Making an online talkshow is one thing: sending from home or a studio into the living room of your audience. But how do you do it the other way around? How to get your audience into your studio?
Why your webinar needs to be interactive
Interactivity is not nice to have. It is need to have. Especially if you make a live webinar. If you don’t do anything interactive: why bother going live? why have all the hassle, stress, qualityloss and costs if you could have just make an awsome video ans put it on Youtube? Why make people watch at a given time if watching back on youtube is the same expierence?
The effect of interaction in your webinar
- It keeps your audience awake and engaged.
- The audience feels teh event is for them and about them.
- If people just listen, they almost forget everything you say. If they participate actively, they’ll remember much more.
- You can steer the direction of the discussion and presentations towards the desires of the audience.
- You make watching the live show worth while. If there is no interaction, just watch it on Youtube afterwards. but if you can participate; this is your chance to influence the discussion.
- It is what people want and expect. if you want to just see, ther are libraries full of books, videos and podcast. People want to meet people!
case: 100 people in a videowall
The Hague University of applied sciences has a yearly festival where staff from accros faculties meets and exchanges ideas. How to do that digitally? We got 100 people in a videowall!
bare minimum of interaction in an online event: chat / Q&A
Put some questions in the chat for a Q&A at the end. This is almist never working well offline, and it also is not online. Very often the chat stays empty, or just a small group of people put their issues in it and hijack your event.
#protip: use a system where people can upvote each others questions for more democracy.
better interaction during an online seminar: proper polling
Make people vote and infleunce the discussion. Make their opinions not only heard, but make them affect the course of the day. And bring some controversy.
Use a digital whiteboard to create online interaction
With an online whiteboard you keep people awake the whole time and collect a lot of input in just very little time.
even better online interaction: make people see each other. And see the people
Are you bringing the people another TV show ? Or are you bringing people together? Make pople turn on their webcame, but only if it is because theyr are included in the online discussion!
