Pre-recorded webinars are like pineapple on pizza… controversial
Let's Unmute The Audience🎙️. Down with boring, one-way presentations 😡
Hi there!
In this newsletter…
TODAY: How to look good on Zoom 🕺
Why you should be livestreaming on LinkedIn
That’s weird: pre-recorded webinars
Making sense of the chat with AI summaries
Herman Davis tells us how he handles technical hiccups in live sessions
Happening today! How to look good on Zoom
In a couple of hours, Said will be teaching us the secrets to looking good on a Zoom camera. You don’t have to look like a moving version of your driving license photo with his simple tips!
Thinking of going live on LinkedIn?
Here’s what Neil and Martin will cover in their workshop next week:
✅ Why LinkedIn Live Is a Game-Changer
📃 What You Really Need to Get Started (hint: not much)
🪄 The Magic is in the Plan
🛠 Behind the Scenes: Tools That Make it Easy
🚀 What’s Possible When You Go Live
When is it?
📅 April 9th
⌚ 11am EST / 4pm BST / 5pm CET / 8:30 IST
Seriously? Pre-recorded webinars?
That was Lux’s actual reaction when I suggested we try pre-recorded webinars for our website visitors.
To be fair, pre-recorded is the antithesis to what StreamAlive is all about, so I wasn’t surprised by that reaction.
We’ve found that people really understand what StreamAlive is capable of when they’re in a live call with one of us. They see the “ah ha!” moment and they are more likely to become an active user.
Unfortunately, one-on-one demos don’t scale when you have dozens of signups each day. But, what if we showed them a video of Lux talking about why StreamAlive is so important?
Curious to see how it works? Register for a webinar 👇
Multiple webinars per day
We’ve set it up so that there are multiple webinars throughout the day that people can join based on their timezone.
How to make a pre-recorded webinar not feel like a pre-recorded webinar
eWebinar has a live chat option in the lower right of the window with prompts to get viewers to respond and participate.
There’s a neat little integration with Slack so any message in the chat is sent to our Slack channel, and from there, any StreamAlive team member can respond and engage the user.
Why not just a video on YouTube or on the website?
According to eWebinar, which is in the business of selling pre-recorded webinar software, there are loads of reasons why webinars are preferred over videos.
One of the most compelling reasons is that you can make it engaging for the viewer by asking questions and interacting with them one-on-one in the chat.
Since there is no pause button, the viewer either has to watch the whole session in one sitting, or miss out.
We do believe that a person who is participating in a session, whether live or a recording, is paying more attention than someone who is passively listening.
So yes, we could put the video on the website but we don’t think it’ll have the same effect.
Asking the big questions: Does it work?
It’s early days yet, but we’ve already had a few users join the webinar, respond in the chat with questions, and then go on to become a paid customer (yay! +1 for the marketing team!).
The main goal is to get viewers to become active users when they see what is possible.
We’ll be watching the webinar cohort to see if they become more active and more likely to upgrade to a paid plan than the non-webinar cohort.
If they do, then pre-recorded webinars for the win! If they don’t, we’ll probably try something else.
New feature: Making sense of the chat
We’re big fans of AI notetaking apps in meetings.
So much so that we built an AI to summarize the chat for individual interactions.
When the chat is on fire and everyone’s giving their asynchronous thoughts and opinions (that’s kind of what StreamAlive enables!), making sense of it all can get a little fuzzy.
Now, with a click of a button, the AI summarizes everything that has been said during the interaction.
You’ll get a summary, what the most popular opinions were, any alternative views that were offered, and standout chats from your audience.
The AI summaries are now available for word clouds, Talking Tiles, and Transient Thoughts.
StreamAlive Community Spotlight
Herman Davis is the lead broker at FBCBrokers and regularly livestreams on his YouTube channel. He’s done over 100 live sessions featuring StreamAlive in the last two months!
1. Why is audience engagement and participation important to you?
In virtual meetings it is easy to lose the attention of your audience as they get distracted. Engagement and participation lowers this challenge.
2. Ever had a technical hiccup? How did you handle it?
Yes, all the time! My solution is to always have a co-host. The back up plan is to hope that people won’t drop off prior to me returning 😁.I try to give a disclaimer just in case.
3. What do you know about running webinars or live sessions now that you wished you had known when you started?
I’ve learned to implement engagement throughout the session to have a conversational feel.
4. What's one piece of advice you'd give to someone who's going to use StreamAlive for the first time?
Take the time to use the AI to spark ideas. Explain from the beginning of the session that it will be interactive and display interactions like Magic Maps. Encourage people to participate in the interactions. Use the Winning Wheel to reward participation.
5. What's your go-to StreamAlive interaction to get the audience to participate?
That’s easy: Magic Maps!
Catch us on our social pages
If you haven’t already, check out our social media pages to stay updated on our quirky takes on the latest social media trends and the occasional piece of engagement-related advice.
All the best,
Peter and the StreamAlive team
100% human written with ❤️