Tips for A More Effective and Engaging Web Conference

Web conferencing is an effective, cost-efficient and convenient method of communicating and collaborating with your geographically dispersed employees and customers. Today, web conferences are available on almost any device and used for many purposes, including staff training sessions, shareholder meetings, product launches, marketing services – even interviewing potential employees.

However, even though web conferencing eliminates the hassle and costs associated with business travel, your conference will still require the same amount of forethought and effort as an in-person meeting for it to be valuable and a constructive use of time for both you and your participants. Thankfully, there are a number of things that you can do to help deliver engaging material that will keep your attendees focused and actively participating in your meeting, such as:

• Recruit an assistant – having an additional person to introduce speakers and lead Q&A sessions helps to not only streamline the flow of your conference, but also aids in keeping your participants focused by breaking up the monotony of a single speaker/presentation style

• Rehearse your presentation – stay away from reading directly off of a sheet of paper. Even if your participants cannot see you while presenting, they will be able to tell that your delivery is less than natural. In the event that you have a lot of material to cover and are worried about missing something, an outline is a great way to keep on topic. Bonus: you can also allot specific amounts of time to each topic on your outline to keep your conference on track

• Provide visuals – to get the best return on your web conferencing investment, be sure to utilize all of the tools and features that your service provides. And remember that graphs, charts and other visuals are a great way to make complex information easier to process.

• Avoid duplicating your speech and visuals – just as you should avoid reading directly off of a sheet of paper, make sure you also do not read directly off your PowerPoint slides. Instead, limit the text on your slides to a few key bullet points, which you can expand on while presenting

• Set aside time for Q&A sessions – generally these are held at the end of a conference provided it is 30 minutes or less. If it is over the 30 minute mark, you should allow for smaller Q&A sessions at breaking points throughout your meeting, for example, after each speaker or topic. This will permit your participants to address pertinent questions prior to moving on to more complex material, as opposed to saving all their questions until the very end of your conference when you’ve moved on to unrelated material

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Benefits of Employing Web Conferencing Services

Here at ConferenceShopper.com, we regularly talk about the multitude of benefits that web conferencing and web conferencing services offer, including:

• The ability to collaborate with any number of participants in multiple time zones in real-time
• Cost and time-savings by eliminating the expenses and time involved with business travel
• The ability to meet with your participants on short notice
• Improved work/life balance for your employees
• Reduced corporate carbon footprint
• Increased in-house productivity

Thanks to the productivity and business continuity it provides, Unified Communications (UC) is becoming more and more vital to today’s businesses. With that said, as UC services, such as web conferencing, continue to grow, businesses will find other value in the technology as well.

Recently, while speaking to industry analysts and reporters in San Francisco, Polycom’s CEO, Any Miller, spoke on the value of UC, saying that it “will move from ROI to business continuity and productivity. It’s no longer about the ROI of [conferencing] versus travel.”

Unfortunately, a number businesses have given conferencing services the brush off – partly because they are not aware of the advancements and features that are now available on modern conferencing services, and partly because they believe in-person meetings are the best/only way to get business done. To be sure, in-person meetings are a crucial part to forming a strong relationship with your dispersed customers and employees, however as Miller also pointed out, conferencing services ensure your business is not interrupted by natural disasters (anyone remember that Icelandic volcanic ash cloud in 2010 or last year’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan?), infectious diseases (H1N1, etc.), and post-9-11 airport security.

The fact is conferencing services (web conferencing in particular) provide a way for people to maintain a close relationship with their customers and colleagues, and has time and again proven to be an incredibly valuable asset to all types and sizes of businesses. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) – the leading worldwide provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the IT, telecom and consumer technology markets – the forecasted revenue from UC and collaboration technology is expected to grow at to $44 billion by 2015 for a compound annual growth rate of over 18 percent.

Additional Information

To find out more about audio and web conferencing services and how they can enhance your business, give us a call today!

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