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What If My Webinar Is Not Lasting Long Enough?

With a webinar, you can present live online training. And just like any presentation, you probably have a goal about how long you want your webinar to last. If you wanted your presentation to last an hour and you keep coming up short, you keep ending at the 20-minute or 30-minute mark, what are you doing wrong? And how can you get better so you hit your time goal? To make your webinar last longer, have more talk to about, take questions during the call and reiterate and demonstrate.

If you are stopping your webinar around the 20-minute mark, you probably just don't have enough to talk about or you're going through it too fast. Maybe you're not going into enough detail. Maybe you can still use the same outline but stop and explain things more or repeat important points to make sure people get them or recap things you've already spoken about. Different people go through their presentation slides at a different pace. I happen to go through my slides, one slide every 1 to 3 minutes but I know people who only go through one slide every 10 minutes. There is no real set number of slides to have in your PowerPoint for a 1-hour presentation. It depends on how quickly you go through the slides. If you have to add more slides to fill more time, do it. Because you're on a live webinar, you can take questions. Maybe you mentioned and somebody wants you to slow down or brings you off on a tangent. Somebody wants you to cover another topic. Or somebody wants you to recap a specific need you said a few minutes back.

Depending on your style, you might want to specify a point in your webinar to take questions. Or if you're like me, take questions as you're speaking. Don't worry because this is a webinar, you're attendees cannot interrupt your voice. They can only type in questions as text in a question box then you decide if you should ignore it or take care of it.

And finally, here's a way to make your webinar last longer without adding any new content and that's to reiterate and to demonstrate. Too many times, I see people and I hear people telling me things in a theoretical sense. They tell me how to set up an opt in page but they don't show me. You are on a webinar. You are showing you're screen. If you're telling people about something, show it to them. Let's say you were teaching a money management course and telling people how to always save more money than you spend. That sounds good in theory but I'd rather see your personal budget or for you to create a budget on the call with real life numbers so I could better understand it. Different people learn in different ways. Some people learn from the big picture, others learn from the example. Show both ways. This will make your webinar have a slower pace, which means the information will stick better with your attendees and it will make more sense.

If you're webinar is not lasting long enough, either add more content to talk about, take questions or demonstrate the things you taught, or a combination of the three. Run your very own webinar and become famous right here at www.webinarcrusher.com.

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30. Aug, 2010
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What Little Things Can Make A Big Impact On My Webinars?

When you are presenting live internet presentations or webinars, there are a few small tweaks you can make to your presentation to make it a whole lot better. I want to share those with you today.

The first thing that can have an enormous impact on you webinars is by saying nothing. That's right. You can add pauses into your presentation for dramatic effect. If you are finishing a thought, if you just said something profound, there's nothing wrong with stopping for one second and letting it sink in. It's your natural reaction to try to fill the silence. That's why people say words like "uhm," and "you know," and "like" to try to fill in the silence. But having a pause shows that you're in control of the conversation and that you are relaxed enough to be okay with little pauses.

Another big thing that can improve your webinars dramatically is to keep your hands off the mouse. Too many webinars especially ones that show the screen, show the mouse cursor dancing around, or the person manipulating the screen, selecting text randomly, moving the windows around, fidgeting. If you are watching a speaker in person fidget with their fingers or their clothes, you would be distracted from the content they were speaking. The same is true, if not more so, on a webinar because all the person is looking at is your screen. Keep your hand off the mouse unless you want to click on a link or advance the PowerPoint slides. If you can get a clicker or a wireless presentation remote, try that to advance your slides. That way you don't have to touch the mouse at all during your presentation.

Another thing that makes a big deal with webinars is to simply stop for questions. Too many presenters don't care at all about their audience and the audience has no idea if the presenter cares about them. If you feel like you just gave people a lot of information and you should stop and make sure they all understand it, stop and ask for questions, or stop and ask people if something makes sense, or stop and ask if they are ready to continue on.

If you have not been applying those three things to improve your webinars, add them. Add vocal pauses, keep your hand off your mouse, and stop for questions. Here is a method that is 50 times easier than any other way to generate content: It's at www.webinarcrusher.com.

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27. Aug, 2010
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What Mental Exercises Can I Perform To Become More Confident With Webinars?

Most of the things that hold you back are all in your head, especially with live online webinar presentations. Public speaking is the #1 fear and if only you can get over yourself and force yourself to run some webinars, your anxiety will die down and every time you do a webinar, it'll get easier and easier. I want to share with you a few mental exercises you can perform to silence your inner voice and overcome your natural obstacles and actually get yourself out there and perform a webinar so you can create the easiest way of making the product and the best way of getting in touch with your audience. That's to listen to someone you want to be like, imagine a crowd cheering, and focus on just one of your own faults.

I want you to think right now about one person in your life who you think is a great speaker. This might be someone on TV, on the radio, that you know in real life, that you see him speak at seminars, that you know from the internet. Whoever it is, get a recording of their voice. Listen to one of their teleseminars, or their free audios, or their CDs, or their phone calls and get their voice in your head. That way when you speak, you can speak as if they were talking almost as if you inhabited their body and were controlling the things they were saying. I know that I hate my own speaking voice. You probably hate your own speaking voice. So make yourself sound like someone who's voice you don't hate. Think about what part of their voice you like the best. Is it the way they slow down certain words? Is it the way they ask certain leading questions. Is their voice high? Is their voice low? Is their voice fast? Is their voice slow? Whatever it is, listen to someone you want to sound like and slightly change your voice to somewhat model but not copy the way their voice sounds.

The next thing I'd like to do is imagine a crowd of cheering people. It's kind of a weird thing to sit alone with your computer and talk to nothingness. On the other hand, if you imagine that you're in front of a crowd of people and they all are just like loving you and cheering and wanting you to talk to them, it provides more motivation for you to be excited and for you to get yourself out there. And if you don't like your speaking voice or you think people don't like the way you talk, narrow down the problem.

It's so easy to just cop out and tell yourself nobody likes the way you talk but if you can focus on the number one thing you hate about the way you speak, you can improve on just that one thing. For example, maybe you don't breathe properly and can't catch your breath when you are presenting. So you need to work on adding more pauses, taking more deep breaths. Maybe you talk too fast, so you need to make it a point to speak almost too slow, almost at a point where it's too slow for you to be comfortable, that way people will better understand what you are saying. Whatever the one thing it is you need to focus on with your speaking, you probably know what it is. So next time you're on a live webinar, make it a point to only improve that one thing.

Those are the things you can do to get yourself more confident and psyche yourself up for webinars. Listen to someone you want to be like, imagine the crowd cheering, and focus on one thing. Put these mental exercises to use and run your very own webinars at www.webinarcrusher.com.

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24. Aug, 2010
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Why Are Webinar Mistakes A Good Thing To Happen?

When running your live screen capture webinar presentations, you are going to mess up. It's going to happen, it's inevitable. But I'm here to tell you that messing up is not a bad thing. In the long term, making mistakes on your live webinars is one of the best things that can happen to you because you'll make the same mistakes other do. You can always turn your mistake around into a valid point and then you'll get better over time.

The great thing about a live webinar is that when you're demonstrating something right in front of an audience and something goes wrong, there is no do over. There is no Delete or Rewind button. I'm a PHP programmer and I have been in plenty of webinars where I messed up the PHP codes somewhere and it gave an error. Instead of freaking out and giving up, I would analyze the program. I would say, "If you are coming across this same mistake, then check for a semicolon in the end of the line."

In another webinar, I was showing how to find message boards that you can post on and none of the message boards I found fit the right criteria I was looking for. What do I do instead? I use another way of finding message boards. The great thing about demonstrating something is you'll come across the same road blocks that your students are about to come across so you are really saving them time by showing them your mistakes and fixing them.

Also keep in mind that many of your webinar mistakes can be turned into a valid point. Not only can you show how to recover but you can also joke about it or take the problem and stride because that's just the way life is. How many times have you been at school or at a seminar where someone was talking and if there was a noise in the other room or if there was a loud crash, they would completely get distracted and derailed? You can't do that. If you are in a webinar and your phone rings, make a joke about it. Or even better, realize you don't have to be perfect. I've been in webinars where the phone has rang, where one of the presenters stopped to pay the pizza boy.

I've been in webinars where the webinar crashed three times in a row before I could continue speaking. It's going to happen and you need to learn how to deal with it instead of letting it stop you. If you make a webinar mistake, you know you're going to get better. If you stutter, you know you're just going to work on it. If you speak too quickly, that's one thing to focus on. If you find yourself getting really nervous, you just need more practice. There's always ways you can improve on your webinars and the best way is simply to practice, figure out what you can make better and repeat the process.

That's why webinar mistakes are very good. You'll make the same mistakes others do so you can prevent your student's mistakes before they happen. You can turn any bad thing into a valid point and you will improve over time. Run your own webinars and improve over time with this training at www.webinarcrusher.com.

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21. Aug, 2010
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What Would You Tell Me To Make Me Feel More Confident About Webinars?

The biggest problem with webinars is that if you've never done one, it's scary. On the other hand, if you've done one or two, it's one of the easiest ways to present in the world. I want to get you over that hump and make you confident with webinars by sharing a few quick tips with you and those are that making the stakes is good. People will respect you more from webinar and you'll relate better than from any other medium.

Making mistakes is a good thing. You read right. No matter what you do, you're going to have your share of successes and failures and you need to get through the bad part to get to the good part. It makes sense, doesn't it? You're never going to be prepared in the future unless your PowerPoint fails. You're never going to be prepared unless your guest doesn't show up. You need to be ready to think on your feet because you are running a live presentation.

We've all been at that point where we had something to say and in the middle of the sentence, we got stuck. And you know what? Some of those us are covered, some of us didn't. I'd rather be the person who knows how to recover from getting stuck than the person who never got stuck. Even if you mess up on your webinar, it's okay. People will respect you more just because you are putting yourself out there. You're not writing a report trying to edit all the words. You're not giving them a prerecorded video where you can start over if you messed up, it's live. You say the wrong thing, you need to pause for a second. It doesn't matter, it's live. Plenty of times I've been on a webinar, opened up a web browser to demonstrate a particular URL and the URL failed. I simply moved on and people didn't care all that much. When you show yourself as a real human being and occasionally mess up, you will relate better with your audience.

Think about how most people interact on the internet. They interact via text. If it's from social networking, if it's from emails or forms, every now and then some of these medias will show a picture of the person but it doesn't really get inside their head. It doesn't really convey that person's voice. When you talk one on one with someone or at least when you broadcast your voice live on a webinar, they are hearing the person that you really are. That means they will be more forgiving of you, they'll listen to you more closely and when you have something to offer, they'll be more likely to check it out.

That's what I would tell you to get you more confident about webinars. That making mistakes is good, that people will respect you more and you'll relate better when you make mistakes on a live webinar. I give you permission to make mistakes. Go ahead right now and make all the mistakes you can so you'll get better at making products, at getting traffic, and at getting sales at www.webinarcrusher.com.

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18. Aug, 2010
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How Much Of My Webinar Should I Script Out?

When I'm dealing with someone who's new at audio, video, or even live webinar presentations, I always get the question of how am I possibly going to talk about anything for 10 minutes, 30 minutes, even an hour? How much of my webinar should I script out? I'm here to tell you that even though many webinars you attend are scripted and it shows you should not script your webinar. You should create your PowerPoint template to guide the conversation and practice, but don't script because people can tell.

Scripting a live presentation is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard of, especially because you are not getting paid millions of dollars for your broadcast. You're not a professional broadcaster. Too many people write out their whole entire presentation and spend days, if not weeks, preparing for a 1-hour webinar and putting way too much work only to have the script make the webinar worse than it can be. I do understand that you need to stick on a schedule and that you do need to have some kind of notes and that's what the PowerPoint is for. After all, if you were speaking and presenting on stage in person you wouldn't have every single word of your presentation mapped out, would you? You would simply be knowledgeable enough in a subject that a headline and three bullet points per slide is enough to hold you over for three to five minutes, then have your PowerPoint have 10 to 20 slides. And depending on how detailed the bullet points are and how quickly you go through them, you'll easily have an hour of presentation.

You might be asking, "If I don't have my presentation scripted, how am I going to know what to say?" And the answer to that is just simply rehearse and practice. Create your PowerPoint. Go through it as if it were live and that way when it comes time to present it for real, you will be prepared. This way, you will know exactly what you're going to say but it's not going to sound like you're reading off the script because people really can tell if you're reading off the script. I've been on plenty of webinars where there were two presenters and they were both scripted and it sounded so forced and so fake. I know you've been on webinars like those, too. Don't be as bad as them. Don't have a script. Instead, have a PowerPoint presentation and rehearse.

Now that you know not to script your webinar, how do you put together an hour-long presentation that people will not just like, but love? Go to www.webinarcrusher.com to find out how right now.

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15. Aug, 2010
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How Do I Overcome Webinar Anxiety?

If you have not yet run your very first online webinar or live video training session, you might think that a live webinar is a scary thing. Actually, it's not and you can easily overcome the anxiety that's holding you back with three simple techniques: Practice, get critiqued, and get a partner.

You really should run at least one webinar per week. All it takes is one hour per week to pitch your latest product, make a new product, answer questions, or even present to another marketer's subscribers. You need to stay and practice. If I go for longer than three weeks without running a webinar, I will find I will get worse at it. The first time you have a webinar, the first five minutes will be really scary but once you get the hang of it, it'll become second nature to you. And the more you do webinars, the better you get as long as you stay and practice.

Again, even if you don't have time to create a PowerPoint presentation of some kind, at least hold a webinar for your customers where they can ask questions or even show you their URLs for critique. An example might be if you taught real estate and one of your customers placed a home listing, you could look at how they could improve it. Speaking of critiques, you really do need to have someone else watching your webinars and telling you what you need to improve. Even if you don't have someone like this, just watching your own recordings will tell you what you should change. I know that at first you might cringe at hearing and watching yourself, but once you watch a complete webinar of your very own from start to finish, you'll find it easier in the future to watch them and self-critique them, and get better.

If you noticed that you're having difficulty presenting or dealing with your anxiety or moving forward in the webinar, you might want to get a partner to co-host the webinar with you. The job of this co-host will be to handle questions while you speak. You might tell the partner to interrupt you, or you might simply present and then when it becomes question time, ask the partner to find the questions. If there are no questions, make sure that your partner is skilled enough in your niche to think of some questions on his own.

Those are just some easy ways for you to overcome webinar anxiety today: Practice, critique, and get a partner. The only way you will really get better at webinars is by doing them. Find out how to do them at www.webinarcrusher.com.

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12. Aug, 2010
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How Do I Practice Webinars With A Friend?

Running a webinar or a live streaming, stream capture presentation might seem scary and you definitely want to want to at least practice your webinar once to ensure that everything goes properly, that you didn't leave anything out on your PowerPoint slides and that most importantly you know what you're talking about. I would definitely recommend you practice your webinar with a friend ahead of time for these reasons: You can pretend it's live and get used to an audience, you can leave in time for questions, and you can record yourself and see how your recording compares to what your friend sees.

When you're rehearsing webinar, you might be tempted to skip over the non-important parts. But I'm telling you right now, you need to pretend your webinar is live. That way you will present, when you practice, exactly the same way as you present live and that means if you are going to make a mistake on the live presentation, you'll make that mistake while you're practicing and you can correct it. This might mean that your order form is broken, that your PowerPoint is broken, that the order you were going to present things is broken. Whatever it is, pretend it's live, that way you'll make the same mistakes you would've made and stop them before they happen.

When you practice, it's important to have a friend there to ask questions. When you practice by yourself, you might forget that you need to leave room for questions. Your audience might have an urgent message right in the middle of your presentation that might slow you down by 5, 10, or even 15 minutes. Leaving time for questions and even ask your practice partner to ask you some questions which also gives you the added bonus of being prepared in case there are no questions whatsoever.

And finally, record yourself practicing. It's one thing to do a dry run of your webinar to have a friend see you, but now with the recording, you can go back and watch yourself and catch even more things you can improve upon. You can hand the recording off to a third party for a critique, and most importantly, you can even offer people the replay to your webinar before the webinar is even over. Here's what I mean: Many times when I run a webinar, I don't offer the replay but instead I make the webinar itself the recording a bonus to the offer I'm selling. If I just ran a practice session, I could have the practice recording already loaded in and I can say, "If you want to go back and watch anything on this webinar, it's already in the member's area, go get it right now." It has more instant gratification that way.

When you practice webinars with a friend, pretend it's live, leaving time for questions and record yourself. This last part is very important: Become the absolute master at webinars with this training at www.webinarcrusher.com.

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09. Aug, 2010
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How Do I Plan For Technical Difficulties With My Webinar?

One of the webinars you present in the future will go wrong. It's just going to happen. Something weird, something technical is going to come up, but I want you to be prepared for it. To be prepared, practice your webinar first, reboot your computer before presenting, and have a backup computer ready to go.

Once I was on a webinar and the host arrived five minutes late. Then he spent another five minutes trying to get his PowerPoint working but by the time he did, he realized he created it in such a way that it simply would not present on the screen he was showing it on. All of this could've been avoided if that webinar presenter had rehearsed ahead of time. If that webinar marketer had simply spent five minutes on a dry run practicing him starting the webinar, practicing firing a PowerPoint and going through the slides, he would have avoided the headache of having to get embarrassed, get nervous, and having to reschedule the webinar. Practice your webinar ahead of time and you'll thank me later.

Also, I would recommend that you reboot your computer before starting your webinar. This ensures that all your programs are closed and there is a much less likelihood of your computer crashing if it has just been turned on. When you're on a webinar, you don't want to have all kinds of windows open so close all unused browsers, instant messaging clients, and other distracting programs. When you're on your webinar, you want to be 100% focused on the exact thing you are presenting.

And finally, your computer might crash or something else might happen that's beyond your control. For example, one time in the middle of a webinar my internet connection died. Nothing I could've done to prevent it, it simply died. What did I do? I immediately picked up my phone, switched the audio to the dial-in option and continued speaking without a hitch to my webinar audience. If you're computer crashes and you're waiting for it to boot back up, switch over to a second computer. I always have a laptop on my desk, that way if something goes wrong with the main computer, I can join under the laptop to the webinar and continue until the main computer is back. An even better advantage to having a laptop is you can join as a guest and see exactly what guests see. So if you forgot to show your screen or your screen is not displaying correctly or showing the wrong screen, you will see exactly what your attendees see on your laptop computer.

That's how you're going to plan for technical difficulties on your next webinar: Practice at first, reboot just before, and have a backup. Become a teacher. Become a marketer. Become someone who has authority and expertise. Use webinars to run your own live presentations, online pitches, and information products at www.webinarcrusher.com.

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06. Aug, 2010
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What If My Webinar Lasts Too Long?

I never thought I would have this problem, but something that's been happening every now and then is that my webinars last too long. I plan for them to last 90 minutes and they last 2 or 3 hours. I want to share with you some strategies I use if I notice my webinar is running a bit long and I want to wrap it up quickly. I skip ahead a few slides, I stop taking questions, or I just get right to the close, to the whole point

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03. Aug, 2010
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