 Yes, G'day Australia. Welcome back for another year of the impeccable Redback Business Skills show. We've jazzed up the program to make it more informing, more educating and more inspiring than ever. And it's on twice a month now because there's so much to talk about. It's great to have your company. 2020 Webinar Hacks is the first episode. And joining me live in the studio to help us understand how to take your content to the next level is everyone's favourite Webinar expert, Sarah Jury from Redback Connect. Sarah, welcome to the show. Hi, Daniel. Thank you so much for having me. Always great having you here. You've got some great insights to share. Yeah, and this is our second event that we've done together for the year, so I'm looking forward to getting into it and talking about some hacks, which is sure to liven up everyone's taste. Yes. Is it the second one in the space of a week? Yes, I know. We've started the year strong, I feel. We have. Yeah. Let's not get sick of each other. Let's just come down here. Love just yet, anyway. We can talk about that in about a month's time. Yes. Lots to talk about today. Yes. When you've got some hacks that you want to present to us. Yeah, and the reason why I thought of this is as the new year comes out, all these emails come out and all these Facebook Reddit sort of posts and everything around hacks and how you can get more time in your life and all these life hacks. So I started to think back to what are some hacks that have really improved my life? And over the Christmas break, I actually started to grow a veggie garden. Oh, what? And I've got so much lettuce that I can't eat enough lettuce. I don't know what's going to happen to me, but recently I found two hacks with lettuce. OK. So the first one is if you actually wrap lettuce in paper towel in the fridge, it absorbs all the water, so it lasts a lot longer. What, really? Yes. And then more recently, and I'm sure many people may have seen this on the news, if you have an avocado and you cut it in half because you don't want to eat a whole avocado at one time. Yes, we do, yeah. And it goes brown, wrap it in a lettuce leaf. Yeah. I know, try it. I haven't tried it yet, but that's going to be my big thing to do this weekend. And it keeps it green. Yeah, it does. That's amazing. Yeah. What about you? Any hacks? Well, most of my life hacks involve a dash of alcohol. Oh, OK. So this got me thinking about webinars and what are some quick wins that we can get whether we're starting a new series or whether we've got a program that we need to refresh. Because as we get into the swing of it, and I know that we do this here at Redback as well, we tend to forget these little things along the way. So today I'm breaking it down into engagement hacks, into reporting and data hacks, and also into time-saving hacks. And then some trends that we're going to go into that we're seeing that might come through in this year. Trends for 2020. Yes. Everybody wants to know about it. Yes, we have to talk about it. Of course we do. Yes, and as always, we encourage you to join the conversation today by using the dark blue hand icon at the top of your screen. You can ask a question that will come through on our trusty old iPad here, and we'll get through your questions as they come through at the end of the presentation. Also, there's a light blue icon if you'd like to get some help with your own webinar program. Click that button and get your pause on some of those key documents. They are quite handy. Now, everybody wants to talk about engagement, Sarah. Yes. Now, I say let's kick off. Well, yes, engagement is always a big one. When we talk about engagement, it's really about keeping your audience online and engaged for a lot longer. So basically not having them drop off like flags. And also, the other key distinction here is engagement isn't always interactivity. Exactly. So it's about keeping people online and not only engaging them when they're online, but also after the webinar to try and make sure that they're coming back for your series, not just for that one time because no one dislikes the one-time show. So, intros and bios. So this is something that does come up, and we've spoken about it for some time now. Don't keep long bios or don't have long bios and introductions of your presenters. And many of you would have downloaded the Redback Report for 2019, where we go through a lot of data and insights from some of the feedback we've collected. You can also download that from the resource folder on this event. 67% of people in that report actually said that presenters have the ability to make or make break an event when it comes to engagement. So when you do have a presenter, you don't need to go through their whole bio, where they've been, what they've done, what they've done in their whole life. You need to keep it really short. But how do you do that if you also want to talk about your presenter and create some credibility? So the first thing is, when you have an open slide, most webinars you'll open up about half an hour beforehand, and that allows people to actually come onto the event, make sure they're logged in, make sure their system is working fine, and then they can actually sit there and wait. Consider having a holding slide on there where you can actually have information about your presenter, maybe a headshot, and then maybe some information about where they've been and what they've done and why they're actually talking on this event. That's actually a really good idea. Mostly it's just, hi, welcome to the webinar. We'll be kicking off in half an hour. And it's sort of wasted space and dead air. So start to utilise that. And some other things that you can do before your webinar begins, if you've got sponsors or something, you could play videos, but there's a whole different range of things. Something on there. It's dead space, and we should be using it. Also include LinkedIn links on the registration pages as well. So on the registration pages, and I see this all the time, sometimes there's a whole biography of the presenter, and it takes up half the page, and you have to actually scroll down three times. Rookie mistake. Exactly. And you want people to register. That's the goal of your registration page. So maybe put a little bit about your presenter, and then a link to the actual LinkedIn profile so people can stalk them and find out more there. Who doesn't have a good LinkedIn stalking. Yes. And then the other thing, like I said here, is also updating your Regio page, which is exactly what I meant there as well. So start to think about if you were to actually land on a page and the goal is for you to register and convert you to a registration, then what would make you react to that as well? And we'll go into registration pages in a moment. And you know what's good about all of this? If you've got the bios effectively on the landing page for the registration and then also on that opening hold slide, you don't waste time on the actual webinar when it kicks off saying, hi, this is the presenter. This is what she's done. This is why she's so good. She's done this, this, this, this. That's not what people are here. They don't. And you actually, if you think about in a physical event when someone gets on stage, you probably have a few minutes to capture someone's attention. On an online event, you probably have 10 seconds. And 10 seconds in the online world can sometimes feel like a minute. And people can log off. They can have a room. So always start to consider that and think about how you can trap people and not trap them. Try and engage them and get them into the topic. We do want to trap people in a very positive way. Yes, exactly. Number two, thank you emails as well. So once the webinar is over, you send a thank you email. As you do? As you do. Just a few little hacks with these thank you emails because I tend to find they're very underutilised sometimes, Daniel. So first of all, always send within 48 hours. So keep in mind if you are running a webinar on a Friday, like we are today, try and get it out before the weekend and then otherwise so that people can actually watch it. And by the time Monday comes around, sometimes people would have forgotten completely. Yeah, strike while the iron is hot. Exactly. Think about some call to actions as well that you want on your actual thank you email. So the goal of my event might be to build a community so people keep coming back to my webinars. So on my thank you email, I might have a link for people to view upcoming webinars or to register for the next webinar because it's fresh in their mind and they can link off. Or my goal might be to actually, I've got a membership base and I want to increase that membership base and I want to convert people to members. Maybe that thank you email might have a link to the membership page for people to register so they can attend more webinars. So start to think about that. Also the webinar slides, you have to include the webinar slides and a lot of people say, oh, my presenter doesn't actually want to include the slides because they're worried about plagiarism or whatnot. PDF the slides, people, if they want to get the information, they can take screenshots of when you're presenting on the webinar anyway. And that level of detail that you have on the slides, people just like it and it's something they can save and it's something they can refer back to on a regular basis. And have that ready in advance. If there's any intellectual property you're worried about, a dumbed-down version, not a dumbed-down, it's not the right way to do it. But have a version that's ready for public access. A simplified version, yeah. Have that uploaded ready for people to download or at least put that on the thank you email and then have the full one on the presentation. Yeah, I tend to not. Some people say they want to upload the slides to the actual webinar themselves. So like today we've got the resource folder uploading the slides there. I don't really recommend that and we don't as a business either because people can just download that and remember engagement is keeping people online but then give them something of value afterwards. And any sort of physical events you've got afterwards. So your thank you emails might direct people to register for other webinars but you can also cross over with other marketing opportunities whether it's to download some additional content to bring them into the funnel, whether it's to actually register for a conference that you might have coming up. So these emails typically get the biggest open rate. So you're looking at probably an 80 to 90% open rate on these emails. Oh, really? Yeah, as opposed to your invitation. Your confirmation and reminder emails obviously get a lot as well but your follow-up emails receive such a high open rate because people want that content to share. You're kidding. And not only that, the people who are opening these emails may not have attended the webinar. That's the other thing. People click to watch the recording. Exactly. So if you say, okay, 100 people register for your webinar and you have a 30% attendance rate, which is around average now. So you send the thank you email out to people. All of those 100 people are going to receive it as opposed to just the 30 people who watch you online. You'd be silly not to take advantage of that option. Huge advantage as well. And then also consider sending different emails. So personalization is very important when it comes to webinars. So think about the people who attended and who didn't attend and have two different channels and segmentation. And if your systems don't allow you to do this, you will have to do it manually. And it's not a huge task, to be honest. It's quite simple to do, and it would make such a difference. You know what, nothing's more off-putting than receiving an email. It clearly wasn't for me. Yeah, it is. I hate that. It's very, very off-putting. And it could be as simple as, hey, thank you for attending yesterday's event. Oh, hey, sorry you couldn't attend, but I've included some additional resources to hopefully bring you up to speed. You know what, if you do all of these and have your thank you emails include upcoming webinars, upcoming physical events that you've got. Not only do you come across as super professional and super switched on, like the recipient will notice it's part of a grand scheme. There's so many things that are happening. They're all across it. And it's a well-oiled machine as well, which you need to start creating. And then the third one, when it comes to engagement, and I'm a big fan of this, I think I talk about it in every webinar, and that's because I also adore you when we do this, is having someone facilitate and moderate. And it's got to ring to it as well. It is. It's so much easier as a presenter to actually have someone next to you keeping you on track, asking questions, and then making sure that you're on the right track as well. And it's so much more engaging for people online as opposed to having one person just stare down the barrel of a camera. Yeah, that's it. And even if it's audio only, two people make a difference. It's like a radio show. Yeah, or a podcast. Yes, exactly. Much more interactive to listen to. Yeah, absolutely. And it's also about putting your brand front and centre. So chances are, if you are running a webinar series, your presenters aren't part of your organisation. So if you have the same facilitator to actually open up your webinars on a regular basis, then your brand is front and centre as well. And people will come to expect seeing that person open up. You have the ability to brand that. And the person who can get to do this is probably sitting across the room from you. Yes, that's it. Yes, it's just a bit of training. And if you can't do this, even if it does come down... We don't have someone who can regularly come online all the time to do this. Even create an opening house introduction video or something like that. But, yeah, think about how you're... about making your presenter feel more at ease when you're running these events. Because, like I said, 67% of people say that presenters make or break a webinar when it comes to engagement. It's like the old adage. Teamwork makes the dream work. Oh, good one, Daniel. I'm a sucker for... I don't know. We should have had a lower third come up for that. Please, Shays and Puns, that's my special... In the thank you email, we'll send everyone some of Daniel's hot quotes that were actually sent at the webinar. How's that? Please, Shays, Champion. Yes. OK, thanks. We talk about engagement. I know. Some of it is engaging content, and that can be just conversation like this. Exactly, yes. So, we talked about engagement hacks. Let's talk about reporting hacks and data hacks. Yes. The reason why I put this in here, and I was very guilty of doing this for a very long time, of just looking at the data, looking at vanity metrics, and just looking at attendance rates. So, I was really focused on the people and how they were attending my event, which is great, and you should do. But I really neglected to look at some of the the insights that I found in there. So, as humans, we look at numbers or we look at data, and sometimes we just see, like, binary. It's just like all too much. How can we look at our data more intelligently? And how can we look at some of the stories that our data is telling us? Because this, I think, can be very, very valuable. And this is something we can all do today if we go and look at some of our previous reports that we have. We can actually look at that before we do kick off our 2020 webinar program. So, the first one is landing pages or registration pages. So, this is a page that people go to to register for your event. And like I said, the whole idea is for people to actually convert and to register on these pages. Now, Daniel, the great thing about using the data on this page is it's ongoing. So, you create a webinar, you create a landing page from that moment that you send out your invite to the moment someone actually your event takes place. You can actually look at the statistics and tweak this page. Oh, because you're compiling a bit of a journey, so to speak. Exactly. So, when I launch this, I can look three days after I've launched my event, and I can actually see a hundred people have landed on this page, but only 3% have converted. So, only three people have actually registered. What's going on with my page? And that's a lot more insightful than looking at, hey, 30 people have walked up to my webinar. Exactly. Or just looking and saying, oh, only three people have registered. Why have only three people registered and what's actually driving that or not driving that registration? Are they not going to the page? Are they going there and not registering? Yes, exactly. So, in terms of, we know the issue now, so what can we do about it? Look at, obviously, what the page is doing. Look at the conversions and tweak the content as well. So, we've now, this year, started to have a different banner for every single event that we actually run. Also, make it succinct as well. So, I think what a lot of people do is they actually dump a whole lot of content onto these pages, because they think the more, the better. But I think it's really around having... Sorry, my hair's in my eye. It's around, isn't it, really? Yeah, it's around having something nice and catchy as a title. It's around having, obviously, what the time and date is as well and even where the event will be held, because some people might not catch on that it's a webinar. And then a brief summary and key learning points in terms of what people will actually take away from the event. What are they going to walk away with? What are they going to learn? So, it gives them the bare essentials that they need to know about the webinar and enough of a teaser. So, it draws them and entices them to get registered for the webinar. And if it's not working, then tweak the content and play around with your subject line and test it a bit. So, some common things that you can do with your subject line is use numbers as well. So, if you have a topic and odd numbers tend to work better, so there's a lot of research into that. So, you know, three top tips or seven top tips or nine or 10. So, odd and then 10 really work well when it comes to actually catching people. And they're sort of list. So, I think the psychology behind that is knowing, okay, if I register for this event, I'm going to walk away with three top tips. I'm not just going to walk away with some random information. But then also look at your registration fields as well. What are you capturing? Are you trying to capture too much? Can you only get away with maybe capturing three fields that are relevant for you? And then can you capture more information in the actual webinar through polling or surveys? I guess that would also tie into the goals of the webinar that you're talking about. If it's something like building an online community, you can capture data down the track which you've got them into your community. Exactly, yeah. So, the goal, that's perfect because you are trying to think about this as a journey and building a webinar community and programs do that, as opposed to just running one off webinar. So, yeah. To get everything in one go. Yeah, definitely. Have a think about that. The next one is actually using feedback to create topics as well for future topics. And I think this one is a great one because obviously we all want to create great topics that people want. And you don't want to be sitting there scratching your head just saying, what should my next webinar be about? Who should my presenter be or what should I focus on? So, I've listed some tools that are actually available to us within the platform. And the first one is the Q&A chat box. So, the Q&A chat box or the ask a question feature which we have on at the moment, if you actually download this transcript at the end of your webinar, you'll probably send some common themes or some common questions. So, there's two things that the transcript and the information here will give you. The first one is if people are all asking similar questions that might relate to a theme that might possibly be a future topic, which would be great. And the second one is if people are constantly asking the same question, if it's about technology, if it's about your business, if it's about your company, then maybe you need to create an FAQ or something like that because if people are having the same issues with technology, maybe you need to make it more obvious when you're actually promoting your event next time or if people are saying the same thing about a certain presenter, maybe you need to have a discussion with them. I just think we really need to look at some of the information that comes out of how people are engaging with us on our webinar when it's primetime and start using that. And similar to what you said, Daniel, you know, there's nothing worse than open an email that's not personalized to you or it's not meant for you. There's nothing worse than giving feedback and then having that feedback not being used. Yeah, not being listened to. Yeah, exactly. What did you ask me in the first place? Yeah, so take a look at those transcripts and start to see some common themes and similarities. And similar to this, this is also in feedback as well. So in the feedback survey, and if you aren't doing feedback or exit surveys, I definitely recommend that you do because they're absolutely crucial for you to get that feedback live and on the spot. Try and refrain from sending out any sort of surveys in a thank you email. But with your survey feedback, if you extract that data and you look at it, there's a few things you can find in here. First of all, any suggestions? Sometimes we ask people to give suggestions for future topics. Also rating the presenters as well, which you should have. But also if people give you great feedback and you can benchmark that over a certain time frame. So say, for example, I've asked people to rate my webinar topics and the webinar program that are running over a 10-month period. And the benchmark, we're rating people from one to five. And there's a constant benchmark of four. And then I've got some qualitative data. So people have actually said how great my program is. I can use that to promote future events. So think about quotes or if you're promoting on social media. When you're promoting your webinar series or you're launching it, you can go into it and say, 90% of people rated our webinar program as amazing back in 2019. And here's what they had to say about it. That's actually really good. Yeah, you sound surprised. Yeah, because I haven't thought about it in my webinar program. Yeah. Did you see that about services or websites? Yes. This is what our customers have said. We use it for everything else to promote our services or, like you said, anything. Yeah. But people have given us this feedback. Why not use it? It's amazing how we think of a webinar and then we like compartmentalize it into this special thing. It is, yeah. It's part of life. It is. Apply the same principles I've worked elsewhere. It's a different channel. It's because I think it's still relatively new for a lot of people. And I think people still haven't grasped the idea of a program. You're right. We do compartmentalize it and we do see it as something unique and special. Yeah. And they are special. Yeah. But they're just another channel in terms of getting our message out. That's it. And then the third one is the registration process. So find out why people are joining as well when you're actually going through that registration process. So when you actually export the data of people registering, ask them where they're joining from, why they're joining, if you can. But I think another great thing that you can do with this data in the registration process is say, like we did today, why are you going to attend this webinar? What do you want to learn? And that's invaluable for your presenter as well. So you can start to create some relevant information for them. Yeah. And then tailor the content by the time the webinar starts off. Yeah. And then polling as well. Another great way to actually get feedback and use that. And you can create statistics for future content as well. So if you are running a poll and you tend to get some, you're obviously going to get some percentages out of that, which then will create some statistics in your future webinars. If you are running similar content, you can actually use that to refer back to. So saying something like, oh, previously, if I launch a poll, I said, okay, previously, 20% of people actually chose A. And it's funny, you guys are choosing B. So you can start to sort of bring your webinar series together, if that makes sense. From a participant standpoint, I honestly find the polling the funnest part of all. Yeah. Like, I feel like I'm getting really involved. Yeah. Like, who doesn't like getting pulled? Yeah. Yeah. Like, people want to know what I think. Yeah. Well, that's why people actually get paid for it these days as well. And then the third hack is to look at where people are joining from. So in your webinar reports, you should also be able to see how people are joining your event. So are they using a mobile device or are they using a desktop? And how they are joining is going to play into a few different reasons. What they actually do during the day, which will play into when you're holding your event. So are they behind a desk or a day or are they on the road? But what this actually does, this data, it allows you to choose your format a little bit more strategically. So if I see that the majority of my attendees are always using a mobile device to actually attend my webinars, I'm going to choose a format that maybe is video only. Because if I choose video and slide, side by side, like we are today, then it's going to change up a bit in terms of the responsive layout. If I have video only and I have slides coming over the top of that video, then I can actually, as an attendee, I can expand or enlarge my screen and I can actually see the full content. Or I might just choose to do audio and slides only. If I know that my attendees are on the road on a regular basis and I want them to engage, but I also want to make it easy for them to engage, audio and slides is probably a better option because they can stick their headphones in. However, if you do see that most people are using desktops to actually join your event, also your opportunities are endless. You actually have an opportunity to use whichever you want. But then you can probably incorporate more engagement activities such as polling and the like as well because people are going to be able to do that. So there's really only two options here in terms of looking at the data, but I think it can make a huge impact in how you're actually presenting and engaging your community when it comes to this. And it's one of those things where you need the data to make decisions first. You know what, we're going to go with this format because I feel like it. Yeah, you do need, like I said, it's about making these decisions intelligently and it's not just about looking and saying, okay, great, we've got people using mobile devices, which means we've got a real tech-savvy webinar audience. What else is that actually telling you? So start to think about that as well. I'm trying to process it all in. It's quite a fair bit. So we've gone through engagement hacks. We've gone through reporting and data hacks. Let's now turn our attention to time-saving hacks because there are things you can do to keep your operations more efficient when it comes to webinars. Yes, and that's exactly right. This is all about efficiency and giving us more time so we can focus on other things because we don't want to be just constantly running webinars all the time. We've all got so much other things that we need to do. So what are some time-saving hacks that we can actually do for our webinars and for our series? So think about your webinar as one webinar with so many different uses. It's almost like some of those morning show ads. It's just like one night that does 20 different things. So if you are running a webinar, chances are you are using video and slides or maybe you're just using slides only. Either way, you do have an audio element of that webinar that is actually being recorded as well. So in a webinar at the end, you will receive a recording and that will be archived online or it might just be MP4, which is a video file. What you can actually do is you can extract the audio file from that and you can actually create a podcast. So an MP3 file or you could just create an audio series on your website as well. And the reason why this is maybe important to look at is because people are very interested in podcasts now and they are increasing. It's one of the trends that we're seeing. So in the Redback report, 37% of people say that they listen to podcasts on a weekly basis as well. So it's a huge opportunity to create a separate channel, whether it's for engagement or revenue. So consider exporting your audio files if you are looking to go down the podcast path. The next one is blog posts as well. So we create webinars because we want content and especially if you are running webinars for lead generation purposes, you want written content as well because you want to create blogs, you want to create SEO-friendly content as well and then you may also want to create a sort of post on LinkedIn or something like that. Why it's important to think about the written content as well is because that just makes your event more accessible as well. So people learn in a variety of ways and not everyone wants to listen, not everyone wants to watch, some people want to read as well. So if you can cover those three bases, chances are you're going to appeal to three different types of people. So you can actually sit there and you can actually listen to the webinar and you can create some content out of that or you can have someone in your team do that even if it's just picking out the key parts of it or what you can do is you can actually have your blog post transcribed as well which means that you get word for word in terms of what has been said on the event but then you also have the ability to actually create that into some content that you can actually publish online. Time-saving hacks indeed. Social media as well. So if you are using your webinars for social media content you can't just post a 45-minute webinar on social media. So when you actually have that file, that raw file, consider cutting up the content to create maybe a show reel or maybe just a bit of a teaser and then linking on to the actual webinar as well. And videos can be a lot more powerful than just having posts on social media. Video is tailor-made for social media uploads. Exactly. Yeah. So start to break it down into maybe 60 or 90s that I think Instagram is 90 seconds max for videos before you need to click on to watch it. I don't know about a business account. Personal accounts are 60. Oh, they're 60? That's probably it then. So yeah, these are three ways that you can actually not reinvent the wheel and say, oh, God, I've done a webinar. Now I need to do a podcast. Now I need to write a blog. We don't want to have to repeat ourselves over and over again. And people out there who are organised in these events don't want to have to do more things. It's also good because there's consistent messaging coming out from all of your different channels. Yeah, exactly. It's the same message. Perfect. The next time-saving hack is something I just alluded to, which is looking at what worked last year and not reinventing the wheel. So as we launch into any webinar series or as we launch into anything in general, we tend to have to start from scratch. If we look back at what has worked the previous year and how it can be repurposed, that's how we can create great webinar content. So start to look at your white papers or your reports. If you had a conference, a physical conference last year and you had some great speakers, they got great feedback, why don't you invite them back to do a webinar or something like that because they're tried and tested, essentially. Yeah, so don't necessarily think, oh, I need to create new topics with new presenters and new speakers. We've recycled speakers so many times as well and they've just tweaked the content because we know it works. And people still want them. Yeah, exactly. That's the other key part. They definitely do. So definitely start to look at what has worked in the past and who has worked in the past and then try and bring that together and try and just mix it up a bit because it's like fashion, I guess. Speaking of mixing it up, maybe you could even get two or three of them and put them on a panel. Exactly, that's a great idea because then you've got a different dynamic happening as well. Yeah, take a timely topic that everyone wants to talk about or is talking about already and get their take on it. Maybe, and then link it to your upcoming event because if these are presenters on last year's conference, you probably have a conference coming up next year or this year, whatever it is. And then somehow tie that together. Perfect. Another great quote that we can put in the thank you email. And then time saving hack number three. So this is going to come across as little backwards because it's going to take you time to do this but it's going to help you in the future. So this is actually mapping out your journey. So we've done a lot of research and it does take a lot of time to create successful webinars. So it can take between three and four weeks to actually plan a webinar series and get it up off the ground running and it can take between two to five resources and different departments as well. So there's a lot that actually goes into this and you should be mapping this journey out for a few reasons. The first one is so you know how much time to dedicate to different areas. So you know what departments to actually get involved and also if something happens to someone someday and no one else is there to do it, you need to have a really refined journey and process. So when you are actually doing this, map it out into three separate areas and it will be a lot less daunting and it is going to be quite filled up. I'm not going to lie, there are a lot of things and a lot of moving parts that happen in this but first of all, map out the pre-journey and what happens pre-webinar. So everything from getting your presenters involved, so whether it's reaching out to your presenters, getting their permission, bringing them onto the event, the content that you're promoting, how you're going to promote that, which channels you're using and then look at what happens during your webinar. So if you're outsourcing your webinar to a provider, then obviously they take all this but there's still some communication with them back and forth. The training component, how you're going to train your presenters, technology, interaction and engagement tools and then also who's going to support your webinar. And then post-webinar as well, what happens during the follow-up, how you're going to host your content and then how you're also going to engage people afterwards. So just starting to map this out, it might seem like a lot of work, but just do it in bullet points, on a spreadsheet or something and that will actually then allow you to see, okay, where can I spend more time here or how can I put some more time in here and actually make it a nice, efficient process. Like you said, it does sound like a fair bit of time at the start. Yes. But it's one step backwards, two steps forwards, really. You're doing a lot of planning so the rest of the process is okay. Exactly. And I think sometimes we've just launched into these webinar series and we're just being so reactive with what we're doing because it is sometimes considered a bolt-on to some of the other stuff we're doing. So mapping this out will give you something to work from and we all need processes at the end of the day. An exciting bolt-on at that, that gets people like running around, oh, we're doing a webinar. Yeah. And then the planning goes out the window. Yes, exactly. And then it's like, oh, we didn't have that many people attend, why not? And then you forget everything else that's gone into it and you don't do them anymore. Yeah. Yeah. So you definitely start to map it out. And I think it will... It's quite nice to actually see something mapped out on paper as well and just say, okay, this is everything that we are going to do. Here's what we're going to accomplish. Then you can put some goals to it and responsibilities as well because the other thing is your webinar shouldn't be managed in silos. You should get other departments like your marketing department should be completely on board with what you're doing and helping with the promotion for that consistent message. It's funny. We probably plan everything else in our businesses and companies. Yeah, we do. We just don't do it for webinars. No. It's just not a thing for some reason. Cool. Okay, so now let's move our attention to the whole topic of trends and what is hot in 2020. Yes. This is something on everybody's lips at the moment. I do realise we're in February. A whole month has already passed. Yes. But trends, what's hot, what's not, this is what people want to talk about. Yeah, so the first one is hybrid event styles. So thinking about getting away from the traditional webinar of having someone on a webcam with some slides next to it and starting to think about what your audience wants, what your strategy is for the entire year and your plan and then tying in your webinar series to that. And that might also be looking at something like where your attendees are joining from. So hybrid event styles, we're talking about podcasts. So audio only as well, realising that not everyone needs to be in front of camera and maybe not everyone wants to be in front of camera. It can actually come across as disengaging sometimes. Taking your conferences and streaming them online. And I feel like every single year this gets a lot of hype in the beginning and then people, oh, it's too hard basket, they don't want to do that. But it's really now about just taking some of your content and streaming that online as opposed to doing two-day conferences. And then also mixing it up as well and using facilities like this, like broadcast studios. We had someone fly to Brisbane this week. A customer wanted to present and they wanted to do it in their office and they wanted to have full video as well and they wanted to be in their office and they didn't want to use a green screen facility. So starting to mix it up that way as well. Short snackable content as well. So the rise of the online talk show has been quite popular and there's actually a blog in the resource library if you click on that and that will give you an idea on how you want to create some short snackable content whether it's 15 or 20-minute episodes. I think we all know people's attention spans are decreasing and we're sort of fighting for people's attention as well. 15 to 20 already sounds a bit too long. Yeah, exactly. I don't know if I'd watch a 20-minute online show. I might watch a 10 to 15-minute one. Well that's the thing, you just need to start playing around with different types of formats as well because what your audience is going to respond to and what you're putting out there might be completely different as well. And then on-demand content. So realising that we are in this wave now this world I guess of just Netflix and on-demand TV and we want stuff when we want it and we don't want to be told when to watch sometimes and that obviously has impacted our low attendance rates now which has then led to us obviously creating more on-demand content. So really start to think about your series. Are you going to do it all live? Are you getting really low attendant rates? Should you actually create on-demand content and then start to play around with that and have some online hosting sites? So all these things are sort of starting to come to light and becoming a lot more popular. But I would say to speak to professionals who are looking to go down this path because obviously there's a lot of techy stuff involved so you don't want to necessarily do a lot of this stuff on your own. You want to try and get the professionals involved and also get some feedback from your audience and who you're actually talking to. There's no point going out there and changing up everything you're doing and then your audience doesn't respond to that and they don't actually want to borrow it. So definitely try and scope out what's actually happening. It also ties in nicely with what you were talking about before in terms of silos. If you can get the IT guys involved from the company and maybe make it work with your own website, like if what you're trying to achieve is completely different to what the rest of the IT strategy is, it's not going to work very well. Oh, absolutely. And I think, you know, this is a time... I know it's a time to do everything at the beginning of the year, but this is a time like mapping out that journey and seeing who needs to be involved. That's a great idea just to sort of start to say, okay, even if I need to bring my IT guys in once and they're going to give me a little nugget that's going to help me run my entire series, then so be it. I'll keep everything under like one big overarching theme and synergy. Yeah, that's really useful. Cool. Well, gee, that takes us to the end of the presentation. Yeah. And that was really filled with a whole lot of information. Oh good, I'm glad. As you can see on that slide, there is that light blue icon that you can click on to get some access to resources. There's about five or six different documents there which you'll find quite useful. If you do need to go before we hit Q&A, which we're about to do now, make sure you hit the yellow button and give us your thoughts before you go. And you can also see Sarah's email address if you'd like to get in touch with her privately. But yes, it's time to check in with the questions you've been submitting. Reminder, it's the dark blue hand icon if you'd like to get involved. A whole bunch of questions I've been streaming through on this little iPad of ours and we'll go through those until we run out of time. And if we do run out of time, we'll be sure to get back to you offline. Yes. Okay, so I've got a question here from Hannah. And Hannah asks, our audience keeps asking about a new topic they want to hear about, but it's hard to find a presenter because it's so cutting edge. How can I use this feedback? And I think that's talking about the bit about, you know, why would you ask for feedback and then not act on it? This is a tough situation. Yeah, it is. I guess, why is it tough to find presenters? And I think when we are sourcing presenters, we're sometimes a little bit afraid to actually go and just ask the question or someone can actually say is no. So really start to, I think my advice would be, and the way that I source a lot of presenters is obviously through networks. So you're using LinkedIn. And if you know someone who is connected with the person who you're trying to get in touch with, maybe ask in for an introduction as well. And the majority of people will actually be willing to do a lot of this stuff for free as well. It's about them putting their brand out there. And when you are approaching them, a lot of it is in the communication and the pitch as well. So I think the person needs to have some sort of alignment with your industry and what you're actually talking about. So if it is something technical, there need to be maybe a subject about a space in the pharmaceutical industry, if that's industry you're in or something like that. But there needs to be something in it for them. And there also needs to be something, I think something where they can actually get their brand out there front and center as well. But ask the question, use resources like LinkedIn as well or go to the Speakers Association. There's a lot of speakers in there that you might be able to get on board as well. Speakers Association. Yeah, I can't remember the exact name. I think the National Speakers Association Australia. There's a few of them out there as well. So they can also maybe help you out. Right, another idea I had was you used the pharmaceutical industry as an example. If it's like a legal change, see if you can get any lawyers on to talk about the changes. Maybe even get involved with government and or politics if relevant. If not, one other idea I had, and I've uploaded this one before, but get a panel involved with people who are affected by the change. So it might not necessarily be the people who are running the changes, if it's so cutting edge. But maybe think about some of the other stakeholder groups that might be impacted by the changes that's coming up. Get them to talk about it. And then from there you could probably build enough of a networking or a community online to find more speakers who are experts. Sounds good. Yeah, great question. Thank you very much, Hannah. I've got a question come through from Corey. Is it when you're asking people why they are joining, is it better to use multiple choice or leave it open-ended? I want to process the data easily instead of reading every response. Yeah, so I think it's good to try both. If you... Most people, when you actually... It's funny, when you actually ask this question, most...so you'll have maybe three bullet points on what people will actually learn if they come. And most people, when they actually respond in that registration, what am I hoping to gain? They'll pick one of those bullet points anyway. So it pretty much is, like radio buttons. But I think if you just mix it up and see, because sometimes there might be something in there that know what that you haven't even thought of maybe presenting or that you haven't really thought about. And it's...if you just think about it, it's all about giving this information to your presenter as well. So I'd probably ask the presenter what they prefer. I don't think one's right and one's wrong. I think it needs to sometimes even be a mix on it. If you...if your goal is to get quantitative data and you can actually just sort it and say, okay, here's the top thing. Let's spend 30 minutes on this, 20 minutes on this and 10 minutes on this. Then definitely use radio buttons. But if you do want to sort of get people to be more creative and come to you with maybe some questions or something like that or something specific, maybe use open-ended. But also remember, if you use open-ended, sometimes you can just get a bag of worms. Yes. And you'd have to troll through and read everything to make it worthwhile. Exactly. Yeah. You know, why can't you do both? I just had an idea because I've seen some surveys where you can pick A, B or C and then other and if you pick other, there's like another few. Yeah, conditional logic. If you'd like to other, please specify. You can do that as well. Yeah, definitely. There you go. Thank you very much for that question, Cori. Another one's come through from Camilla and she says, what's the best way to practice the webinar beforehand and do you rehearse? So I think it depends on the surroundings and how many people are involved. So if you are doing a webinar on your own or you and I, we don't tend to rehearse too much because I think it can come across as a little bit fake, a little bit too rehearsed sometimes when if you've got to facilitate they're doing it with you and you really don't want people to be reading off slides as well. So it's really about having people who know their topic and having people who can maybe have a conversation because having a conversation with you here, I'm not too focused on the camera or what's happening in the background. So if you do have a panel discussion or more than two people presenting, I think there definitely needs to be a lot of rehearsal involved and I just want to clarify because there's two types of rehearsal. There's technical briefings and rehearsals so making sure that everyone's familiar with the technical side of things and then there's the content side of things. So technical 100%, you need to know if you're doing a remote webinar and you're logging in from home, you need to know that you're internet stable, you need to know that your camera's working. You need to know that your audio is fine. If you're coming into a studio like we are today, you need to make sure that you're familiar with your surroundings and you know what to expect on the day. But when it comes to content, I wouldn't say practice in word for word because it's never going to come across like that, but if you have a panel, you need to even have an online panel discussion or meeting just to make sure you know what's being covered off at what time. Maybe rehearsal in the sense that everyone knows what they're doing as opposed to line for line debates with rehearsals. That's a great question. Thank you very much, Camilla. A quick comment's come through from Ross and we are about to run out of time so we'll take this as the last one. Ross has just let us know that Professional Speakers Australia is the name of the organisation now. National Speakers Association is the main other one in the USA. Oh, okay. Excellent. Good to know. Thanks, Ross. Thanks, Ross. Good tip there. But yes, that does mean we are out of time and that's all she wrote for today's programme, folks. Thanks for being with us to kick off another great year of Redback's Business Skills Show. Before you go, please complete the survey, which you'll be redirected to shortly. Your feedback means a lot to us, so don't be afraid. Get in there, let us know what you think. Give us your thoughts. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for your company once again. Hope your 2020 is off to a great start just like ours and from us here in the studio, it's goodbye for now. Goodbye, everyone.