my resolution for you...
Updated: May 10, 2021
What are your resolutions this year? One of mine is to work on increasing audience engagement. This is one I’m sure many of us strive for but fall short when it comes to taking concrete action. I know that especially with the pandemic, a lot of us out there are still trying to figure out how to adapt so that we're still able to reach our audience and potential clients and be able to provide a ton of education.
With that in mind, I've got a resolution for you...
Hint - it has to do with one of my favorite ways to remotely engage with my audience: online workshops and webinars. These are a great way to provide value and education to your audience and to demonstrate to potential clients what you bring to the table. But hosting webinars and workshops doesn’t come naturally to everyone - it takes practice. Whether you have experience with hosting webinars or if you’re completely terrified of it, I want to talk about a few tips that have totally stepped up my webinar game and can do the same for you too.
#1: Ask your audience what they actually want to hear about.
Sometimes we get caught up in things like, “My athletes have shoulder pain, so they really need to know about how to fix their shoulder pain,” which was my own initial thinking for planning one of my first webinars. You recognize a problem your audience is facing and you really want to help people solve that. But when you are creating content for somebody else, whether it's potential clients or current clients, you have to ask them what they're actually interested in learning.
So when I was getting ready for my webinar, I surveyed some of my athletes and they were more interested in mindfulness and stress management, rather than fixing shoulder pain. And that was fine! As healthcare clinicians we know that stress can play a huge impact on the healing process, so for me it was totally fine to go that way because I know it would have a positive impact on their shoulders.
Talk to your audience. You can go out of your way to ask people what they would want to learn about if they were attending a webinar that you put on. You could poll or survey your audience, or you could even go into different groups on Facebook that seem to have your ideal client base and just see what people are asking questions about.
#2: Ask your audience how they want the content delivered.
This is something that I talked to one of my clients about one time. She said she was having trouble getting a group of moms to attend an online workshop because many of them were too busy. And so my suggestion to her was to ask if maybe they don't really want to do a one to two hour workshop, and maybe they would rather have a series of shorter videos over a few days.
Sometimes we just need a different format. Maybe it needs to be a short video series, maybe it needs to be audio clips, maybe it needs to be an email series.
So not only do you need to ask your audience what they want to learn about, but especially if you've already tried once and you feel like you got crickets, maybe the approach and the format is just not what your audience is looking for. Think about changing the format of a general online workshop to fit your audience’s needs.
#3: Register, register, register!
Having a registration form is super helpful in following up with your audience. If we don't have a registration form that includes the names and emails of people who are interested, it's hard to tell how many people might even go. And it's also hard to follow up with people afterwards to ask them what they thought, if they have any feedback, or if they have any more questions. It's so powerful to be able to have that contact information and put it onto an email list so that you can have a really strong follow up game, not only just for attracting new clients, but also continuing to do market research and continuing to get to know your audience moving forward.
So here’s my resolution for you: consider putting on a workshop or webinar for your audience. If you’re already planning to, implement these tips and see what happens. Whether it’s just better engagement or five new clients, these simple tips will change your webinar game and get you the results you want.
