Pro Webcasting Blog

When planning a webcast, success just doesn’t turn on at the click of the broadcast button.  Many have made the mistake and have spent costly money finding out what NOT to do.  Here are 5 No-No’s you can avoid to help deliver success for you and your viewers when it comes to webcasting.

1) Hitting the broadcast button before figuring out the technical details

Just because you want to deliver the highest quality HD webcast experience doesn’t mean that you’ll be connecting with your viewers.  You need to determine whether your facility or location where the webcast will be occurring will be able to provide you enough bandwidth to broadcast your content adequately.

In the same fashion, knowing what your average viewers bandwidth capabilities will be for viewing your stream is critical.  Are they at your home office, or will they be viewing this at home or in a coffee shop.

Knowing these along with other technical specs including streaming format you should use and the multi-cast trans-coding solution that will deliver you the highest consistency for streaming are all considerations you must determine well before your webcast.

2) Winging it on camera

Just because your CEO was super awesome on stage in Jr. High doesn’t mean he’ll be a rock star on camera.  Winging it on camera is ONE OF THE BEST WAYS to lose an audience.  When an audience member perceives that there is no value being delivered to them in the quality of presentation of the message they will turn off or worse yet click over to another competitors site.  Plan and rehearse your content and message delivery before your webcast show “goes live.”

3) Expecting viewers to connect with you without marketing to them

So you’ve made a great message, and you have killer content and a great presentation that’s captivating; but there’s just one problem.  No one planned for, let alone budgeted for, giving your message market exposure to draw in an audience.

As maddening as having a press release event without notifying the press might be, creating a webcast to tell the world about your product without having a strategy and budget to expose your webcast is not a good use of your resources.  Make sure you plan ahead to not only deliver your message with quality, but also budget to expose it properly to the masses that need to hear it.

4) Doing it “just to see if it works the first time”

Perceiving webcasting as a platform that you can simply throw on the proverbial wall to see if it sticks will not give you a solution for content delivery success.  Webcasting as a platform is still new to viewers, but once they understand how to connect with you using a webcasting platform, they’ll want to do so because of the value that it delivers in providing them your message live.

Of course there are those exception one time press and marketing events, but most of those whom use webcasting in this format and have found success have a highly techno-savvy audience.

If you’re wanting to create momentum with your messaging and build your following, make sure you provide a budget and timeline that allows users to catch on to your use of the platform and gives them time to see the value of connecting with you through your webcasting experience you’re providing them.

5) Not understanding how your audience needs to connect with you

Just because you or your company use a specific kind of computer or device does not mean that your average webcast viewer is needed to engage with those connection metrics.  Make sure you understand your audience and know where they are connecting, with what type of device, and even the type of browser or app that they may use in order to connect with you.  If you expect an audience to connect on your terms instead of delivering content on theirs you are diminishing the value potential in captivating eyes that could be watching your content but are turned away.

If you don’t know where to start to find this information out, or know how to avoid one  or all of these 5 NO-NO’s, then call us and let us help you develop solutions and strategies to equip your team to deliver your message and content successfully through webcasting.