Webinars are the future of events and seminars in the world of business and education. Gone are the days of arriving late to a group seminar and speaking to your peers in person. With the increase in advanced technology, seminars can now be hosted online via webinars.
If you are looking for a platform to host your own webinar on, here are 5 crucial features that you should be looking for in a webinar platform.
Polls for engagement
Engagement is key when hosting a webinar or event and the views and opinions of participants really matter, whether it be their views on a topic regarding the webinar or their opinions on how the event is. Asking people questions and their opinions individually can be time consuming, therefore by creating a poll you can ask anything you like, and have all participants be able to respond without having to vocally speak up.
Screen sharing
Events often require you to display images, slideshows, notes, videos, data and other visual representation, so that participants can receive information visually rather than being spoken to. Screen sharing allows you to share your screen with everybody else in the webinar, so whatever is on your screen, can be seen by everyone else. This is crucial for displaying information visually.
Live chat
It can be hard to speak up and voice your opinion if an event has large volumes of attendees, and even harder to speak over people if you can’t physically raise your hand. The ability to raise your hand and put anything you want in chat form is vital. Participants can put any questions, concerns, or any other information they wish to make known. Anyone can add to the chat, making it easier to put forward any concerns while someone is speaking.
Breakout Sessions
Breakout sessions allow you to split the amount of participants within your webinar into separate, smaller groups. Many platforms allow you to create a vast amount of break out sessions so you can divide any number of the attendees into numerous groups. This allows you to have different speakers and avoid making certain people sit through discussions and take in information that is unessential to them.
Recurring events
Webinars are often scheduled to take place numerous times on several occasions, therefore the option to schedule recurring events is crucial for having participants meet up on webinars on different dates. Recurring webinars have one landing page with multiple dates and times and a range of sessions to register for. This makes structuring your webinars easier and allows participants to sign up to more webinars of their choice. Moreover, this allows you to save time by having all your future events in one place and avoids having to reach out to individuals every time a new webinar is taking place.
So, there you have 5 crucial features you should definitely look out for when choosing the right webinar platform for you and your organization. These features are too useful to miss out on so keep them in mind.
