Planning a webinar

Planning a webinar establishes its format, price, platform, speakers, promotion, registration, audience interaction and follow-up. Preparation also covers rehearsals, volunteer roles, technical support and any agreement about recording.

Reach and delivery options

A webinar reaches a large, geographically dispersed audience cost-effectively, can be offered live or on demand, lasts if it is archived and, done well, engages its audience. ¹

Online delivery may reduce costs for the writer and the company and ideally helps diminish a business's carbon footprint, and medical writers often need to share information with clients in other locations. ²

Design and delivery checklists

A 2014 practitioner's checklist recommends six elements for designing and hosting a webinar: ¹

• Decide the format, whether a single speaker, an interview, a panel discussion, interaction with the audience or a combination, and whether to charge a fee. Free events have high registration but only 30% to 50% of registrants are likely to attend; paid events have lower registration but 75% to 98% attendance. With so much free material available, consider why an audience would pay for the content, and expect attendees to have higher expectations of a paid event.
• Choose the platform: a suite of conference tools or a webcasting platform, offered as do-it-yourself paid, do-it-yourself free or an all-inclusive service, with Google Hangout, WebEx and GoToWebinar named as major providers in 2014. Understand what the platform offers in the number of events, viewers and speakers, the availability of series and the types of interaction, and ask whether customisation and branding are available; whether a dry run or training is possible; whether the software supports registration or a separate web page is needed; whether it can send mass emails; how big the audience can be; what support services exist; whether engagement can be measured in real time; whether audio comes by telephone, online or both; how content is distributed; whether the platform supports recording, mobile devices and software download, a recording for on-demand access increasing potential viewership; and whether it works on both Mac and PC.
• Select speakers who are engaging and well prepared. Audio is the key component; presenters should be subject matter experts; webinar skills differ from those of an oral presentation; no pause should last longer than 3 seconds; presenters should know the platform, be available for rehearsals, log on half an hour before the event and do at least one dry run; and prerecording is worth considering to avoid distractions. Telephone and computer headsets improve audio quality, the computers should be wired to the internet rather than relying on wi-fi, and for an archived session the presenter should wait 5 seconds after recording starts so that all the audio is captured.
• Promote the event. Email to a list is most effective, supported by newsletters, blogs, websites and videos; messages should be focused, relevant and value-driven, carry the recipient's name and give the key details, such as a link to the registration page and the date and time. The registration page should give a description, learning objectives, the speaker's biography and picture and a registration box asking at least for name and email.
• Engage the audience. Average viewing for a 1-hour event is 53 minutes; know who the audience is and how to engage them, since engaging them increases viewing time, ensures higher retention and establishes a personal connection. The registration page can engage the audience from the beginning, perhaps with a pretest. Advertise no more than a month ahead, since many people sign up in the week or on the day of the event, and send reminder emails at least 24 hours and 1 hour before it. During the webinar, interact through polls and question-and-answer opportunities, and change approach if the engagement statistics suggest attention dropping off.
• Follow up after the webinar, to be memorable, with follow-up emails, surveys, evaluations or post-tests, a blog entry or social media post, thank-you emails to everyone who attended and a check of the metrics, and, if the session was recorded, edit the file and post the recording on a website.

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Brainstorming can help develop webinar topics. ⁵ A 2015 practitioner's checklist recommends five steps for delivering a successful webinar: ⁵

• Find the right webinar provider: the many webinar companies are often similar but differ in the services they provide and in cost, so ask whether the program is ready for mobile devices, how accessible the technical support is and what training is given in using it.
• Choose the format: a single webinar or a small series of no more than four, with 60 minutes, 45 of presentation and 15 of questions, a good place to start; whether to charge depends on the expertise being shared and the ultimate goal.
• Justify it to the consumer, particularly if there is a fee, perhaps with a promotional document of questions each answered "then you need this course" or explaining the benefit of the course, and perhaps with a 100% money-back guarantee.
• Market it through mailing lists, professional organisations, newsletters, blogs, press releases and LinkedIn groups, and through affiliates such as colleagues and professional organisations, using specific discount codes to track where referrals come from.
• Engage the audience, the most important step: anonymous pre- and post-surveys to get to know the audience and tailor the webinar, live polls and questions during it, and perhaps letting the audience see the presenter.

⁵

For a technical webinar, fifteen to twenty minutes can be allocated to questions, taking account of how long participants can attend. ⁶

Platform choice and historical options

An employer's preferred platform usually settles the choice. ⁷ Otherwise, platform choice should consider the budget and audience size, since most free tools are limited to smaller groups, then participants' technical confidence, installation requirements, operating systems and devices, and the desired communication features and statistics. ^{7, 8} The same tools also help a team work more efficiently, not only to present. ⁸ An undated platform recommendation named Skype and Google Hangouts as free options and tentatively put capacity at 25 people; an attendee considered GoToWebinar powerful. ^{9, 6}

A chapter should choose a platform that fits its needs and budget. ¹⁰ Several popular options dominated the virtual meeting market in 2020, among them Skype, GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Zoom, and the Southwest and Greater Chicago Area chapters chose Zoom because its functionality, security and price fit their needs. ¹⁰ Platforms differ, and each offers a range of subscriptions, so a chapter should understand the differences and start with the subscription level that fits its virtual-event needs. ¹¹

A meeting and a webinar give attendees different roles. ¹⁰ In a meeting the hosts control many functions but attendees are otherwise fully participatory, seen and heard; a webinar typically gives attendees far less parity, focusing on the presenters, with attendees by default neither seen nor heard and taking part only through chat, questions in a question-and-answer session, and raising a hand. ¹⁰ In 2020 Zoom's meeting subscription and its webinar add-on differed as follows: muting all attendees, turning off their video and locking screen sharing were options in a meeting and automatic in a webinar; group and one-to-one chat, polling and registration were available in both; breakout rooms were available only in a meeting, and a question-and-answer function only in a webinar. ^{12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19}

Not every platform offers a webinar function, and where it exists it may be an add-on at extra cost: in 2020 a chapter offering webinars on Zoom needed a paid meeting plan plus the webinar add-on. ^{10, 11} In 2020, the Greater Chicago Area chapter found Zoom inexpensive compared with its typical in-person events, while recognising that this might not hold for every chapter, and the Southwest chapter saved some cost by combining a chapter meeting account with the webinar add-on of a board member's account. ²⁰ Many platforms offer free plans, some of them limited: Zoom's free plan then limited meetings to 40 minutes and offered no webinar add-on. ^{11, 21} Free plans can still give a good feel for the environment, and they often come with support media such as webinars and how-to videos that give a good idea of the functions of the paid plans. ^{11, 22} When attending other people's webinars and meetings, a chapter planner should note what they like and dislike about each platform as an attendee, and whether the host is struggling with it or the platform has become nearly transparent, leaving the focus on the event's purpose and content. ²²

As of late 2020, the free options of four common platforms were these: Zoom was free within a 40-minute time limit, for up to 100 participants, with an app available but not required; Microsoft Teams was free with a limit of 24 free hours, for up to 500 participants, with an app required; Google Meet was included at no charge in Google's workplace suite, for up to 100 participants, with an app available but not required; and GoToMeeting had no free option, cost $12 a month, and took up to 150 participants through web and desktop. ^{21, 23}

Registration and ticketing

Whatever the event's size or type, a chapter should balance security with efficiency in planning and promoting it. ²⁴ Posting the registration link on the chapter's website rather than on social media discourages bad actors, or trolls, while keeping registration convenient for members. ²⁴ Beyond the security features Zoom has made defaults, small measures such as requiring registrants' full names and further information such as an institutional affiliation discourage bad actors from trying to get in. ²⁴ Having Zoom send confirmation emails with individual join links automatically keeps the programme volunteers' work to a minimum, and Zoom can also send or resend confirmations automatically just before the event, for attendees' convenience. ²⁴

Events that need a certain level of participation to succeed, such as chapter conferences and roundtables, should be ticketed, and charging even a nominal fee improves the attendance rate and further discourages bad actors from attending and disrupting the event. ²⁵ In 2020 about 70% of registrants for the Southwest chapter's free webinars attended, against nearly 100% for its events with a nominal fee of $10 or $20. ²⁵

Apps can replace individual email registrations and banking tasks: tools exist for ticketing (EventBrite, for example), payment processing (PayPal), registration updates for stakeholders (Google Sheets) and registration confirmations (EventBrite or Zoom) that can all be connected to each other. ²⁵ In 2020, a chapter could charge for webinars through PayPal integrated with Zoom, but for more complex ticketing, such as different fees for members and nonmembers or roundtables with limited tickets per topic, the flexibility and ease of EventBrite or a similar service may be worth its fees, which EventBrite does not charge on free events. ²⁶ The 2020 workflow connected these apps through Zapier integrations called zaps, which sell tickets, register attendees with the platform, deposit fees in the chapter's account, give stakeholders a live list of registrants, which can also help automate breakout room assignments, and send attendees event information, receipts, confirmations and log-in details, so that the routine labour of managing and monitoring registrations is avoided. ^{25, 27} Zapier offered paid and free plans in 2020: a Southwest chapter member donated webinar access and integrated the apps through her paid account, while the Greater Chicago Area chapter used the free plan successfully. ²⁵ A chapter that uses Google products in the integrations should set up a separate Google account solely for the purpose and configure its security options to restrict Google's access to data, to maximise the account's privacy. ²⁶

Presenter and volunteer preparation

Virtual events require careful planning and attention to detail beforehand, and thorough planning gives the host and volunteers a confidence that carries them through the event. ²⁸ All volunteers need confidence and a working knowledge of the platform, because things will go wrong just as they do in person: someone starts speaking while muted, a presenter's video gets stilted or the connection drops completely. ^{28, 27} Online, the lack of visual cues and feedback can disorient presenters and heighten any anxiety about public speaking, and with a little anxiety about the technology added, things can quickly go sideways. ²⁷ Planning well keeps such snags few and lets the team handle those that occur without losing its confident stride. ²⁷

The two chapters' 2020 preparation advice recommends six methods: ²⁷

1. Encourage presenters to connect computers to the router with an Ethernet cable rather than Wi-Fi to avoid freezing and dropped connections; cables then cost under $10 and were easy to obtain and use.
2. Use a headset for clearer sound and less background noise, and encourage presenters to do the same.
3. Keep presenters' and team members' mobile numbers for texting if technical trouble arises.
4. Foster an open atmosphere where presenters and team members can ask questions.
5. Always rehearse with presenters and hosts during the preceding week; hands-on practice with the technology and one another dissipates anxiety.
6. Manage expectations: the session will not be perfect, but it will be great and everyone will come out looking good.

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In 2020, the South Florida group found practice runs helpful for familiarising everyone hosting, cohosting or presenting with the platform's features. ²⁹

In 2020, the South Florida group found a cohost very useful even for small meetings and a necessity for large ones, to help people having trouble logging in, run the meeting and share presentations as a backup, run polls or monitor the chat for questions. ^{29, 21} The South Florida group suggested that the host and cohost keep in touch by text. ²¹

Debriefing and chapter policies

After each event the core volunteers should discuss what went well and what needs improving, so that they keep growing and gain confidence for the next event. ³⁰ Sharing the lessons with the board helps chapter leadership understand what each event type requires and what the current volunteers can do, and continuing to cross-train volunteers to host virtual events helps them as professionals as well as volunteers. ³⁰ The Greater Chicago Area chapter found that these events called for new policies, among them where a webinar recording is stored and for how long it is available, how much to charge, and who should be trained as technical and attendee-facing hosts. ³¹

Checklist for a first chapter webinar

The 2020 chapter-webinar checklist recommends the following steps, which can be adjusted to each chapter's needs and built on for more complex events such as roundtables and chapter conferences. ^{24, 28}

• Schedule the session. Create the webinar in Zoom, require registration and do not override the default safety settings such as the password requirement; add presenters and polls then or later; capture the registration link for EventBrite or the chapter's event page, or both; configure the confirmation emails to presenters and attendees and have samples sent to yourself before going live to make sure they are correct; and register a sample attendee the way attendees will register, so that you can monitor how the applications perform, such as when the confirmations go out, using EventBrite's guest function to avoid the fee when one is charged.
• Integrate the apps. A ticketing app such as EventBrite can likely be linked to the payment app through its own menus, without a third-party app, and Zapier can automate other processes, such as linking EventBrite to Zoom to automate registration and to Google Sheets to give stakeholders live registration information.
• Prepare the presenter. Schedule a run-through on the platform so that the presenter is comfortable with it, covering the introduction, the exit and whether they would like you to put questions from the chat; exchange mobile numbers for use if technical trouble arises; encourage a headset and an Ethernet cable; and make clear that the session will not be recorded and that the presenter is not to promote their own products or services.
• Promote the session. Use a general chapter email account or forwarding address as the contact, for security and privacy; give the website manager, social media team and communications coordinator the information and the registration link, and never publish the direct link to the event, to discourage bad actors who come to disrupt; and to reach beyond the chapter, post on AMWA's online community with the webinar title, the presenter's name, title and affiliation, the date and time with time zone, a description and the registration link.
• Register attendees. Register through EventBrite or the platform directly; if tickets are not free, set up the link to the chapter's payment app with the treasurer; require full names at a minimum; if charging, include a disclaimer, for which the association's refund policy can be adopted and adapted where appropriate, though one chapter has a liberal refund policy of its own; and say in the confirmation that the joining link will come about two hours before the event, and resend it then, manually or automatically, because without joining details sent on the day a wave of emails asking for log-in details arrives in the minutes around the start, when the host has other tasks.
• Host the session. Greet attendees and introduce the event and speaker, for which one chapter updates a slide template for each event; remind attendees that they are muted and unseen and should submit questions in the chat; help the presenter with questions, a role to agree in the rehearsal and usual for most webinars; watch the time and cue the presenter; monitor the webinar email account for people with problems as the session starts, who almost always just need to find their log-in details in their spam folder; run the presenter's polls to engage the audience and a chapter poll to collect feedback for the events committee; and close by thanking speakers and attendees and reminding attendees of upcoming chapter events.
• Close out the event. Thank the presenters by email, with an honorarium or other thanks if the chapter offers one; write a brief report for the chapter president, secretary and Chapter Advisory Council representative, taking the attendance figure from Zoom's reporting function; ask for the event to be removed from the upcoming-events page; and if it was recorded, secure the recording as agreed with the speaker, distribute any post-event access promised to registrants, and, where access is time-limited, diary the date to remove it.

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If recording is chosen, the checklist advises knowing applicable federal and state requirements for presenters and attendees, deciding storage and protection in advance, checking the plan's space allowance, and preserving speaker agreements so that all chapter personnel understand the permitted access. ²⁶ Posting a speaker's presentation publicly when the agreement allows only limited, password-protected member access can lead to litigation and reputational loss. ²⁶