Producing Quality Webinars: or If You Build It They Will Come Rebecca Daniel-Burke, PhD Director, Professional Projects & Career Services

ACA Webinar Factoids Did you know that: The current DSM-5 webinar series has over 1,000 participants and has made over $120,000? Did you know that: Between 70-95% Of webinar participants are clinicians in private practice or community settings? (There is a live poll before each webinar)

Why are so many clinicians buying webinars? It’s difficult to attend an ACA conference if you are a clinician in private practice. There is the cost of the registration, airfare, hotel, food, etc.; and you are losing revenue the entire time. The webinars have included many clinical offerings. We keep each webinar to an hour, one could actually see a client before and after that hour.

Starting a Webinar Program

Partnering with a Company that Produces Webinars or DIY Partnering In the beginning we negotiated a “per registrant” cost Now that we have large numbers of registrants we have a “per live- event cost” DIY There are some do- it-yourself webinar programs out there The jury is out on the quality of these programs We wanted/needed the technical help and event producers to produce a quality program

Now you have a partner, you need a subject This is where it comes in handy if you have been a counselor in a variety of settings for years! Ask yourself: What is interesting to counselors? What do they need in terms of their practice? Their licensure? What is topical? What do they need to know? What do they want to know?

Use Your Personal Committee I ‘ll bet you know a lot of counselors Develop an list of counselors whom you respect Seek their wisdom Write to them asking them “What do counselors in your setting need/want to know?”

You Will Need to Consult Your Committee One More Time When you collaborate, discuss, and decide on a topic the next question is: Who is the right presenter for the topic? Start a list. There are the experts and there are presenters you discover through word of mouth. Then it is time to call the possible presenters and see how a conversation goes, after all a webinar is a form of conversation. It is very, very important to get the right presenters. They will make or break your webinars. They must commit to a date as soon you will have marketing materials made up and there is no turning back. When I started the DSM-5 six-part webinar series process, I had 15 names.

Dates, Times, Title Details, Details, Details By the time you discern: who is a good speaker, that they know the subject, what their schedule is, what your schedule is, you are left with six! You come up with a spiffy title like: Creative Counseling When You Don’t Have Time to be Creative and Why Does Culture matter, Isn’t Counseling just Counseling Regardless? Then it is time to head to your marketing department. You need flyers, ads, banners for websites, etc. You schedule blasts, social media campaigns, and consider every media vehicle available to you.

Training Time You will need to schedule training times with each presenter and your event person. 1.The three of you will meet online and go over the platform (this takes about ½ hour) 2.You will need to get the speakers slides a week before the live event. There may need to be tweaking. By this time the members have told me what they do and don’t like about the series. We adjust as we go.

The Day of the Event You meet ½ hour before the live event to go over the platform again and do sound checks. You need to be in a chat box with the participants, lining up their questions, answering questions, putting out fires. You have to remind them, should they need to leave, that they can watch it on-demand later. You need to announce: if we don’t get to all of your questions, we will get them to the presenter and send you all an with the responses.

Complaints The only complaint we ever get about webinars is that they cost money Webinars cost $2500 each to produce Podcasts cost $100 each to produce We continue to produce podcasts to include two recent ones on the DSM-5 and one (regarding a new ACA book: Solution-Focused Counseling) All 33 podcasts are free to members They cost $20 each to receive a CE

Cost to Members Webinar series 6 webinars 6 CEs Members $119 Non-members$159 Single webinar 1 webinar 1 CE Members $29.95 Non-members$39.95

The Day After the Event Remaining Questions Create a word document with all remaining questions Send it to your presenter with a big thank you. Ask if they can get the answers in about a week. Lesson Learned One counseling VIP wrote the answers in 40+ pages! I now tell the presenter it is fine if the answers are very brief. One VIP said the questions were so interesting that they gave him an idea for a new book!