FOCUS now runs Webinars, or Online Seminars, which make it possible for our clients to reach a global audience, with slides and live Q&A, without leaving the office.  Webinars make flying people to attend meetings and conferences a thing of the past – making a huge contribution to reducing your organisation’s carbon footprint?  People in other timezones who can’t join the webinar live can watch it later.

EUFIC, the European Food Information Council, provides authoritative information on food safety and quality, health and nutrition.  They commission research and in the last year have been looking at  food labelling.  Across Europe and the rest of the world, people in the food industry are working on ways to to make sure consumers know about the fat, salt and sugar content of their food.  So EUFIC held Webinars to announce the outcome of this research, and found their audience only too willing to make the time to ‘attend’ online.  It just means providing security details to signed-up attendees so they can listen to the live presentation, watch the slides and ask questions at any time using an online form.  For people in other timezones the live webinar may have been at an inconvenient time, so they just watched the online recording later.  Surprisingly the recording opened up a whole new audience even larger than the original number, and the views are still clocking up several weeks later.  The message reached people that other media just couldn’t find.

Of course nobody would put on a physical conference for just one seminar, expecting their audience to fly in for it.  Which may be why we’ve found  more people attending webinars and the recordings afterwards than would ever make it to a conference.

So what are the real advantages of a webinar?  Well obviously, whether you’re making the presentation or viewing it, it involves less time, and arguably the retention of information is better.

Presenters like it because, although the session can be live, presentations can be recorded beforehand, with just the Q&A going out live – so the pressure is less.  At the end the presenter and moderator run through the Q&A live, an exhilarating way to engage with what could be a worldwide audience!

For each person joining with their laptop, the engagement experience is unique.  The Webinar has real immediacy, with the expectation of acquiring knowledge before anyone else.  And the Q&A are like Instant Messaging with an audience!  More important – it doesn’t cost anything!

For the organisation running it, the cost is much less than a physical conference, the lead time is shorter, and the shelf-life sustains its benefit for months.

Contact us if you want to know more.