Most people book their work calendars by the hour.  Plan to start a couple minutes late, and plan to wrap up a few minutes early.  More people will see the beginning because they have time to get back to their desk and login, and more people will hear the conclusion because they’re not ducking out to the next meeting.

Optimize the attendees who see all the content.  Don’t use the whole hour.

There are some good reasons to purposefully start a web seminar a little bit late.  The best reason is that a good percentage of attendees are going to be late getting there (i.e., a previous meeting runs long, they forgot where they put the login info, or they’re just tardy).  

Problem 1:  If you start your web seminar exactly at the top of the hour, and the opening welcome script that gives instructions about how the interactivity of the day is going to flow gets done in a minute or two, then many attendees don’t hear what you want them to hear.

Problem 2:  If you start late to accommodate late arrivers (assuming that you have this positive reason and that you’re not starting late because of a negative like a later presenter), inevitably someone sitting in the audience will immediately send in a chat or Q&A submission snipping ‘you should start on time’ or ‘is this thing going to start soon?’  

Solved:  Use a countdown deck. 

Quickly, here’s how. 

1. Create a set of slides that whose purpose is to cycle by those waiting for the event to begin.  Think of these like the preview slides you see at a movie theatre that are trying to sell you popcorn or telling you to turn off your cell phone.
2. Plan that number of slides relative to a time increment that you’re going to flip them at. 
3. Start them before the clock hits the top of the hour, and let them tell everyone who’s in the audience exactly what the countdown is before the event starts.

More deeply…

• I use a set of 12 slides – duplicated
  • Content of those slides include variations of the following
    • The dial in phone number for the event
    • The phone number to event support in case they need help
    • A promotion of an upcoming event they should register for
    • A promotion for a past event whose recording is now posted in the event archive
    • Quips, quotes, or stats
    • Bios of the presenters
  • Set one I use for a cycling slide show
    • I set those slides to change every 15 seconds
    • I start the cycling slide show about ½ hour before the event starts to catch any very early entrants
  • Set two I use for the countdown deck
    • This set is identical to the first, except that on each slide I add a callout (usually a star auto-shape)
    • In the first slide, that star has text inside that says “This event will start promptly in 3 minutes”
    • In the second slide, that star (usually on a little different spot on the slide than on the first slide), the text says, “This event will start promptly in 2 minutes, 45 seconds”
    • This set I start at one minute before the top of the hour, meaning that my 12 slides, at 15 seconds each, count down to a start time at two minutes past the top of the hour.

Now the audience knows exactly what’s going on.  It’s not so late that everyone is mad.  And attendees ready to be engaged are increased.  Every time.

Use a countdown deck to start late and create happy attendees.

Part of the cause of ‘death by PowerPoint’ is presenters who adhere to outmoded rules.  So if those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, here’s a short PowerPoint history lesson that you hopefully will never forget.

What is the pain?  Too much content on a slide which doesn’t move quickly enough.

PowerPoint pundits then created rules-of-thumb for presenters designed to help.  Examples of these rules are ‘5X5’ and ‘the two-minute rule.’

The 5X5 rule (and variations of it) remind you to have ‘no more than five bullet points with no more than five words each.’

The ‘two-minute rule’ tries to remind presenters only to spend no more than a couple minutes per slide.

But these rules were created for presenters who are in-person.  Imagine, if you will, a television program that spends two minutes on a single, still image!  You get the idea – the old rules do not work in a new medium.

An extreme example of a presenter who gets it is Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, and a pile of others.  I once moderated a web seminar where he showed up with 109 slides…to present at an event that is supposed to last an hour, or less, including Q&A.

Ironically, Gitomer’s ‘getting it’ is because he knows his audience really well, not because he’s a pundit about effective web seminars.  Salespeople are a sharp, typically ADHD-afflicted bunch.  My guess (I never asked) is that Jeffrey figured out that you keep it moving or lose then to the hangover from last night’s outing.  With one thought per slide, and many slides that were simple, single images, those 109 slides flew by and the web seminar was done inside the hour.  Just under 30 seconds per slide.

Use only one thought per slide.  Don’t use more content, use more slides.

1080 Group once conducted a short survey to determine how many people multi-task while attending a web seminar.  The answer wasn’t surprising:  90% of respondents said they do some or all the time.

I think my own behavior is typical of many:  since we can’t always afford a full hour just to sit and watch,  we check email, answer cell-phone calls, etc., while occasionally checking in on what’s going on.

The remedy?

Keep it moving.

Make the dialogue irresistible.

Don’t write out bullet points.  Especially if the presenter isn’t adding any additional content of substance.

Don’t ask, “Is my audience multi-tasking?”  They are.  Ask “How do I produce a web seminar so good that they don’t want to.”