Creating your first Zoom webinar

As long as your organization’s current Zoom plan includes webinars, scheduling them is remarkably easy:

1. In the Zoom web portal, under the Personal header, click on Webinars.

2. Click on the blue Schedule a Webinar button.

   Zoom displays the Schedule a Webinar window, shown in Figure 8-1.

   

3. In the Topic text box, enter the name of your webinar.

   You can always change it later.

4. (Optional) Enter a description.

   Don’t skip this step. You’ll want to provide prospective attendees with more information about what they can expect to learn if they attend.

5. Enter a date and time.

6. Enter a duration.

   Zoom defaults to one hour. This duration is for scheduling purposes only. That is, Zoom doesn’t cut you off once the host reaches the end time.

7. Override the time zone, if you like.

   Zoom defaults to the time zone associated with your account, but you can override it.

8. (Optional) Enter whether the webinar is recurring.

9. Indicate whether your webinar requires users to enter a password to join; if so, then enter the password.

   Only provide this password to webinar registrants unless you want it to be useless.

10. Under the Video header, select whether the hosts and/or panelists can show their faces.

11. Indicate your audio preference.

    Zoom defaults to Telephone and Computer Audio, but you can override that option.

12. Under webinar options, indicate whether you want to allow the following options by selecting the appropriate checkboxes:
    • Q&A
    • Enable Practice Session
    • Only authenticated users can join (See Chapter 9 for details.)
    • Make the webinar on-demand
    • Record the webinar automatically

13. (Optional) Enter the email addresses of any alterative hosts.

    I cover this option in the section “Reviewing Zoom’s webinar-specific roles,” later in this chapter.

Say that you’ve enabled a practice session for your webinar. When you start the webinar, Zoom displays the following orange text at the top of the window: Practice Mode Only: Attendees cannot join until you broadcast.

None of these webinar options is set in stone. That is, you can edit all of them later — up until the point that you begin your webinar.

Setting your registration options

By default, Zoom doesn’t require people to register for webinars. As such, as long as they know the URL, they can just show up without providing any of their contact information. This option is certainly viable. For many reasons, though, you may want to require registration and collect their basic data in advance.

To tweak your webinar-registration options, follow these steps:

1. In the Zoom web portal, under the Personal header, click on Webinars.

2. Click on the title of one of your upcoming webinars.

   They appear under the Topic tab in the middle of the page.

3. In the Invitations tab, click on the blue Edit link to the far right of the word Approval.

   Zoom displays the window in Figure 8-2 with three tabs:

   • Registration: Make decisions about webinar registration and approval. For example, when you require registration via a unique URL, Zoom sends one to each registrant. Also, you can disable attendees’ ability to join from multiple devices so that they can’t share their unique URLs with other people and circumvent the registration process.
   • Questions: Select the checkboxes here if you want to require attendees to include additional information to register for the webinar. Examples include their phone number, employer, industry, job title, and more.
   • Custom Questions: Create your own multiple-choice or short-answer questions.

   By asking a few targeted registration questions, you may be able to determine which topic(s) attendees would value most ahead of time.

4. Make whatever changes you want and click on the blue Save button.

Tread lightly with webinar registration. You don’t want to required too many questions. Try to strike a balance. If you come across as too nosy, then you run the risk of minimizing the number of webinar registrants and attendees. On the other hand, your goal should not necessarily be to maximize these numbers.

Consider two scenarios:

• Option A: Twenty people attend your webinar, each of whom is legitimately interested in your company’s product or service. Attendees ask penetrating and insightful questions.
• Option B: Fifty, mostly aloof, people attend your webinar. Attendees constantly fidget with their devices as you present. They ignore your polls and other chances to interact. When it’s time for questions at the end of the webinar, you hear crickets.

Option A beats B any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Visit bit.ly/zfd-webreg for ways on how you can customize your webinar-registration options.

Preparing for your webinar

As the famous philosophical query goes, “If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

By the same token, if you hold a webinar without any attendees, does anyone gain any knowledge from it? For now, forget whether they view a recording of it a few weeks or months later. (I cover that subject later in this chapter in the section “Accessing your recorded webinar and sharing it with the world.”)

I never advocate spamming people. Still, if you’re hosting a public webinar, then you should promote it and encourage people to register for it. Doing so allows you to get a sense of your audience in advance — specifically, their interests, job titles, locations, and more. As a result, you can customize your webinar’s content to provide the most valuable experience for as many attendees as possible.

Sharing a link to your webinar with others

Blasting emails is certainly one way to encourage others to sign up for your webinar. For example, you can send the invitation to members of your organization’s mailing list.

But what if you don’t want to limit your potential audience to people with whom you’ve already connected? After all, the whole point of many webinars is to connect with new people — individuals whose email addresses you just don’t know yet.

To this end, you may want to share your webinar link on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other high-traffic sites. What’s more, it’s wise to create a simple page that links to the webinar on your company’s website. (I do the same thing myself when I host webinars for my clients.)

To find the registration link for your webinar, follow these steps:

1. In the Zoom web portal, under the Personal header, click on Webinars.
2. Click on the title of one of your upcoming webinars.
3. In the Invitations tab, to the right of Invitee Attendees underneath Registration Link, copy the full link.

4. Share that link however you want.

   When other people click on it, they’ll see something like Figure 8-4.

By filling out the form, attendees can register for your webinar. Once they do, Zoom displays a confirmation, such as the one in Figure 8-5.

If you want to add a banner or logo to your webinar URL, click on the Branding tab on the same page and go nuts.

Viewing and removing webinar registrants

Ideally, loads of people will sign up for your webinar. Great news, right? Perhaps, but maybe a few of them participated in previous webinars and acted like knuckleheads. To view which people have already registered and block a few knuckleheads from participating, follow these steps:

1. In the Zoom web portal, under the Personal header, click on Webinars.
2. Click on the title of one of your upcoming webinars.
3. Click on the Invitations tab.

4. To the far right of Manage Attendees, click on the blue View link.

   Zoom displays a screen similar to Figure 8-6.

5. (Optional) To remove a registered attendee from your list, select the checkbox to the immediate left of that person’s name.

6. (Optional) Click on the white Cancel Registration button.

   Zoom adds the user to the Denied/Blocked list.

Reviewing Zoom’s webinar-specific roles

Like just about all popular webinar tools, Zoom understands that one size does not fit all. Zoom users can perform different actions during a webinar.

Note that the roles in the following section pertain only to Zoom webinars. That is, they differ from the proper user roles discussed in Chapter 3. Also, they overlap a bit with the roles in Zoom Meetings & Chat (see Chapter 4).

Co-host

At a high level, co-hosts can perform most of the same actions that hosts can. In this way, think of the co-host as the host’s right-hand man or woman during the webinar. (If you’re a fan of the seminal HBO series The Larry Sanders Show, then the co-host conjures up images of “Hey Now” Hank Kingsley.)

More specifically, co-hosts can perform the following actions during webinars:

• Manage attendees
• Start and stop the recording
• Remove disruptive attendees
• Open polls

Co-hosts cannot start webinars independently — a key difference compared to Zoom’s alternative host role.

The co-host is an essential role. As such, it’s wise to assign at least one to each webinar that your organization hosts. In my earlier example, say that Hank is feeling ill and cannot serve as the webinar co-host. Larry should designate a different webinar co-host as soon as possible.

If you’re still on the fence about using a co-host, here’s the final nail in the no-co-host coffin:

• Scenario A: You fly solo on the webinar and opt not to appoint a co-host.
• Scenario B: You appoint a co-host.

During the webinar, your Internet connection suddenly dies. Under Scenario A, Zoom terminates the webinar for everyone. Under Scenario B, Zoom automatically transfers hosting responsibilities to the co-host and keeps the webinar running.

Zoom doesn’t require hosts to assign co-hosts to webinars, but it’s certainly a best practice — particularly for large webinars.

To enable webinar co-hosts at the account level, account owners and admins should follow these directions:

1. In the Zoom web portal, under the Personal header, click on Settings.

2. Slide the Co-host toggle button to the right.

   Zoom turns the toggle blue and confirms your new settings.

Note that Zoom remembers this selection for all webinars held under your organization’s account. That is, you need not perform this step for every webinar that you and others under your account host.

Oddly, at present, Zoom does not grant webinar hosts the power to pre-assign co-hosts. To receive their promotions to co-hosts, panelists have to wait until a host starts the webinar. At that point, the host can promote panelists to co-host status by following these directions:

1. Launch the webinar.
2. From the icons at the bottom of the screen, click on Manage Participants.
3. Click on the Participants tab.
4. Identify the person whom you want to make your co-host.
5. Mouse over that person and choose Make Co-Host from the menu that appears, as Figure 8-7 displays.
6. Select Make Co-host.

As the sidebar illustrates, an experienced webinar co-host is worth her weight in gold.

Ask a colleague whether he would be interested in being a webinar panelist or co-host. Don’t spring these responsibilities on folks at the last minute.

Zoom provides a host of other options here for adding and managing co-hosts. (Pretty good pun, eh?) Visit bit.ly/zfd-web-h to learn more about this topic.

If you’re the host, then you cannot remove a co-host from the webinar in one fell swoop. You have to demote him first and then kick him out of the webinar.

Taking Zoom webinars up a notch with third-party apps and integrations

Chapter 7 covers third-party apps that extend the native power of Zoom Meetings & Chat. If you would like to do the same thing with Zoom Video Webinars, you’re in luck.

Generally speaking, Zoom’s webinar-specific apps and integrations fall into the following three buckets:

• CRM and Marketing Automation: Many organizations use customer-relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation tools. Popular choices include Salesforce, Marketo, Pardot, and HubSpot. By installing these apps for Zoom Video Webinars, users can automatically capture registrants as leads in these systems. Say goodbye to dual-data entry.
• Content Distribution: Zoom’s Kaltura and Panopto integrations allow users to easily share their videos with large audiences.
• Monetization: While many or most companies provide their webinars for free, some charge a nominal fee. With a few clicks of your mouse, you can directly connect Video Webinars with PayPal. Say that you use Eventbrite, CVent, or another event management site and want to charge for your webinar. If so, then you can use the popular and multifaceted automation tool Zapier to stitch those tools together.

Laypeople don’t need to worry about the technical differences between Zoom apps and integrations. At a high level, they effectively do the same types of things — namely, automate manual tasks and make your life easier.

For more on how to use these apps and integrations, check out Zoom’s informative 12-page ebook Running Engaging Online Events at bit.ly/zfd-onlineev.

Canceling your webinar

John is an accomplished guitarist who works at a Guitar Center in Long Island, New York. He decides to hold a webinar called “How to Play a 12-String” and show his considerable chops. For whatever reason, though, attendance is sparse. Despite his best efforts to promote it, only two people have registered. After mulling it over, he pulls the plug on the webinar.

To cancel your webinar before it starts, follow these directions:

1. In the Zoom web portal, under the Personal header, click on Webinars.

2. To the right of the webinar that you want to cancel, click on the white Delete button.

   Zoom displays a window allowing you to easily notify registrants that you are canceling the webinar, as Figure 8-8 shows.

   

3. (Optional) Uncheck the Topic checkbox and click on the red Delete button if you want to cancel the webinar without alerting registrants.

   If you cancel the webinar, leave the checkbox selected here to alert registrants. It’s bad form to cancel a webinar without notifying them.

4. Customize your cancelation email as desired.

5. Click on the red Delete button.

   Zoom sends all registrants the email that you specified.

Whether you alert registrants or not, Zoom sends the webinar host a separate email confirming the cancelation.

Launching your webinar

Follow these directions to kick off your webinar:

1. In the Zoom web portal, under the Personal header, click on Webinars.
2. Click on the title of one of your upcoming webinars.

3. Click on the white Start button.

   Zoom launches the desktop client, and displays a screen similar to Figure 8-9.

You can and should begin your webinar at least 20 minutes early. Doing so allows you to assign webinar co-hosts, test your computer’s audio and microphone again, and generally relax before it’s time to rock and roll. Starting your webinar early does not mean that registrants will be able to participate ahead of time.

Table 8-1 displays the controls that Zoom offers hosts once they kick off their webinars. They largely overlap with the controls for Zoom meetings, discussed in Chapter 4.

Always record your webinar — even if you’re not sure that you’ll need it for future use. To paraphrase the German writer Franz Kafka, it’s better to have and not need than to need and not have.

Of course, Table 8-1 displays the options available to webinar hosts. To state the obvious, Zoom does not grant everyone on the webinar the same power. In fact, Zoom limits the tasks that attendees can perform to the ones listed in Table 8-2.

Sharing and annotating your screen

Say that your webinar is going swimmingly well. For example, attendees are enthusiastically asking you pointed questions about what your software product can do and how to do it. As the host, you want to demonstrate a specific feature as clearly as possible.

Zoom’s screen-sharing and annotation functionality mirrors that of its Meetings & Chat service, discussed in Chapter 4.

Follow these directions to annotate your screen for all webinar attendees:

1. After you launch the meeting, choose Share Screen from the menu.

2. Select the specific screen on your computer that you want to share with webinar attendees.

   Zoom displays that screen with everyone on the webinar.

3. Mouse over the black menu and click on the Annotate icon.

   Zoom displays a separate annotation menu.

Table 8-3 lists the webinar-annotation options that Zoom provides for hosts:

These icons largely overlap with the ones for Zoom meetings covered in Chapter 4. This fact shouldn’t surprise you. Webinars are special types of Zoom meetings.

Figure 8-10 shows how I marked up the Zoom For Dummies manuscript during a practice webinar.

Interacting with webinar attendees

More than 10 million people purchased and presumably read Stephen Covey’s 1990 book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Free Press). The text didn’t impress me all that much when I read it 25 years ago, but one of his recommendations always stuck with me: Begin with the end in mind.

Think about that oft-quoted adage in the context of holding a successful webinar. More specifically, it’s critical to consider the following questions well before starting your webinar:

• What should attendees be allowed to do during the webinar?
• In both positive and negative ways, how could attendees’ actions affect the webinar?
• How many strikes do offending attendees get?
• Do you want to limit how attendees ask questions and interact with others?
• Based on the answers to the previous questions, which permissions will allow co-hosts and panelists to manage the webinar most effectively?

By thinking through these issues ahead of time, you maximize the chance of a smooth webinar.

There’s no one right recipe for holding a successful webinar. Much hinges upon the size and demographics of your audience, their level of inquisitiveness, and even the topic itself.

Bounce ideas off of more experienced colleagues, especially if you’re new to hosting webinars.

Disabling attendee annotation

Webinar attendees run the gamut. In my experience, most act in a professional way. Never confuse most with all, though. It takes only one troll to disrupt a webinar and ruin it for everyone.

One simple way to thwart potential trolls is to disable attendees’ ability to annotate the screen. Just follow these steps:

1. After starting the webinar, share your screen.

2. From the black menu bar, click on the More icon on the right-hand side.

   Zoom displays the webinar-specific menu in Figure 8-11.

3. From the drop-down menu, choose Disable Attendee Annotation.

Of course, you may want to keep this option enabled if you trust your attendees and there’s a legitimate need for them to annotate the host’s screen.

Dismissing attendees’ questions

Panelists and co-hosts typically want to save interesting attendee queries for the host to answer at the end of the webinar. Sometimes, however, attendees ask redundant, previously answered, or downright silly questions. In such cases, the webinar co-host can easily dismiss them as follows:

1. During the webinar, click on the Q&A icon in the menu.
2. Click on the Open tab and mouse over an attendee’s question.

3. Click on the gray X Dismiss text that appears over the question.

   Zoom moves the question to the Dismissed tab in the Q&A panel, as Figure 8-12 displays.

Responding when webinar attendees raise their hands

When attendees raise their hands, panelists and co-hosts can view new activity by clicking on the Participants tab during the webinar. Zoom displays Figure 8-14.

Performing other attendee-related actions

Zoom allows co-hosts and panelists to do a number of other things with individual participants:

1. During the webinar, click on the Participants tab.
2. Click on the name of the attendee in question.

3. From the menu that appears, select the action(s) that you want to perform.

   Figure 8-15 displays the following attendee-related options:

   • Allow the attendee to talk to fellow attendees and disable that ability if already enabled.
   • Send them direct chat messages.
   • Promote to panelist.
   • Rename.
   • Remove the attendee from the webinar.

For more information on managing attendees’ questions, visit bit.ly/zfd-manq.

Options for managing attendees’ specific questions remain after they leave the webinar. That is, they don’t need to be present for co-hosts and panelists to answer or dismiss them.

As the nearby sidebar illustrates, an experienced webinar co-host is worth her weight in gold.

Practice for your webinars. Unprofessional or underprepared hosts usually get only one bite at the apple. Attendees can always leave with a few mouse clicks.

Accessing your recorded webinar and sharing it with the world

All your preparation paid off. The webinar killed, and you’re glad that you recorded it. You want to access it and share it with people who couldn’t attend the live event via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more.

Zoom makes performing these actions very easy.

1. In the Zoom web portal, under the Personal header, click on Recordings.
2. In the main area of the screen, locate the recorded webinar and click on the Share button.

3. In the window that appears, indicate what you’d like to do by sliding the appropriate toggles.

   Figure 8-16 displays your related webinar-sharing options, including whether you want to:

   • Enable a password for the webinar.
   • Allow people to view the webinar on-demand without registration.
   • Let the link to the webinar expire on a certain date.

   

4. Make whatever changes you like from the options in the previous step.

5. Copy the sharing information to your computer’s clipboard.

   Pay special attention to the webinar’s unique URL.

6. Click on the white Done button.

You can share the link however you want, with whomever you want, and as often as you want.

Downloading your recorded webinar

Another popular distribution channel is YouTube. After uploading the webinar there, it takes all of about eight seconds to embed the webinar on your company’s website. By doing this, you keep users on your site and hopefully encourage them to interact even more.

1. In the Zoom web portal, under the Personal header, click on Recordings.
2. On the right-hand side of the screen, locate the recorded webinar and click on the More button.
3. From the drop-down menu, choose Download (2 files).

4. Select where on your computer you want to save the video file.

   Zoom’s default video-file format is .mp4.

5. Click on the Save button.

6. (Optional) Select where on your computer you want to save the audio file.

   Zoom’s default audio-file format is .m4a.

7. (Optional) Click on the Save button.

   Figure 8-17 displays both the audio and video files.

   Just like with meetings (covered in Chapter 4), Zoom provides transcriptions when you record your webinar to the cloud, but not locally.

   

8. (Optional) Edit the audio and video files with whatever program you like.

   Visit bit.ly/zfd-edit to read an informative post about some of Zoom’s file-editing options.

9. Upload the audio and video files to whatever service you like.

Soundcloud is a popular audio destination. Along with YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo are obvious choices for videos.

Running webinar-related reports

Who exactly who attended your webinar? How did attendees respond to your poll questions?

As long as your formal Zoom role permits you (and not your webinar-specific role), you can answer these types of questions by running reports:

1. In the Zoom web portal, under the Admin header, click on Account Management.

2. Under Usage Reports, click on Webinar.

   Account admins and regular members will see the word Reports instead of Usage Reports.

3. Select a reporting option.

   Underneath the Step 1 heading, Zoom provides the following five reporting options:

   • Registration Report: Displays a list of webinar registrants and related information.
   • Attendee Report: Presents information on webinar attendees. (Remember that this data stems directly from the questions that you required them to answer upon registering for the webinar.)
   • Performance Report: Provides information on attendee registration, attendance, and feedback.
   • Q&A Report: Displays attendee questions and answers during the webinar.
   • Poll Report: If you conducted polls during the webinar, displays attendee responses.
4. In the top part of the screen, select the checkbox to the left of the report that you want to run.

5. (Optional) Underneath the Step 2 heading, restrict your available reports by date range and/or by webinar-ID filters.

   For example, I selected the attendee report option. From here and as Figure 8-18 shows, Zoom displays the reports that I can run.

6. Select the radio box to the left of the specific report that you want to run.

   For example, I am running a report from May 9, 2020 at 9:04 a.m.

   

7. Under the Step 3 heading, select your report options.

   Note that report options hinge upon the specific one that you want to run.

   If you prefer simple, structured data, you probably want to leave these options blank.

8. Click on the blue Generate CSV Report button.

   CSV here stands for comma-separated values.

9. Download the file to wherever you like on your computer.

10. Open the file in whatever data-analysis program you like.

    I chose Microsoft Excel, as Figure 8-19 displays.

    Note that I hid a few of the report fields and formatted the header record in Figure 8-19 to improve its visibility for the book.

Chapter 6 goes much deeper into the subject of Zoom reports.

For more information on Zoom’s webinar-specific reports, visit bit.ly/zfd-webrep.

Deleting your recorded webinars

After a while, you may decide that you no longer need to store a copy of the webinar in your account, especially if you’ve already taken the steps in the previous section.

Delete your webinar by following these instructions:

1. In the Zoom web portal, under the Personal header, click on Recordings.
2. On the right-hand side of the screen, locate the recorded webinar and click on the More button.

3. From the drop-down menu, choose Delete.

   Zoom displays a prompt confirming that you want to delete your files.

4. Click on the blue Yes button.

If you change your mind, you can recover your deleted webinar as follows:

1. In the Zoom web portal, under the Personal header, click on Recordings.
2. On the right-hand side of the screen, click on the word Trash.

3. To the right of the deleted webinar, click on Recover.

   Zoom displays a prompt confirming that you want to recover the deleted webinar.

4. Click on the blue Yes button.

   Zoom briefly displays a green message acknowledging its successful recovery at the top of the screen.

Just like with meetings (discussed in Chapter 4), you can store your webinars as long as you like with one caveat: You need to stay within your plan’s data storage limit. As Chapter 2 describes, Zoom provides 1GB of free storage per account user on its Pro and Business plans.

Zoom emails the account owner when a user reaches 80 percent of his storage capacity. If a host reaches his storage limit during the webinar, Zoom graciously continues the recording until it finishes.