Introduction
Webinars have become a popular method for online course creators or community leaders to connect with their students online. However, a successful webinar requires more than just a compelling presentation. A well-organized team is crucial for ensuring the webinar runs smoothly, engages the audience, and achieves its intended goals.
In this lesson, we’re learning about webinar event team roles, so that you can set up your team to have all the different responsibilities and features that they need in order to run amazing webinars.
Hosts may encounter the following challenges if webinar event team roles are not assigned:
- Without a moderator, organizer, or host, the flow of the webinar may become disorganized, and the audience may lose interest.
- Lack of technical support may cause technical issues that may lead to the loss of attendees or the webinar being canceled.
- If there is no designated speaker, the webinar may lack structure and purpose, leading to a lack of engagement.
- Without proper marketing and promotion, the webinar may not reach its intended audience, leading to low attendance rates.
- Without a panelist or presenter, the webinar may lack in-depth information or may not be engaging enough to keep the audience’s attention.
Video Lesson – How To Run a Successful Webinar
What Are Webinar Event Team Roles?
Webinar event team roles are various responsibilities assigned to individuals involved in planning and hosting a webinar. These roles are necessary for ensuring the success of the webinar, providing a positive experience for attendees, and achieving the intended outcomes.
Roles are assigned to every team member and guest on a webinar, whether you explicitly give them a role or they just inherit a default role, like an attendee. Everyone on the webinar that has an email that registered or didn’t register and is in there, in that session, has a role that connects to features so that every person is either allowed or not allowed features from the webinar based on their role.
Roles are a nice and easy way to identify a set of features; if you have that role, you get those features.
Roles are essential for ensuring the success of the webinar, providing a positive experience for attendees, and achieving the intended outcomes.
Who Can Use Webinars?
Lots of teachers and trainers can use webinars to not only sell services like courses and communities, but also to provide skills and coaching to their students.
Here are some examples of how creative teachers can use webinars:
- An anime teacher can provide a workshop about drawing facial expressions
- A candle maker can provide a webinar to new artisan business owners
- A window designer could promote a supportive community with rooms full of storefront sample pictures
- A writing coach can provide group coaching on character development for sci-fi books and shows
- A music mixing professional can show students how to set up a home music studio
Leadership Roles
Leadership roles are the main administration roles that you get with your webinar. Some of the leadership roles include scheduling webinars, default settings, inviting people, starting and ending the webinar, sharing screen content, drawing and annotations, providing handouts, and changing users midway, for example; I want to take this person and make them a panelist, I want to allow them to speak, etc. muting users, who can ask questions, when can you ask questions, creating polls, seeing reports and managing all the recordings.
These are all the administrative leadership roles and features that are available on most of the webinar platforms.
Admin
One of the most important leadership roles is the administrator. This is the owner of the account. They have access to all the tiers, licenses, and billing, and can change their email and password. They’re the number one person who owns the account for your company, and they are also the most powerful account on your webinar.
Host or Organizer
The host or organizer is responsible for coordinating and managing the entire webinar event, from planning to execution. They are the main point of contact for all team members and the audience, ensuring that everything runs smoothly and according to plan.
They are also responsible for ensuring that the team members are aware of their roles and that everyone is working together cohesively to achieve the webinar’s goals.
You may have a smaller company where you’re the admin and main host, and that’s fine. Or, you may assign a host and they’re the main leader of that particular webinar and the main scheduler.
Co-host or Alternative host
The main host may also want to assign a co-host. Maybe when traveling or just in case the host’s internet goes down, the co-host can set up the slides, let people in the room do all these other things, etc. So the co-host or alternative host helps the leader/ host with the webinar. It’s great to have an alternative host just in case something goes wrong.
There are dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people coming to your webinar. You need to have a couple of people to back you up and have content and other things ready in case anything goes wrong with anyone’s internet connection.
Panelist or Presenter
The panelist/presenter presents the content of the webinar and answers questions from the audience. They’re responsible for ensuring that the content is informative and engaging and that the audience leaves with a clear understanding of the topic.
Panelists or Presenters can share their video and audio, annotate and speak to slides. It may be a traditional panel where there are three to four people on screen, or they may be the main person. The host opens up the meeting and introduces the guests. You may want to break out the presenter role, it doesn’t need to be in front of the camera, it could be behind the scenes, backstage, with your virtual assistant, etc.
The admin sets up the presenter role so they know exactly which slides or videos to show at any point. You want the presenters to have the right abilities to take over the screen, show the screen, switch the content, show this other camera, and turn off this person’s video.
Marketer or Promoter
The marketing and promotion team is responsible for promoting the webinar to potential attendees and managing the registration process. They will work heavily on email marketing.
They create and distribute promotional materials, including emails, social media posts, and advertisements.
Content Creator
The content creator is responsible for creating and developing the content for the webinar. They work closely with the presenter(s) to ensure that the content is relevant, informative, and engaging. They may also be responsible for creating visual aids or slideshows to accompany the presentation.
Consumer Roles
Consumers are the people that you’ve invited to your webinar. They can typically watch the webinar, they can chat, raise their hand, ask questions, or see and answer polls. These are the things that the guests will be able to do when they join your webinar. Some webinars break this up into the following two roles.
Registrants
These are people who received an email, filled out a form, and might have paid unless it’s free. Nevertheless, they were required to register for the webinar instead of just popping in, with a webinar zoom link, as an example.
Some webinar platforms break that out and have this kind of registrant role versus the attendee role.
Attendee Role
The attendee role is what the majority of your guests will be once they arrive and join. Maybe they’re in the waiting room, but ultimately they’re in the webinar, and they’re watching your production.
They might be clicking on your offer or learning extra content. You might have their email and maybe afterward you emailed them a recording. Those are some of the main roles that you’re going to configure and set up for your webinars. You may have a tiny team of 2, 3, or 4 people, and you may give them different roles.
You may have some helpers or friendly guests that give you special abilities to see the chat or ask questions. Those are the main roles that you’ll set up for a successful webinar, and whether it’s a live event or pre-recorded, free or paid, all the variations, you’ll probably want to identify who has these rights regardless.
If they have more privileges ahead of time, that’s okay, but at least you’ve identified who does what and who has the abilities to do those things in case you need them to perform those functions, those features, based on their roles.
Running Your Webinar
Typically in a webinar, you might have a script, but you might do it in a spreadsheet format or a bulleted list, and that’s called a Run Of Show. It basically says who does what, at this point, this person does this thing, this other person does that thing, then this next stage happens, etc.
Let’s go over a typical Run Of Show for your webinar and talk about who might be doing what and what roles and features are used, to help you plan a more successful webinar.
Webinar Activated
This is where the host or the co-host launches the webinar, but it may not be fully on, where select folks can come and you can verify everything is working. We recommend launching the webinar in practice mode when they’re getting ready.
They might verify the camera, check that the slides are working, and wait for the key people to join before they let everybody else in. By activating the webinar, you’re going in, logging in, and making sure you can turn on the webinar.
Tweak Roles
Once you’re in the webinar, you might tweak some of the roles. You’re making sure the panelists are there. You might upgrade or downgrade people to say, oh, you’re an attendee, wait a minute, you should be a panelist, Or, ‘hey I’m going to assign this other person as an alternative host just in case something goes wrong with my connection.’
By tweaking all the roles, you’re looking at the main host and panelists and presenters, and you’re giving everybody the rights and you’re testing everything.
Screen Sharing
You’re going to get the screens ready, You might have an intro video that’ll play, or a deck, PowerPoint, Google Slides, keynote, etc. You want your content to be in presenter view and not editor mode with the outline, widget, and font selector buttons..
There can also be issues when you present with multiple monitors, one panel may show the editor and the other panel shows full screen content, but where are your webinar controls and are you sharing the right screen? There are all sorts of issues so you’ll want to ensure that your videos and content are ready and that the different people that might be on screen are arranged, and that you have a nice layout. If they’re not talking, you may want to hide them. These kinds of things happen at this stage.
Start Event
This is when the waiting room attendees come in and can see stuff. You might have somebody on your team do some small talk, like welcoming everybody in the chat room, for example, ‘Where are you from?’, ‘Welcome’, etc. by name or by just chatting. You may want to get everybody warmed up in the room before you officially start. Then you’ll wait a few minutes so that you can get the majority of people to join your webinar.
Handle Issues
Maybe several people are speaking, but somebody’s mic is on, you might want to mute them or send them a private note so that they can mute themselves. You might be experiencing internet lag, or maybe one person’s at a hotel or there’s a weather situation at one location, you’re going to be monitoring all that stuff to make sure that everybody feels confident in what they’re presenting, and there’s no issue.
If you have Call To Action (CTAs) or links that you’ll be sharing with your audience, you’ll want to make sure that those links work. Also, if you’re seeing anybody in the chat room that doesn’t have them, or maybe your webinar is presented in a frame and below your frame, there’s a button to do some main action, like order a service, order your coaching, buy your course, join your community. You’ll need to ensure that somebody is assigned to provide tech support in case any of these things happen.
They might also want to toggle a panelist. If a panelist is trying to speak, but maybe it doesn’t work, they might be able to switch to a different camera and do all these different things. You need somebody to handle these behind the scene issues and look around while the main speaker is ready to perform and have full energy.
Support Interactivity
This means monitoring the chat room by sending prompts like, where’s everybody from? or what are your biggest problems? Those kinds of prompts connect with them, especially while they’re waiting and the content is not there yet.
You might be collecting information. There may be questions and answers happening, among the audience. They may be asking about which technique or software to use, which problems are being handled, which books, blogs to read, etc.
This interactivity also includes polls and you might be sharing resources and links. You need to have this person supporting interactivity, as the behind-the-scenes MC is there.
Handle Questions
Somebody on your team, who could be the same person supporting interactivity, should also be handling questions. As things are happening in the large chat room that might be flying through with different topics, questions, and suggestions, you’ll need somebody on your team to pick and choose the best of those questions and give them directly to your presenters and hosts when they’re ready to entertain questions.
They might also have one or two pre-canned messages while their questions are being collected and you’re asking, ‘does anybody have any questions?’
Your host can start with a perfect common question, and then in addition to that, as all the different questions are coming in, you can have your helper role find one or two, really great questions and extract those from the big giant chat room into a direct message with the host and the presenters.
Close Event
Another important step in the webinar is closing out the event. That’s where a panelist is speaking and provides a recap followed by giving it back to the main host.
The main host then provides the final messaging, shares, links, and resources, and drives that main call to action that you want your live webinar people to do.
Remember this is the last few minutes and often what people remember when they go away. So recap, be positive, enthusiastic, and helpful.
Wrap Up
Finally, you’re going to wrap up the webinar. That’s where you stop the webinar and all the attendees are dismissed. Their session closes and you and your team can process or even email the recordings. There will be a variety of recordings that are stored. There might be one main recording or multiple recordings depending on cameras and audio.
You and your team should schedule some time to review the stats and maybe the reports of the webinar; how many people registered and how many people showed up? Those are the different roles that you’ll assign as you go through your webinars.
Recommended Webinar Platforms
There are many webinar platforms, but here are some of our favorites:
Frequently Asked Questions About Webinar Event Team Roles
Summary – Webinar Event Team Roles
Successful webinar events require a well-organized and coordinated team effort that is flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances. Each team member has a unique role and responsibility that contributes to the success of the event.
Assigning roles based on strengths and skills, providing training and support, and establishing clear communication channels can help the team work effectively and efficiently towards common goals. It’s important to utilize your team, and give them well-defined roles, capabilities, and features that they need to back each other up and think about possible problems.
You might want to give some of the different people slightly elevated roles so they can back each other up. With all these well-defined roles and a small team, you can ensure that your education and training company is well-equipped to plan, execute, and deliver a successful webinar event.
Tips for online courses teachers when assigning webinar event team roles:
- Schedule regular check-ins to discuss the run of show about the timeline and who will do what.
- Review key team member rights and be prepared to adjust roles in real time.
- Ensure each team member knows what is expected of them in their role. Assign roles based on strengths and skills.
- Provide team members with training like cheat sheets, access, and do practice sessions.
- Use real-time communication channels (e.g., chat, slack, discord, teams) to confirm and handle issues.
So, now you’re a lot smarter on webinars. Finally, don’t forget to go to start your webinars in practice mode so you can set up your speakers camera/mics and screen sharing before your audience enters the room.
You should be a little smarter now. Thanks for hanging out!
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