Pro Webcasting Blog

Many people jump head first into webcasting because “it’s cool.” Hey, you have free apps on your phone or tablet now that allow you to create your own webcast for free. They’re cheap right?

Do you want to look cheap?

Do you want to be just like the other thousands of webcasts out there…

OR do you want to capture viewers with quality that makes them want to stay connected with you while in turn growing your audience?

As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. If you want to get the most value out of your webcast you’ll invest what you can into it. If you’re starting out or on a limited budget, sometimes that’s hard to determine what to invest in to get the most value to begin with.

Here are a few tips to help you get the most of your webcast production while determining the priority of your budget whether it’s big or small.

1) Competent team

Make sure that your team has experience behind them for your webcast production and this isn’t their first time. If your team doesn’t have anyone experienced in webcasting, then it’s worth the investment to bring in others from outside your organization either on a per event or full time basis to help guide you through making the right decisions. The investment in guidance alone based on experienced team members can save you expenses allowing you to focus on costs to promote your message with quality.

2) Quality cameras

Just because you can record a webcast from a computer webcam doesn’t mean you should. By using your webcam to deliver a valuable message it’s almost like seeing a major product release live while the CEO stands on the bumper of the intern’s car in the parking lot. Outside of the factor that it might be a good gag, there’s no quality in the basis of the statement.

There’s a good reason why cameras in the studio cost tens of thousands of dollars and your home video camera may only cost hundreds. Without getting technical, there is a lot of quality that can be produced from a high-end camera. When it comes to HD and content streaming you cannot make content look better than the level of quality which it is being shot at from the camera. Make sure you have a capture system including good quality cameras that allow you to present yourself the best to your audience throughout your entire webcast production.

3) Proper lighting

If you have the best setup in the world but you’re located in a dark room, your audience is going to only see silhouettes or at best very grainy dull images of you. Proper lighting eliminates issues when it comes to shadows under the eyes, chin or other parts of the body that you don’t want distracting while your presenter is delivering your message live on your webcast. It’s worth the simple investment to make sure your lighting helps to present you in the…well….best light that you can have.

4) Good environment

If you plan to shoot outside, make sure you understand the weather. On-site shoots for webcast productions can be fun and really deliver those messages in a visually captivating way that still pictures can’t provide. It can however be the demise of your viewership levels if it’s windy out and you didn’t prepare to have the proper equipment for picking up the audio properly.

At the same time, if you have decided to do an in office webcast for internal communications purposes and you’re located over the flight line to the airport or near a major corridor for emergency transportation (ambulaces, fire trucks, etc.), then you’ll be competing with giving your message over noise instead of delivering content that allows your viewers to focus on during the entire duration of your presentation.

5) Planning of “on camera” presenters

Make sure you have a plan and never, never, NEVER allow your CEO, boss, or other onscreen personality to convince you that they’ll “do just fine and can wing it” regardless of their experience. Their mistakes on camera for your webcast production can cost you time, money and above all else, viewers who get frustrated with uhh’s and ohhh’s when they realize that they’re just making it up as they go. When you do pre-planning with your webcast you are investing in the value perception that you will be presenting to your viewers that engages them to invest time into viewing your content.

6) Webcast event flow

Think about the following questions as you’re developing your webcast production:

• What are viewers going to see before we start?
• What are viewers going to engage with during the presentation outside of simply viewing the content?
• What am I providing to viewers that missed the live event, but want to engage with the content after the webcast is over?

Developing solid answers for those questions are just a start to helping to create a solid webcast event flow. Keep in mind that if you’re marketing your webcast, viewers may be clicking on advertisements and other content promoting your webcast well before and long after your webcast actually was live. How do you captivate those audience members to give them reason to connect with you even though they missed the live experience?

Starting with these 6 tips will help in equipping you and your team with delivery of a webcasting experience from the production side to the end viewer experience that will deliver a winning strategy for all.

If you’re wanting some more tips to help maximize the value of your webcast, check out our blog titled “The Top 10 Webcasting Must Do’s” by clicking here- https://prowebcasting.com/the-top-10-webcasting-must-dos/