Webinars are fantastic because you can your screen and talk to people and present to people from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world as long as there is an internet connection, but because you might be teaching the people in different time zones or overseas or in different countries, you might come across some difficulties with time zones. It could be noontime where you are but 10 o'clock at night where someone else is. So how do you avoid time zone differences when scheduling a webinar?
First off, when you promote your webinar, remind people about different time zones. allow them to choose their own time zone, and allow your webinar service such as GoToWebinar to send email reminders that come in as the webinar gets closer. When I run a webinar, I always remind people about different time zones. That might mean just listing a few time zones in addition to yours.
I like to run my webinars at 4:30 PM. When I tell people about the time and date of the webinar, I'll give them the day, then I'll say, '4:30 PM Pacific Time. That's 7:30 PM Eastern, 6:30 PM Central.
If I know I'm going to be speaking to a European audience, I'll give them the time and date in GMT or Greenwich Mean Time so that if they are in Europe or in Africa they can easily adjust.
The great thing about GoToWebinar is that when someone goes to register for your webinar, there is actually a dropdown box where they can choose what time zone they are located in and the time and date will change accordingly. That way when they make plans in the town they are to attend, there will be no confusion about what time and day your webinar is in their time zone.
Keep in mind: Webinars are live and not prerecorded. That means there is going to be some kind of time zone difference.
The great thing about GoToWebinar is that by default, they will send out reminder emails a week before the webinar, a few days before, one day before, and even an hour before the call. That way, even if people forgot about your webinar or forgot what time it was, they will still get an email a little while before the webinar starts.
When you run your own webinars you're going to find that although the time zone differences are something to watch out for, they really are not that big of a deal and they really should not prevent you from running your own successful webinars especially because you could remind people of different time zones. You can allow people to choose their own time zone, I need to remind them of this feature as well. And when you leave the email reminder settings as the default, it will send your registrants several email reminders before the webinar happens.
And that's how you can avoid time zone differences when scheduling a webinar. Go ahead, schedule your very first webinar right now at www.webinarcrusher.com.
