When you have a large webinar, it can be challenging to manage questions because there are so many of them and you never have time to answer them all. You don’t want to spend all of your time answering questions because you have a presentation to make, but you also don’t want to leave any of your attendees in the dark because you couldn’t answer their question. Here are some strategies that you can use to make sure that you answer as many questions as possible.
Generally, in a webinar, all attendees are muted by default. You are the only one that has the ability to talk. Most platforms give you the ability to unmute individuals but this is a very unproductive way to answer questions because some people will not have their microphones set up correctly and it wastes time.
Some platforms incorporate chat, and that’s a much better way to take questions. If your platform doesn’t offer that capability, then you may have to use Twitter or Facebook to take questions. In either case, here are some tips to help you get questions answered.
- Get some help. Have someone helping you that can track questions so that you aren’t answering something that has already been asked. They can also filter out the most important questions and depending upon how much they know about your topic, may be able to answer some of the questions themselves.
- Ask people to make their questions brief. Someone who is telling you their life story just to ask a question is going to waste valuable time that could be used to answer other questions.
- Have information available online that will answer all of the basic questions about your topic so that people can get answers, which leaves time for questions that aren’t covered.
- Explain that you have very limited time for questions and ask people to email you with questions that they don’t need an immediate answer to. Tell them that you will answer their email questions over the next few days and then spend your time answering questions that require an answer as soon as possible.
You definitely want to take questions from your attendees and having a moderator and following these tips will help you answer as many good questions as possible and provide the information that your audience needs.
