25 Ways to Promote Your Webinar

Here are 25 surefire ways to promote your next webinar: 

1. Create an #OfficialHashtag: Prior to promoting your webinar, be sure to create an official event hashtag. Use this #OfficialHashtag throughout the rest of your promotion efforts.  
2. Create a Registration Landing Page: Creating a registration page is absolutely vital to the success of your event.  For more information, check out this great Wishpond article.
3. Create a Slideshow or Slide Deck: Once created, you can use individualized slides, images, graphics, statistics or even pull quotes for nurturing campaigns and other post-webinar marketing efforts.
4. Create an Archived Webinar Link: People are busy. Even those who are dying to attend your webinar may have other obligations on the day of. Don’t lose out on a connection because of bad timing. Be sure to archive your webinar and share it with those who did not attend the live event.
5. Write a Pre-Event Blog Post: Never assume that your existing audience knows about your events; you need to tell them! Be sure to provide an overview of the topic being addressed, bullet points outlining what attendees will learn and short bio’s for all webinar presenters. Don’t forget to include a link to the registration page!  
6. Update Your Website Properties: Whether your organization has a simple “events” section or a full web calendar, be sure to update your applicable Web properties with the upcoming webinar registration.
7. Send an Email Invite: One week prior to the event, send your existing clients and prospects a personalized e-mail inviting them to attend your upcoming webinar. Be sure to include social media buttons in the email so the recipients are encouraged to share the event information via their own social networks. 
8. Send an Email Reminder: Whether it’s one day before, one hour before, or both, be sure to send out webinar reminder notification to all registrants prior to your event.
9. Promote the Webinar on Social Media: Be sure to push out pre-event webinar notifications over Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn at least a week prior to the event. If a visual slide deck has been created, don’t overlook the power of promotion through Instagram and Pinterest. 
10. Then Promote it Again: Putting out a single notification over your social media channels is not enough. Develop a cadence with your social media promotion and be sure to push out multiple messages before, during and even after the event.
11. Promote Your Event in Spanish: Based on U.S. Census data, Hispanics make up 17% of the total U.S. population. That’s nearly 1 in 5 people. To learn more about reaching your audience in Spanish, check out this great article from the Harvard Business Review.
12. Leverage the Presenters: Ask your presenters to promote the event over their personal Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages. It’s great publicity for both of you.
13. Leverage your Employees: Don’t overlook the power of your own employees as you promote your events. Encourage sales staff to share information on the upcoming webinar with their current prospects and consider asking the rest of your employees to promote your events over their personal Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn channels if they feel comfortable doing so. 
14. Issue a Press Release: While alerting your existing audience is a great first step, syndicating your content over the wire will allow you to get the word out to new prospects. Think it’s overkill? See for yourself how many companies are promoting their events on the wire.
15. Live-Tweet your Event: Using the #officialhashtag, have an event moderator live-tweet key takeaways from the webinar.
16. Hold a Post-Event Q&A Tweet Session: Using the #officalhashtag, ask registrants to take their unanswered questions to Twitter for a post-event Q&A session.
17. Recap the Event in your Newsletter: Who isn’t looking to fill their newsletter with new information? Be sure to include a link to the archived webinar in your monthly newsletter.
18. Post-Event Blog Post: Whether you provide a list of key takeaways or appropriate content from post-event Q&A’s, it’s important to keep talking about your event after it ends. Don’t forget to provide your blog readers with a link to the archived webinar.
19. Add the Event to Your Website Archive: Whether it’s on your “Past Events” section or in a dedicated “Webinar” section, be sure to include a link to the archived webinar on your company website.
20. Social Media Follow Up: Just because your webinar event is over doesn’t mean your social media promotion stops. Be sure to thank your attendees, and encourage those who were unable to make the session to watch it on their own time via the archived link.
21. Add Your Deck to SlideShare: Upload your webinar presentation slide deck to Slideshare. It’s a no-brainer.
22. Post your Webinar to YouTube: Another self-explanatory step that should be an automatic part of your post-event checklist.
23. Create Bite-Sized Video Clips: With some simple video editing, a one-hour webinar event can easily be broken out into multiple bite-sized clips. Break out your individual presenters, pull out individual statistics or interesting quotes and promote these pieces across your social channels.
24. Monitor Industry Trends: Whether your event took place last week or last month, when a related topic appears in the news you should be weighing in and including pertinent content from your webinar. 
25. Issue a Year-End Webinar Recap: December is the perfect time to revisit your organizational successes. This includes industry awards, top blog posts and yes, all of your webinars.

Follow these simple tips and you’ll be well on your way to increasing your organization’s visibility and becoming thought leaders in your industry.

For more tips and tricks on drawing in the right audience for your next online event, check out:
3 Keys to Converting Traffic into Leads

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles via FreeDigitalPhotos.net