[author: Carolyn Sweet]

These days, the digital landscape has a webinar offering around every corner. You’ve likely attended many, and perhaps even presented a few during the past year. You have also likely encountered dozens of articles offering valuable, yet familiar advice on how to promote, present, and engage audiences via the various webinar platforms.

We would like to move beyond those general tips and provide some behind the scenes insight on how our firm has developed a system that makes the webinar process as painless as possible for our presenters.

Whether your firm is large or small you can likely relate to the limitations of non-billable time that your fellow associates or partners have to offer. Here at Stotler Hayes Group we have been providing monthly webinars since 2017 and have been able to hone-in-on an organization system for webinar planning and prep. Before you put another thing on your team’s to-do list in the midst of this overwhelming season take a moment to read our tips on how you can get the greatest possible benefit from the non-billable hours put into webinar content creation.

Lay the Groundwork

We all know that project management works best when there is a system of accountability in place. Thus, your first order of business should be choosing a team member to lead the charge on the firm’s webinar plan. This can be an attorney or another team member who has the time and organizational skills to get the job done (your first move to save those non-billable hours). Depending on the size of your firm you may want to enlist a team of folks to tackle strategic planning of your webinar series.

Plan Ahead

We have found that webinars come together with ease when they are mapped out well in advance. Each fall our team meets to pour over the data from the past year. We look at what topics drew the most crowds and take client feedback and ideas into consideration. After intense discussion and collaboration, we plan a year’s worth of webinars out in advance. For us that number is a minimum of 12, but by all means chose a number that it achievable for your particular practice.

If you are just getting into the webinar game this may seem overwhelming, but trust us, the few non-billable hours you put into this one meeting will save you time and energy throughout the year as well as ensure that you meet your webinar goals.

If you are just getting started you won’t have webinar data to pour over, but you likely have a wealth of data from other sources that can guide your topic choices – you know your clients and their needs more than anyone. If you don’t feel you have a handle on what your clients would be most interested in, provide a quick and concise questionnaire to garner ideas. Simply asking clients “is there anything you want to learn about?” has led us to some excellent webinar topics.

Pull from a Pool of Knowledge

If you aren’t the expert, find the expert. For our firm this comes easily, we have a staff of 28 attorneys from across the nation which allows us to enlist presenters that are best suited for a particular topic.

If you don’t have a large practice you can always pull in colleagues and industry connections (another way to keep non-billables low on your end) to create dynamic content that is useful to your target audience. Not only can this lead to valuable collaboration, but it can forge relationships that can benefit both your businesses - cross promotion is a powerful thing!

The most important thing is that you find presenters well suited to the topic and invite them to present well in advance.

Ease the Burden of Content Creation

Once you have your presenters lined up schedule and calendar deadlines for content creation and be very specific about what you need. At our firm we require the presenters to provide us an outline with bullet points for each slide. Once the outline is submitted, we have our designer incorporate the copy and add graphics to create a branded PowerPoint. Using a non-attorney support staff to create the PowerPoint and other presentation materials is an efficient way to reduce your non-billables and ease the burden on your presenters.

Make sure you have a Moderator

Ideally your moderator would be your team leader or someone active in the webinar planning process. This could be someone who chimes in during the webinar guiding the content and conversation or just a dependable team member making the magic happen behind the scenes.

Presenters shouldn’t have to focus on anything but being in the moment and engaging with their audience. Having a moderator to start the broadcast, field technical questions, and make sure everything runs smoothly can make a world of difference. When presenters are calm, collected and happy the audience gets the most out of the webinar experience.

Enjoy the Ride

These days, human connection matters more than ever. Sometimes these non-billable endeavors can be refreshing and serve to reconnect you with team members you don’t often get the chance to work with. Make the most of this collaborative experience by engaging with your team members and clients in a new way!