Once you begin to plan and produce webinars, a multitude of questions will occur to you that need to be answered. One of these is, 'how long should my webinar be'? It's a good question and one that needs to be addressed properly in order to ensure the success of all of the hard work that you will put into your webinar.
If you make your webinar too short you will not be able to properly present your products, services and ideas to your audience. The whole point of your webinar is to give participants this knowledge, so a presentation that is too short is not effective. Another thing to keep in mind is that many people are busy and might be a bit late in joining your broadcast. If the entire webinar is very short you might have finished before they arrive. For that same reason it is a good idea to lead off your webinar with a good, informational introduction to the material that you wish to present and to finish with a comprehensive summary. If people arrive late, they may have missed the introduction but can still get the information from the body and summary of your presentation. Question and answer sessions are very effective in a webinar but in a short presentation you will not have time to conduct one. Busy people are setting aside a portion of their valuable time to listen to you, so be sure that you have enough content to justify their attendance.
It is also bad to make your presentation too long. Lengthy presentations can become boring even if the material is not. Many people have an attention span that is relatively short. You are also going to need to be energetic and enthusiastic during the webinar so consider how long you can keep up a good presentation. You do not want to bore your audience and have them tune out half way through the webinar before you come to some of your important points. It is good to leave your audience wanting to learn more about the topic you have been presenting.
So, how long is the right length? To some extent that depends on the content of your webinar. Some kinds of sales meetings or academic proceedings might take much longer than a webinar promoting a product or service.
People tend to be conditioned to take in information in one hour blocks. This is why many TV shows, school classes and other ways of imparting information are structured into one hour blocks. Starting a presentation on the hour is an easy way for both the audience and you to remember the time and be there promptly. One hour is a time period that allows for a good presentation as well as time for a question and answer period. If you have presentation that is very short, think about combining it with another one to make one longer webinar. If your presentation is very long, it might be a good idea to consider breaking it down into several segments. You also need to consider the demographics of your target audience and their probable attention span.
A webinar needs to be long enough that it gives value to the people who attend it. The presentation needs to be short enough that it does not become boring or repetitive. One hour learning and viewing blocks are familiar and comfortable for most people and therefore work well as the length of time for a webinar.
Learn how to structure an effective webinar at: www.webinarcrusher.com
