Tuesday, May 30, 2006

guide: 10 steps for screwing up a webinar

Webinars, also known as "recorded pitches", are the zesty pairing of a podcast and a slide deck. Typically executed and recorded in Breeze or WebEx or something similar, they are a nice part of your marketing mix. Here are ten easy steps to making sure your next webinar is both a failure and hugely frustrating to yourself and your colleagues:

1. Do them by yourself.

2. Use your best monotone voice.

3. Read each of your slides.

4. Use 12 point Times New Roman. Or 12 point Arial. Or 12 point anything. For that matter, avoid any presentation rules advanced by anyone named Kawasaki. Or Tufte.

5. Don't use pictures.

6. Insist on perfection.

7. Let them run less than 15 minutes or longer than 45 minutes.

8. Leave out a call to action or a reasonable next step.

9. Include content designed for multiple audiences.

10. Rely on them as your sole way of telling your story.

While I think everyone reading ack/nak already knows the surest way to make sure all of your outbound marcom will fail miserably, I include it anyway as a bonus failure tip:

11. Don't bother tracking how many people listen to it.

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