Now that you have come up with your webinar topic, it is time to plan how to engage your attendees during and after your webinar.  This actually sounds easier than it is, but the hubze squad has two things for your to keep in mind:

Engage your attendees during your webinar.

There are a lot of things that you can do within a webinar.  For one, you could use a webinar service that has features like chats, polls, Q&As and hand raising.  If you are running a webinar that has a lot of attendees, or you simply want to take advantage of these features, then consider holding your webinar using services as GoToWebinar.  This will also help you ensure that you do not overload your bandwidth, as what would likely happen if you host your webinar yourself.

Webinar attendees like your Twitter followers or Facebook page likers do not like to be ignored or to just sit there doing nothing but listen to you.  Involve them in the process.  Have a moderator ask them questions such as their location or what they expect from the webinar.  Welcome them as they come online.

Polls are also a great way to engage your audience.  This also helps them to stay more focused, instead of checking on their e-mails or doing other stuff.

Question and answer portions in webinars are also a great way to establish your credibility and to really engage your attendees.  You could also send out questions to your attendees and offer them prizes if they answer correctly.

Keep your webinar short.

Short-form webinars are on the rise.  Most companies are pressured to come up with webinars lasting an hour or more because they think that it is the standard.

But the truth is, webinar attendees usually encounter two problems: information overload and short attention spans.

Guy Kawasaki, a former executive at Apple and a speaker, has said that a webinar should have 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font.  That means that shorter webinars are better if you want to leave an impression on your attendees.

Engage your customers after your webinar.

The hubze squad has already touched on discussing your webinars with your customers and attendees and soliciting feedback on social media as a way to get more information and topic ideas for future webinars and also to engage them.

But more than this, you could also archive your slides on your website, then place a link to it on your social media accounts.  If you have an account at SlideShare.com, it could be a good idea to upload your slides there or other similar sites.

This would help you extend the life of your webinar content.  You certainly spent a lot of time putting up a webinar, so why should you trash everything after the live event ends?

These slides and webinar materials could be used as great content for your blog or your site too.  This way you could attract more people coming from search engines who are looking for information on your webinar topic.  Make sure to post upcoming webinars together with your webinar content so that people could sign up for your event.

You could also offer your materials to your attendees.  In exchange for their e-mail addresses and some information about them, you send them the materials through e-mail.