Online webinars are their own skillset. Here are a few tips to make yours a success using GoToWebinar.

1. Scheduling Webinars. Scheduling a webinar is relatively easy, but it takes longer than a meeting. We recommend that you set up one webinar first called WEBINAR TEMPLATE and schedule it for December 31st of every year. Make sure it has all the features and logos associated with it that are fairly standard. Then, for every other webinar you schedule, simply use that as Copy From. For example, we created a template that has our logo in the branding, has an evaluation survey that we created, and has default organizers. Now, when we create new webinars, we don't have to recreate surveys or re-upload our logo each time.

2. Select Your Phone Conference Option Carefully. When you schedule a webinar with GoToWebinar, you are given a choice to use GoToWebinar's phone conferencing service (participants pay their own long distance) or an alternate. We recommend that if you have more than 30 participants, you use a number that is not from FreeConference.Com (which is what GoToWebinar uses as their integrated option) because we've had mixed results with that service. Explore InterCall as a high quality, low cost option.

If you use GoToWebinar's phone option, VERY IMPORTANT: There are three audio roles for your participants: Organizer, Panelist, and Attendee. We recommend that you COPY the number that shows up under Panelist and PASTE it where you see ATTENDEE. Also, COPY the access code that shows up under Panelist and PASTE it where you see ATTENDEE. Why? Because, GoToWebinar assumes you want a lecture-style presentation. As such, the number they automatically give you for attendees is a muted line. No one can speak on the call, only listen. Panelists can speak and mute their own line. Organizers can speak and mute everyone's line. We simply copy the Panelist number to replace the Attendee one, so that everyone who receives the login information receives a number that allows them to speak and mute themselves.

3. Send a reminder email. GoToWebinar will send an automatic email to everyone who has signed up for your training. I usually send an email from my own email account to registrants reminding them to look for that email and to attach any presentation materials I will be showing.

4. Start early & Introduce Your Space. We like to encourage an icebreaker for webinars, and we encourage you to use a quick PowerPoint to introduce your users to the Webinar features.

5. Determine what role you want attendees to have. In GoToWebinar there are three different roles for viewers. Each role has different privileges.

• Organizers can do everything: control what the viewer is seeing, launch polls, end the meeting for all, change roles of attendees, answer questions, and respond to chats.
• Panelists can do some things: they can view all attendees in the webinar, they can chat with each other and the organizer.
• Attendees have a limited Dashboard. They do not see anyone else in the Attendee list (they don't have that panel). They cannot chat. They can use the Q&A feature to ask questions, but they can't see what other questions people are asking.

At NTAP, we usually elevate everyone to panelist so that we can foster brainstorming or idea sharing through the chat. And, it allows everyone to see everyone else attending. We recommend this to you as well. By keeping people as attendees, think of it as a lecture hall. Everyone is anonymously listening, but can't really interact with others in the online room.

6. Assign Someone Else as Organizer When You Start. If something happens to your connection, the other organizer can manage the meeting until you can rejoin.

7. Check the reports. These are excellent and available when you log into GoToWebinar. You can see who was attentive and responses to surveys. Great feature.