if you want to charge for it, don’t call it a Webinar.
Two reasons:
1. Webinars at this point are either a marketing tool or a commodity (sometimes both)
2. Language matters
Call it an online short course. Or a virtual workshop. Or, best of all, don’t talk about the format at all other than to say that it is online. Just don’t call it a Webinar unless you want it to be perceived as something for which people expect to pay little, if anything.
Driven by the shift to remote work, 2020 has proven so far to be a great year for the word “webinar”. However, with everyone hosting one these days, the term “webinar” has lost most of its impact. insight into why the term “webinar” has reached its peak and offers alternatives you can use to better frame your next virtual session and stand out from the crowd.
I think it is time we stopped calling them webinars. You want to know why? Because I do not want to go to your webinar. When you tell me you have a webinar, I think: “Okay, it’s going to be me and a few other people who are going to go through a thing. It seems boring. You are probably going to have a PowerPoint, which is probably going to be poorly designed, and there will be a Q&A session at the end. It’ll be okay or whatever.“
From a pre-COVID world, I was bored out by webinars, but then COVID hit and it was like, “Oh my gosh, we are all doing webinars. It’s all we can do. It’s webinars 24/7. All the webinars you can get.“
I just think there are better ways to frame it because when you look at the functionality of a webinar, all you are doing is creating a Zoom that you are giving people access to. And then everyone is just in a Zoom room – or a GoToMeeting.
There are all sorts of ways that you can frame it so it doesn’t sound as boring as a webinar. So, why don’t we talk about a few of those?
First off, call it a round table. Get a couple of industry leaders and go, “Hey, this is what we’re going to talk about. We are going to have a little round table discussion about how our industry is going to be handling a post-COVID world.” Before you know it, instead of going to a webinar, I’ve got a round table of four industry leaders who are going to be explaining things to me – that I think are going to be very valuable – and I’m going to have the opportunity to ask them questions.
Speaking of, if it’s going to be more of a Q&A, why don’t you just call it a Q&A? Make yourself readily available: “Hey, I’m hosting the Q&A asked me anything.”
If it’s going to be a smaller webinar, what if you called it an exclusive demo and you only invited four or five people? Or maybe you invite as many people as could possibly get, but once you realize it’s only gonna be four or five people, then you say it’s an exclusive demo that you only sent a few emails for because only the most important people could be in this demonstration, right?
I just think there are other ways of presenting it. I think you can even do something like a virtual presentation. I’m more interested in a virtual presentation than I am in a webinar. I think this is an area where some creatives need to really come up with a new phrase to get me much more excited about going to these digital events because, honestly, I don’t want to go to your webinar.
I’ll go to your round table discussion. I’ll go to your Q&A. If you invite me, I’ll go to your exclusive demo or even your virtual presentation. That’s where we are at now. Let’s see where we can get to tomorrow because I’d really like to see the idea of the webinar evolve in a way that makes me much more interested to go to them.
For all of you guys out there who are doing webinars and you’re killing it, congratulations! I’m really supportive of it. I really like webinars, but I do think it’s time for us to just call them something else.
Inspired by https://www.atakinteractive.com/blog/lets-stop-calling-it-a-webinar
