Are you ready to advance your business by hosting seminars? Your business can grow and you will get many benefits when you successfully host a seminar. Educational seminars are an effective marketing tool in the digital age. Business owners will take advantage of the seminar as a networking opportunity and demonstrating authority and expertise on your business.
But not all business owners can run a successful information-rich event like a seminar. This article will give you some tips on how to host your most successful seminar ever.
What makes a good seminar?
Seminars can be said to be good and successful if the audience can get information and continue to pay attention to what the host is saying. Hosts can bring the content to life with some practical examples. Audiences feel comfortable with information by taking notes, asking questions, and complimenting it with applause or networking opportunities.
Bringing seminars must adjust to the audience, because they have different capacities to capture information. You must use language that is easy to understand and topics that are not boring. Even though we can't expect all audiences to understand what we are conveying, at least many audiences are enthusiastic about the information we bring, and they want to know more about it.
How to make seminar more interesting?
Seminars are identical to presentations and the host will speak at the front until all the information is conveyed. Most of seminars only read the text in the presentation or display some images and videos.
Monotonous language style and when the host is fixated on the text and doesn't give full attention to the audience. When the audience feels that the information that the host is conveying is not very useful or interesting, then the audience gets bored easily and the information will be useless.
Don't do the usual seminars with dull PowerPoint presentations and long monologues, but create something different by creating a dialogue between the host and the audience, giving a corporate event gift, or using an icebreaker.
We know being a host in a successful seminar is not easy. We will provide some tips for you to host seminars successfully.
10 tips for hosting seminars successfully
- Build an audience persona
Audience personas are detailed representations of the target audience. You can't make a successful seminar if you can't target the right people. Make a list of the audience demographic traits, such as interests, occupation, education level, age, and geographic location. The young millennial attendee will be different from the retiree in terms of experience and knowledge.
- Focus on the topic
Don't make a topic that can expand into various discussions, but deliver a seminar that is concise, focused, and easy to understand. Hosting seminars with one topic is enough to make your audience satisfied. Look for some information that fits your topic, but can be something unique and add value to offer its audience.
- Make it personal
Before you get into the main lesson, let the audience know about your personality and tell stories that can make the audience more relatable to them. Sharing your personal experiences will maintain the audience's attention and keep them entertained. People will be curious about what you will convey, and make your presentation more meaningful.
- Educate is more important than selling
Even if you have a specific intention when hosting a seminar, you don't need to highlight too many sales pitches to generate leads. People attend seminars to learn new things and want to know what you have to say. If you make a survey about how people will attend events, you will find that more people want to learn something new compared to wanting to buy or hire a service.
But, if the delivery of your information can be useful for the audience, and your services or products become supporters of the information you provide, then the audience will not hesitate to rent or buy your products and services.
- Make a visually engaging seminars
Most people don't like just reading text in a presentation and seeing the host talking non-stop. Hosting seminars should not just be talking to the audience for a few hours, because it will make them bored. Ensure you include several visual elements, such as slides, videos, and animations. Don't forget to maintain eye contact with the audience, learn hand gestures, and get the attention of all the audience by walking around the room and not standing at one point.
- Rehearse your seminar
Whether you are a guest speaker or the main speaker on your own event, you must arrive a day early to conduct the rehearsal to ensure the presentation equipment, how can you interact with the audience, and what steps will you take when the seminar starts later .
Calculate your time when you prepare seminar material, don't let it be too short or too long. Check the microphones, your laptop, and display equipment to ensure there are no glitches when the seminar starts.
- Prepare gifts
Inform the audience that there will be attractive prizes for several people who pay attention to the seminar from start to finish. Ask a few questions about the key topics while you re-explain some of these important things to be a reminder for other audiences.
- Q & A sessions
People attend seminars to learn new things. They always have questions for you and want to know the answers in as much detail as possible. You don't need to schedule a Q&A session for last, because you can wrap it up in a structured way.
You can give the audience time to ask questions periodically, to give the audience time to study the lecture in small parts. Don't be afraid to look for fun ways to engage the audience, such as telling jokes, conducting polls, inviting the audience for live examples, or doing breakout activities.
- Networking opportunity
The large number of people who attend seminars is an opportunity for you to meet and connect with others. After the seminar is over, you can add several events such as coffee breaks or networking time to set out refreshment tables where attendees can mingle and talk about many things.
Providing the audience by providing special time for networking will increase their satisfaction in coming to your seminar.
- Give your contact information
Prepare relevant contact information and you can include it during presentations, or you can give business cards when you do coffee breaks. If you have prepared souvenirs, you can distribute the branded pens and give them to the attendees. Invite attendees to ask questions about your business, and take the time to share social media profiles and links to the audience.
