Introduction
Webcasting is a unique and powerful way to reach large audiences with high impact, rich‐media presentations. Producing even a simple webcast however, can be a challenging endeavor. Webcasting tools enable a webcast producer to create the best possible event, but the technology is only part of the overall webcasting equation. Production practices – the way you put a webcast together with a team ‐ can make or break a webcast event. We developed this guide to help you make the best use of your webcasting tools in the production of professional webcasts. For the purpose of this paper, we’ve focused on one webcasting solution, MediaPlatform’s WebCaster, a highly scalable and customizable tool that enables you to produce, manage, distribute and monitor live and on‐ demand webcasts. With over 10 years in the corporate online video business and the development of stable webcasting products, MediaPlatform® has established the foundation for best practices for webcast production.
About Webcasting
A webcast is typically a live presentation of some kind distributed online to a remote audience. For many years, people presented in front of video projectors in meeting rooms and auditoriums where the only people who could see what was happening were sitting in the audience. In the last ten years however, there has been a movement toward making these sorts of live presentations available to a wider audience on the Web. The process of putting a presentation that combines a video signal, PowerPoint, and interactive elements such as surveys and polls on the Web is known as a webcast. Some webcasts are presented live, while others are pre‐recorded and played on demand.
Why do organizations produce webcasts? Usually, there is a need to present material to a large number of people who cannot physically attend an event, training session, or meeting. Other uses of webcasting include marketing lead generation, continuing education, employee‐facing communication, and public relations.
Webcasting is frequently confused with web conferencing, a technology that is used for online collaboration. Examples of web conferencing tools include Webex and Live Meeting. Though the two tool sets are similar, they serve quite different purposes and operate on a different underlying technological basis. Web conferencing products are great for smaller group meetings (i.e. fewer than 50 attendees) where there is a need for interaction and collaboration amongst all the attendees (i.e. "few to few"). Webcasting, on the other hand, is better suited for presentations that typically involve a small number of presenters and a large number of viewers (i.e. "one or a few to many"). With webcast presentations, the experience can be fully customized and branded while the audience's participation is designed to be limited to participating in surveys or moderated question and answer sessions.