Webcasting has already proven to be one of the most efficient tools for the execution of corporate communication on the global scale. Nowadays, a majority of corporate organizations approach webcast solutions providers to buy their services for business purposes. Webcasting or video streaming have become the buzzwords today. With the advent of technology, webcast has grown by leaps and bounds to help diversified clients belonging to different industrial sectors. Flawless and efficient webcast solutions can assist the corporate organizations to achieve favorable results. I have seen a majority of people ignorant about the loss of engaged audience due to pausing or buffering of videos that are either streaming live or in pre-recorded format.
When I speak about live events, and that too held by big corporate firms, a substandard performance of streaming is extremely dangerous. It damages the business identity of that organization up to a large extent. Please make sure that your event executives are not opting for event management agencies or vendors with lesser experience or those having quite poor records. Here, I’m listing down few pitfalls that you should be aware of. Hence, you must be careful while opting for webcast service provider or even if you are the service provider, make sure that you won’t make the following mistakes:
> Defective Internet Connection- Uploading speed is perhaps the most critical element when you are talking about webcasting of your program. If I need to quote it in context to the global scale, the internet speed should be at least 3 Mbps. If the speed is greater than 3Mbps, nothing better than that! If you do not check the uploading speed of your internet connection before streaming your event live, be sure that you are dooming soon! Nowadays, you can remotely monitor the speed well in advance before the beginning of the event. Several free software or websites are available to check the speed of your connection. Then why do you hesitate to go for it? Also, ignoring the download speed while focusing on the uploading speed can risk.
Here, I would advise you to use keep the internet connection specifically devoted to broadcast that you are using to stream the live event. Don’t use it for any other operation. Otherwise, the speed will get affected. Also, disconnect it from another location Wi-Fi systems, so that the access to the webcast will be only available to the restricted users or participants. If attendees and broadcast simultaneously share the internet connection, bandwidth use of the internet would be affected. Instead of Wi-Fi connection, my suggestion is to use a wired internet connection to the on-site streaming encoder. If you are streaming an extended broadcast, 4G air card is not so recommended. It may cause sudden power overload on the tower of the cellular service provider resulting in disconnection of the bandwidth. Eventually, it will lower down the transmission capacity.
> Late email promotion- You may find a majority of organizers dropping email notifications of the webcast just a week before the date of an event. Even many of them drop it two days before the event. However, it is better to start early, when it comes to mass mailing the promotion of the events through e-mailers or newsletters. Your notifications could be more precise and information-rich when you start sending the emails to the people well in advance. You can effectively hit the target audience to motivate them to move towards registration.
> Failure in Registration- Lengthy and complicated registration forms make a run more than half of the potential participants from engaging in the event. Keep it straightforward and clear. Don’t mess it up with too many details. Ask for relevant information about demographics that will help you to raise the registration rate. While promoting creative of the events, make sure that they are attractive enough to fascinate the participants. Attendees also seek for the visual impact on the confirmation page once they make payment as a part of registration process. Make sure that whatever creative you design on the confirmation page will be consistent and won’t change periodically. Try to optimize the confirmation pages in a systematic manner and add calendaring app or tool to the page that will help you to organize your schedule.
> Disassociated Audience- Communication between the audience and even -organizer is crucial. Keeping your audience out of the conversation is the sign of less interactivity that can even make a failed promotion. Live Question & Answer sessions during or after the webcast, social media platforms, audience polling, group chats are some of the ways to gather the audience at one fixed place to generate communication among them to exchange and share knowledge and ideas. Perhaps you can use social media to promote your webcast more effectively. These collective efforts properly arrange the target audience that you can further add for events in future.
All above-stated points are quite easy to execute if you begin well at the early stage of hosting a webcast. Successful webcasts are today’s key players for most of the businesses as they have the capacity to generate a lead, accelerate the engagement and educate potential customers. If you avoid mistakes and keep your webcast systematic and well-organized, I’m sure the victory is all yours! Wish you a happy webcasting! Cheers!