How to Effectively Utilize Facebook and Twitter for Webinars

If you've done your research on how to run webinars before, then you know how important it is to have a great outline, to do a dry run, and how to properly craft offers for the end of the presentation.

Another key aspect to any webinar strategy is keeping it interactive to increase attendee engagement, and one of the best ways to do this is through social media.

Facebook

We've given a lot of tips in the past on just how awesome Facebook is for your business (if you've read our free eBook “A Guide To Mastering Facebook Marketing” and you've taken our advice into account, then you've undoubtedly seen firsthand just how great it can be).   Facebook can also play an integral role when it comes to your webinar, and in a number of different ways.  There’s the standard “advertise your event!” on Facebook, but here are some other tactics that we've had work extremely well in the past:

Building A Community

This is what social media really is all about - community.  Before your webinar, you can create a Facebook page related to your business that’s dedicated just to that webinar that allows the attendees to have a place to meet one another, discuss topics, and learn with one another.  It also gives you one single place where you can provide information to your attendees about upcoming webinars, blogs, product launches, and so on.  These separate Facebook pages also allow you to somewhat keep your leads segmented (at least for a short period of time), so you’ll know what sort of content to present to them for further nurturing.

Exclusive Offers

Another benefit to building a Facebook page dedicated just to a webinar (or a webinar series) is that you then have a place to offer exclusive targeted deals and promotions to these attendees.  Some time throughout your webinar, to help keep your attendees interested, tell them about your Facebook page and why they should join.  Mention that after the presentation this is where you’ll be providing more information like discount codes, product giveaways, and more.

Group Chat

The final feature that we’ll talk about here is group chat and how you can use Facebook group chat for your webinar.  Group chat can be a great platform for conducting a live Q&A session at the end of the webinar, or you may want to use it to hold live focus group chats with your customers and prospects.

Twitter

Twitter is similar to Facebook in that it allows you to blast out messages about your upcoming events and webinars, but there are features that come with Twitter that Facebook doesn't offer, like:

Use Your Competitors’ Leads

The cool thing about Twitter is that you can tap right into your competition by using the Twitter search tool to see what their followers are saying.  We go into this in detail in our eBook “The Ultimate Cheat Sheet For Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn” if you want to learn more about the art of “spying” on your competition through Twitter.  Keep your eye on your competition’s Twitter stream, because you never know when a follower may pose a question to your competition and when you may be able to swoop right in and respond to their question… and add a little blurb about how you’re hosting a webinar next week that’s going to be answering that question, and more.

Unique Hashtags

In order to keep all comments and questions related to your webinar in line on Twitter, make sure that you come up with a unique hashtag that speaks about your webinar and that’s memorable.  Encourage your attendees to make use of the hashtag by not only promoting it on Twitter, but by adding it to the bottom of any learning materials or presentation slides that you’ll be using.

Live Q&A Period

If you’re not into the idea of using Facebook group chat for a live question and answer period, Twitter is definitely the way to go.  Once you have that unique hashtag set up, tell your attendees that if they have any questions about the webinar to include that hashtag in any queries that you have.  Then after the presentation you’ll be able to go back and answer those questions that they may have.