Hosting a webinar is one of those experiences that can be nerve wracking for solopreneurs, but it can also pay off greatly for your business. If you don’t know where to start with how to run webinars, continue reading for some tips on how to engage your audience and host a successful webinar.
Today I held my first LinkedIn Live.
I’d been wanting to for a while, but they’re allowing it by invite only and I didn’t realize until a few weeks ago I was “approved”.
I’ve also been getting a lot of inquiries around how to bring devs from Ukraine/surrounding countries to Canada given the situation there right now, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to run a “webinar” on how to bring devs into Canada.
Why Host a Live Webinar?
If you’ve never run a webinar before and you’re a solopreneur, you’re probably missing an opportunity to bring in more business. These online events are a great way to build trust with many people at one time and promote a product/service.
I’ve done dozens of webinars over the years – to businesses who need immigration help, aspiring immigrants who want to come to Canada, and even a few business webinars to solopreneurs about lessons I’ve learned along my journey (these are more rare and on request, but I really enjoy them). Through these experiences, I’ve found that knowing how to run webinars isn’t as daunting as some people might think.
Russell Brunson – founder at Clickfunnels – always preaches that the best business model in the world is to pick a product/service, run a webinar every week for 1 year educating your target market and pitching your product/service, and you’ll change your life.
I haven’t done a webinar per week for a year, and you also should take his advice with a slight grain of salt because his software facilitates building funnels like that… but I believe him 100%.
Hosting a Webinar on LinkedIn
Anyway, it was far from my first live webinar, but first time doing it on LinkedIn. Most webinar platforms are similar, but was happy to see an average of 15-20 live viewers for the whole session with minimal advertising (I posted twice about it and that was it).
It also stays online as a video to hopefully get more views after the fact, and I’ll also download it/upload it to YouTube for more reach.
Anyway, if you’re looking to grow a business of almost any kind, I highly recommend webinars.
They’re relatively low time commitment and highly personal. Plus, once you do them one time, it becomes way easier and quicker to do them again.
How to Run Webinars as a Solopreneur:
Pick a great topic that people are interested in. Then, give it a catchy title to immediately engage your audience.
Make a good enough deck/presentation materials. They don’t have to be works-of-art – in fact you’d probably be surprised at how low-quality my decks are. They don’t look that pretty, but they do have a good title, flow well, and present the topic in a clean way.
Bonus: your deck shouldn’t have sentences or (God forbid…) paragraphs. It should be bullets with talking points. You shouldn’t be reading anything off slides, you should be using slides to guide your talking.
Promote your webinar really well. This will differ depending on the topic, audience, etc., but spend more time promoting it than preparing it. If no one/not many people show up, it won’t matter if the slides look 4% prettier. More attendees means more feedback and more potential clients/sales.
Keep it short and to the point (I am for 15-20 minutes plus a Q&A session). People are busy and have short attention spans, so make sure to actually give value and don’t waste peoples time. A good practice is a quick agenda/intro, 3 major talking points/lessons, a summary and then conclusion/CTA/live Q&A. There are exceptions depending on the topic, but general guidelines here.
Always have a CTA – call to action – at the end. If you’re teaching people about how to do something, mention your services/company at the end and how you can help them with this problem or opportunity you’ve been talking about. Don’t be overly salesy but make sure there’s a next step people can take!
Run it many times. Your first version will be okay, and over time you’ll get better at it and also can amend the content and presentation as you get feedback from viewers. You should also do a dry run or two before you go live to ensure that you have the material down.
Anyway, I could go on and on about webinars, but here’s the one reason they’re worth doing – it’s a really scaleable way to provide a lot of great value to people while building that personal relationship with them.
Have a great day, make sure to sign up for my daily email update for solopreneurs and keep grinding,
