3 Ways to Wake Up Your Webinar Audience

Webinars have a well-deserved reputation for being dry, slow, and an opportunity for multi-tasking.  Let’s destroy that reputation and add some simple ways to wake people up and increase learning. I call these more powerful webinars "Engaginars."
 
Here are screenshots of 3 slides that I used in a recent webinar to get attendees participating.  (I use dozens of other ideas, too. Check out this blog post to learn more and/or join me for my presentation at ATD2018.) The concepts are applicable to any content you are presenting in your webinar, and each has research to support its use.

1. Brain Dump – Researchers tells us that understanding and retention of new information increases significantly if prior knowledge is activated first. A brief brain dump near the beginning of your webinar accomplishes this, and also gives you some information about your participants’ knowledge base.
2. Song Titles – Memory experts tell us that music is closely linked to automatic recall. If you can link a song to your content, it will boost future recall. This strategy can also add humor and boost positive feelings, as participants list favorite songs, both old and new.
3. Mystery Number – Find a numerical value related to your content and put in a slide without explanation. Ask your attendees to guess how the number is connected. Everyone will be activating their knowledge and making predictions, both processes that have been proven to boost learning.