7 Easy Ways to Improve Pre-recorded Webinars

Why are pre-recorded webinars and presentations so ineffective?

Here’s my confession: I have never watched the full length of a webinar that someone sent me after the event.

I know I’m not alone. I skim and try to find the information I was looking for, and when I can’t find it I give up and look somewhere else.

This is pretty typical behaviour when we’re looking for a way to solve a problem, we don’t want to waste time and energy on dead ends and shallow information. Especially in this moment in time where we’re surrounded by way too many inputs and superficial and hollow AI generated content.

I’m not saying webinars or presentations are inherently bad—the ones I’m talking about are usually about an hour long and they tend to bury the lede. It’s the ultimate case of “this could have been an email”.

This happens a lot in training and new employee onboarding, someone records a presentation they made to new employees one time explaining a policy or procedure, and this hour-long video becomes the new go-to format for the information.

So, what’s the answer then? Should we stop making training presentations or providing webinars to people who can’t make it?

No, feel free to provide the video! Some people may use it and find it effective, but provide some other formats to make sure the important information is easy to find and understand. Here are some suggestions:

👁️ Add a descriptive title and a lead-in paragraph before the video which tells viewers what they will learn and what to pay attention to.

📃 Provide an accurate transcript to accompany the video and organize it so that it is easy to skim and identify key sections and points.

👩‍💻 Add chapters to the video with descriptive titles so that it is easy to find key sections.

🎞️ Break the video down into smaller logical chunks where you add a clear and concise summary or knowledge check after each section.

🎥 Rework the transcript into a 250 word teaser video script you can make into a more engaging and approachable video that gets people excited and interested to dig deep in the long form content.

✍️ Rework the transcript into a 500 word article which lets you explain it in the most clear and concise way possible.

🪄 Reimagine the transcript into a 1000 word script for an interactive elearning module which lets you elaborate more than the article but is more clear and engaging than the webinar.

To sum it up, there are so many simple ways to improve this format and make it more accessible and useful! You don’t need to throw it out, but let’s put a little bit more effort into it so that it actually becomes something people can use.