Webinars: Making The Most Of Your Q & A Time
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It’s been said the only bad questions are the ones never asked. No matter how detailed and thorough your <a href=”http://www.technorati.com/tag/Webinar” rel=”tag”>webinar is, chances are someone will have a question. However, questions are good. They allow you to precisely take care of someone, as well as add to the knowledge of whoever else is in the webinar. They also show you where your presentation might be thin.
So how can you make the most of your Q & A? First of all, consider budgeting more than the last few minutes of your time for questions. Ten minutes is the amount normally set aside, but due to your subject matter, you might need more.
If you have never given this particular presentation before and don’t know what to expect, why not have several Q & A sessions spread throughout the webinar. If there are only a few questions, you can revisit the previous topic, or stretch out the next. If there are a lot of questions, you can answer as many as time allows, then the rest at the end of the webinar.
A good idea for handling questions is through email, especially since you’ll most likely be at your computer anyway. Announce your email – or a temporary free one – at the beginning of the webinar, and check the inbox periodically. This gives you the ability to screen questions, choose which ones you want to answer immediately and which ones you’d like to take care of at the end.
Using webinars opens up more options than just the simple Q & A. Often a webinar program has a chat box off to the side. Encourage people to type their questions in the chat box – even while you are speaking – and you can work the answer into your presentation, or pause and answer right then and there.
Some webinars offer polls as well. You can start a poll with several common questions and let people vote on which you should answer next. Another good idea is to put one selection that says, “I have a question,” and pause for Q & A when the poll number is high enough.
Webinars are a great tool for easily addressing many people at the same time. While this can be impersonal, you can make it personal by taking and answering their questions.
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