Webinar is a portmanteau of the words “web” and “seminar” to mean “a small online meeting”. Today, we’re familiar with the word through podcasts, where the host brings guests to exchange ideas and create an atmosphere suitable for brainstorming. Webinars can be used for anything from school classes to government meetings.

Anyone can create a webinar live stream, though knowing what you’re doing mitigates problems and makes things go smoothly. This reduces the time and effort needed, letting you experiment more with your content ideas. Let’s take a look at what you need to know and how to make sure your guests and your viewers love your webinar streams.

Streaming a webinar on your own

Whenever you have to deal with weaving different things together, you have to work a lot to achieve perfect harmony. In terms of a webinar, this means you’ll most often have audio and video overlap and other related issues. They can be minor but will make your webinar appear unprofessional and might annoy the audience.

Ideally, you would have multiple devices and the ability to test your webinar capabilities before the event. In this way, you’d be able to troubleshoot the problems right away. The most common problems are due to faulty hardware and outdated software. So, you should aim for maximum compatibility and ask your guests to use an identical setup as much as possible.

Webinar streaming tips

You should start out by choosing a solid streaming platform. This can be any of the social media platforms you and your guests have an account on or even a paid one. There is no best streaming platform except the one everyone is comfortable with, so do take your time to try them all out.

Once the platform is chosen, you should ensure all the hardware and software is working properly. Contact your guests and have them connect to you individually. In this way, you’ll know everything is working on their end, including their internet connection. If not, you’ll have a general idea what’s wrong to start fixing it.

You and your guests should next have solid webcams and microphones. They don’t have to be the most expensive; something of mid-range price will work just fine. Remember that only one app can use the webcam at any given time, so if you have a webcam open in Skype, no other app will be able to see its video feed. There’s a lot of streaming tricks like that and we know them all.

How would a professional do a webinar?

Live streaming professionals who arrange webinars most often use specialized webinar software and avoid public platforms. The reason for this is that general video streaming software, such as Skype, works one-on-one but falls apart if more people join the stream.

Since it’s only natural that guests will sometimes get disconnected from the webinar and have to rejoin it, you want something robust that can endure this process. That’s typically software specifically designed to handle reconnection attempts.

Similar logic goes for public streaming platforms. Even when they proffer the ability to do webinars, they will most often stutter and hang right when the chat becomes the most exciting. So, the professional would choose a small, robust and specialized platform just for the purpose.

There’s a lot of nuance that goes into choosing the right software and hardware for streaming a webinar. If you go at it yourself, you can expect a lot of frustration as you experiment with different settings. That can be rewarding but if you want a live webinar stream today, you’ll need to contact a professional or even a company.

We provide webinar streaming help

We have extensive knowledge of streaming software, hardware and platforms, allowing us supreme flexibility when it comes to fulfilling customer wishes. No matter what kind of webinar you’re after, we can make it happen, so get in touch with us.

One of the first steps we’ll make is ensure you and your guests enjoy the maximum amount of compatibility. No matter which hardware you’re all using, we can find the most compatible solution that fits everyone and provides the most convenience. That way, you can dedicate yourself to the webinar instead of wasting time on technicalities.

If you get stuck setting up a live webinar, ping us and we’ll gladly advise you what to do next. If you feel  overwhelmed by all the technical terms and acronyms or by all the troubleshooting, let us handle your webinar live stream. Your audience is waiting for your webinar, so let’s not make them wait a moment longer.