Pro Webcasting Blog

Everyone has seen or experienced at some level what happens when a good idea turns terribly wrong. Many variables can create the perfect storm which takes down a visionaries idea that was intended for success but ended up in complete failure. Most of the time however this main problem is lack of proper planning.

Taking a few cautious steps for a technology piece that needs to be integrated successfully from the start is no different. Knowing the answers or developing a plan to arrive at the right ones helps to make sure the experience with new technology is one that pays off while increasing long term potential with the exposure typically with communications platforms including live webcast.

To help guide you through the process of establishing how you should find success with your webcast planning, our team at PRO Webcasting has created a free smart checklist. This checklist is intended to help give you ideas for your own success while giving you direction to refine your own goals in creating a value based experienced from in front of the camera or with your content that connects to your end viewer.

Use the list to help you define four critical areas which will determine your success. Think of them as guide points on a map. The use of each of the questions will help you chart your course in determining which points are critical to you and which ones may have less value.

Here are the three critical areas you should consider with the list:

Market or viewing audience

The mistake has been made often as to the reference point and targeted market verses the one that really is interested in the content. Sometimes it can bring surprising success where it was never expected. More often however it created detrimental failure. All due to not knowing who should be reached and how to communicate effectively with them.

Consider these questions:

• Are you connecting to an internal department or a specific group?
• Should your content be age specific or focus on other demographically bound criteria?
• Even if you are targeting “the masses” for exposure, who makes up “the masses” you’re attempting to successfully connect with?

You may be considering doing internal company webcasts and feel this in no way applies to you. On the contrary it does. You can do all of the planning and organization down to the very last detail, but if you have created content that is irrelevant to a department or is a disconnect with even an age group who may be watching your content, hard work in building it and all of the resources you can throw at it will in no way deliver the connection with your audience you desire. Make sure you know as much about your audience prior to planning your webcast. This will help you overcome critical barriers and smooth over issues that may be otherwise inhibiting to your webcasting communications success.

Production quality desired

With the flexibility in the webcast and video streaming technology there have been many implementations that have created captivating imagery and audio experiences for audiences. You can go online and watch 24/7 coverage ranging from owl’s nest cameras to self-help seminars in pay-per-view format. The common confusing mistake that many unsuccessful webcasts make is that if someone else did it with very limited resources they can successfully use the same techniques to connect with their own audience and captivate them.

When you begin to seek out information and develop your plan for webcasting, consider your audience and the perception they would have of your webcast at the level of value you are providing them. Play “devil’s advocate” and come up with a list of reasons that would make you NOT want to watch your content BEFORE you make up a list of reasons that you feel prove the value in connecting with your content. Does your content captivate? Does it deliver a quality level that your average attendee will want to not only click on and view but stay connected with throughout your entire webcast? Sometimes starting with nothing that delivers a value statement of quality can be more of a detriment to your success than simply taking the time and building up the resources to do it properly.

Infrastructure needed

Defining your needs whether you are a one man band or if you have a complete IT support staff is critical. You need to determine who you need to rely on, who you should lock arms with for success, and what technology you should bring on to support your experience that you are delivering to your viewers. You don’t have to know all of the geek terms, the bandwidth requirements or other elements personally, but you do need to make sure that you are surrounding yourself with those that can make sure those critical elements are in place for you. Our team at PRO Webcasting can help you out directly with this by bringing our webcasting experience to give you the confidence and hassle free experience of connecting via webcasting to your audience. At the same time you may have an IT staff that is well experienced at supporting your existing technology infrastructure, but are not equipped to provide support with webcasting and need help in doing so for you successfully. Call us, we can help with this as well.

Budget

You may be wondering why this isn’t listed as number one. There’s a critical reason that could damage your success when looking at your webcasting goals immediately through the perception of your budget criteria. Binding your success and limiting your audience’s experience based on numbers may be something that you have to abide by initially, but you damage your growth and value to your audience if you stay at that one level. By determining who you want to reach, what the quality level of engagement might be through production value, then determining the infrastructure needed, and finally budget you are helping to indirectly create goals for yourself while at the same time determining what will deliver the most value to you for success with your webcasting experience.

You can download our free checklist here- https://prowebcasting.com/pro-webcasting-smart-checklist/