Pre-recorded vs. live webinars – making the right choice

When it comes to watching something live or recorded – it’s all the taste that matters! Deciding whether to go live or not must be very challenging, especially for those who are about to face their audience for the first time. Precisely choosing the content to be delivered, targeted audience, etc. are some of the key aspects one should consider while choosing to go live or recorded. While live webinars allow you to interact and deal with queries of the audience directly, a recorded one gives you the freedom to be in your comfort zone.

Recently, due to rapid advances in technology, there are a lot of webinar platforms one can choose to go live.

What is a Webinar?

The term is defined as more of a video workshop, guest lecture, or PowerPoint presentation concluding it as a mixture of “Web” with “Seminar”.

These solutions help to bring different people together to work for a common goal, sharing ideas, news, and information and building authority around a particular brand.

Different types of Webinar Platforms

Having a good knowledge of your webinar goals, how to use webinars as a part of your business market strategy, and of course, your budgeting options here are some of the most popular webinar platforms –

Dreamcast

Dreamcast is undoubtedly one of the leading competitors when it comes to hosting virtual events like- webinars, virtual trade shows, webcast events, etc.

The webinar services provided by Dreamcast are highly customizable according to the needs of the businesses and their budgeting options.

It also supports multistreaming platforms so that a single event can be viewed on different channels with ease.

Overall, if you want a one-stop solution for all your event hosting needs with dedicated supported staff & variety of options to choose from then Dreamcast is a good match for you.

DaCast

Da Cast comes with a unique feature to attract its customers by providing contract-free services.

It allows users to signup for free and cancel it anytime if they are not satisfied with its services.

With its Paywalls & Monetization features, da cast has a lot to offer. Creators thus have a lot to choose from the lot like- pay-per-view options, in-stream advertising, etc.

Adobe Connect

Claiming to provide complete control over the virtual sessions, adobe stands quite separate from the rest of the competitors because of its worldwide popularity as an Acrobat Reader.

It helps in delivering quality training & learning sessions with highly customizable brand engagement webinars for personalized high-quality meetings.

Webex

With its easy-to-navigate and high-productivity features, Webex turns out to be a perfect solution for all hybrid event needs.

With ease in collaboration merging Webex offers a wide range of services to choose from its best-in-class services.

Pre-recorded vs. live webinars

Pre-recorded webinar

Basically, these webinars are recorded before going “live” and they can be played as per the convenient timing of the audience as they are offered on-demand.

It releases a lot of pressure while performing multiple tasks at the same time while handling the event single-handedly. The online webinar platform allows you to pre-record your presentations, run polls and quizzes, and much more. Let’s discuss some of the Pros & Cons of pre-recorded webinar sessions –

PROS

• In the pre-recorded sessions it is easy to identify your mistakes and edit them out.
• The addition of transition effects, sounds, and more customizable options are available in the pre-recorded presentations.
• To match your standards you are allowed to re-record your current webinar session if you find its content is not up to the mark.
• Some people just hesitate to face larger gatherings even virtually, this is their comfort zone they can perform well and deliver their presentation quite nicely.
• In virtual webinar platforms, there is more flexibility when we talk about content quality, editing, and formatting compared to live webinars convenient when hosting an event for the first time.

CONS

• The major drawback of hosting pre-recorded webinar sessions is that the audience engagement is very less. You don’t receive real-time feedback from your viewers this lets you unanswered about what your audience actually wants to learn!
• It is also a factor in less emotional engagement by the audience as not many people like hearing a pre-recorded session on most occasions.

Live Recorded Webinar

As the name describes live webinars are the events that allow real-time engagement with the audience which requires speakers/hosts and many other persons to run a successful webinar.

For making interactive webinar platforms different service providers work hard in order to compete with each other to rank their platforms top on the search results.

Nowadays, live webinars are the major profit drivers for the event management industry. With a lot more to offer the audience virtually.

PROS

• As it is a real-time interaction with the audience, it acts as a direct selling platform for the companies and endorses their marketing strategy accordingly.
• As it provides insights and data analytics it becomes easy to track your potential viewers and what can be done to improve audience engagement.
• Answering topic-oriented questions and solving doubts while going live can be really very helpful for catching the audience’s attention.

CONS

• Technical glitches are in the first place when it comes to major drawbacks of live webinar sessions.
• While going to choose the best webinar platform for live recording sessions we should go through the necessary requirements it fulfils as per our needs to host a highly engaging session for the audience.
• Welcoming unexpected visitors while going live from home can literally throw you out of the game when it comes to user experience with a sudden interruption during the hosting of the event.

Conclusion

In comparison between the live and pre-recorded sessions if you do not have any concerns regarding the interaction with the audience and content delivery is your key strategy then pre-recorded webinars are a perfect fit for you.

If your aim is to get more attention to the people while interacting with them live and sorting out ways to make your strategy better than others in the market, live webinars are your cup of tea.

With automated webinars in trend, the selling of products and branding becomes quite easy and affordable.