Webinar Myths in 2021 – How Long Should a Webinar Be?

Online Webinars Solution are a great way to engage people online to spread ideas and concepts on a common platform. The COVID pandemic has led to a rapid increase in people organizing online webinars on various platforms such as Zoom, Cisco WebEx, etc. Organizers have to plan webinars and meetings effectively to ensure the participant can make the most out of them and the best way to do that is by optimizing the duration of webinars. Here are a few insights on how long a webinar should be to continuously engage participants and ensure maximum output from webinars:

Introduction
Webinars have grown to become an integral part of our careers since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as they help us stay updated and in touch with the recent advancements in our respective fields. Social distancing and self-isolation have motivated people to learn new hobbies and skills to enhance their persona and webinars have helped them learn and teach them conveniently. Organizations and companies conduct webinars for their employees on a weekly or monthly basis to improve their knowledge and guide them in adapting to changing trends in the industry.

It is essential to plan out such educational activities to ensure all participants follow the programs and pay attention to them. There are different perspectives on how to optimize the duration of webinars as they are modified to suit the respective needs of the organizers and the nature of the subjects discussed. A proper understanding of the various factors that are involved in the decision-making process helps determine the right duration for your webinars.

Factors That Determine Duration of Webinars
Webinars usually last for duration of between 30 minutes to 1 hour with a brief introduction of the speaker for about 5 minutes followed by discussion of the topic for at least 35-40 minutes. It is followed by a question and answers session engaging the participants and communicating with them to clear the doubts and provide them with a clear idea about the topic.

Webinars have evolved with time and transitioned to suit the needs of new listeners and organizers. People started tweaking the durations to best suit their ideology and topics and engage the listeners continuously ensuring future participation. Here are a few factors that determine the duration of webinars:

Nature of Webinar: Webinars are of different types such as marketing webinars, product, and services demonstration webinars, Continuous education webinars, Formal corporate webinars, Panellist discussions, hobby teaching webinars, etc. Marketing webinars are usually conducted for 30-40 minutes followed by extended Q&A sessions to communicate more with the participants. Continuous education classes are conducted for a duration of 45 minutes to 1 hour to discuss in detail the different aspects of the topic within the average attention span of participants which is usually 55 minutes.

Paid seminars and Hobby teaching seminars such as cooking classes, art classes, music classes , etc go on for as long as required by the participants as they stay hooked on to their topic of interest irrespective of the time durations. It is essential to give breaks and engage them with Q&A sessions or interesting activities during these webinars.

Frequency of Webinars: Webinars conducted on a weekly or monthly basis should be planned out properly with content structured evenly throughout the program. Participants should not be loaded with too much information during the early sessions of the webinar as it might bore them out and result in quitting the sessions. Such webinars should be planned out for an average period of 30-45 minutes and the participants should be left wanting for more and waiting for the next session.

Why Should You Stick to Your Time Frame?
Participants join webinars with a fixed time frame set in their minds and it is a must that organizers stick to the pre-planned durations as their attention starts to deviate to the time frame once the time frame is extended. They lose interest in the topic and end up focussing on when the seminar would end rather than focus on what is happening in the webinar. A properly planned webinar should convey its key discussion point in the early and middle parts of the session and use the final part of the webinar to reinforce the points and drive them to the participants increasing their retention.

Conclusion
Webinars are quite similar to classes and marketing sessions in their ultimate objective – ensure participants receive the message loud and clear with their undivided attention during the sessions. Optimize the duration of your seminars and increase the output of your webinars to the maximum. Understand the nature of your sessions and design them innovatively to engage the maximum number of participants during your pre-planned time duration.