Challenges for Webcasting—and How to Fix Them

So webcasts are awesome. What can go wrong?

What Are Some of the Challenges That a Webcast Can Face?

1. Your presentation can be boring, confusing, or just badly prepared.
2. Your delivery can fail.
   1. Viewers at the office can have a very different experience than users at home or on the road.
   2. Users can have trouble viewing on mobile devices.
   3. Your broadcast can have low quality.
   4. Your broadcast can look great—until the feed drops or pauses to buffer.
   5. Your broadcast can be high quality and reliable—but cause bottlenecks that slow down or stop everything else in your network.
3. You can exceed the maximum number of concurrent users on your plan.
4. You can produce a great event, but then have trouble transitioning the webcast from live to VOD because your video solution is siloed across multiple use cases and departments.
5. You can have a great recording that no one can find or access.

But don’t be discouraged. With the right tools and a little planning, you can avoid every single pitfall on this list.

Your Webcasting Checklist for Success

What are the key questions you want to ask yourself as you set up your webcast?

1. Do I have a content plan? Have I planned out not only what I want to say, but what message I want my audience to leave with?
2. Do I have a delivery plan? Have I made sure that my network can support the traffic this webcast is going to cause, for the maximum number of viewers that could show up, so that viewers receive a high-quality experience without throttling the rest of the network?
3. Have I tested my delivery? Am I sure that viewers can watch on any device, wherever they are? Do they receive clear video and audio, without buffering?
4. Are my presenters comfortable with their presenting tools? Do they know how to access their notes and look ahead at their coming slides? Do they understand how to use the Q&A features and the live analytics?
5. Are my producers comfortable with their production tools? Do they know how to monitor QoS and what to do if there’s a problem?
6. Have I given my viewers ways to engage with the webcast? Am I offering a user-friendly Q&A experience? Can viewers focus in on the slides vs the speaker, as their interest changes? Can they use DVR to go back and review points they missed?
7. Do I have a plan for what happens after the webcast? How will people find this presentation later? Can my viewers use the same URL to find the recording as the live stream? Can they navigate by chapters or search for specific text within the slides? Will the webcast recording be available with other company videos, or is it in a separate silo?

Walk through your entire plan when you first start. A little thinking ahead can avoid webcasting challenges before you get anywhere near them.

Interested in more details on planning a webcast? Get the guide.