hope to encourage people to  Present Globally, Speak Locally.  And do it well. 

Create a great Webinar

Lists seem to be popping up everywhere on how to create a good webinar...there are so many good suggestions in them.  Here's one from TechSoup that a friend forwarded to me today.

http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/training/page11252.cfm

The authors make a lot of good points.  I am surprised, however, that the article states that a webinar should be kept to under 2 hours.  That seems very long to me.  I would recommend under an hour and really try for a 45 minute presentation with a 15 minute question/answer period. 

There's  a great link in the article that connects to a recorded webinar, Getting to Know Online Conferencing Tools, in which Laura Quinn from Idealware discusses various online conferencing tools and their appropriate applications.  Online Conferencing has a lot of players in it at the moment, it will be interesting to see how the market shakes out.  This is a rapidly changing environment with a lot of creative solutions offered but consolidation and restructuring is bound to happen eventually. 

Video is gaining importance

I was reading a Wainhouse Research white paper (funded by WebEx) recently about the importance of the Webinar in the Marketing Mix and found it interesting that attendees ranked video capability high on the list of features a webinar should have while presenters ranked it lower.  I'm sure a lot of presenters will be taking note and adding it in a little bit to liven things up.  In fact, it's even the topic of the month at Adobe: 

This month’s Topic of the Month is Video and Connect Pro. What exactly does this mean? Well there are a variety of ways in which video can be created and utilized within Connect Pro. Among the topics we will be exploring are creating video for use in Connect Pro meetings, using video with Adobe Presenter, and working with meeting recordings. We’ve posted a bunch of great new assets about this topic on ConnectUsers.com: http://connectusers.com/community/monthly_topic/ and will be adding more as the month goes on

So, presenters time to get out of your PJs!  You're going to have to be web-ready at the virtual podium....even if it's just at the intro and close.