Online meetings and webinars are the new-aged digital communication tools. These two are the most affordable and convenient mediums to connect, share, and collaborate with remote attendees. After the pandemic, online communication has become the most preferred medium for sharing knowledge and thoughts, marketing products, and connecting with teams, friends, and family. Infect, the webinar has gained so much popularity that now businesses of all scales are using webinars for promotion of their brand, generate new leads, the launch of new products, and as an educational tool to increase audience satisfaction.
However, there is a significant difference between online meetings and webinars, but most people often use these terms interchangeably. If you also doubt online meetings and webinars, then this blog will be helpful for you.
Online Meeting:
An online meeting lets attendees meet digitally over internet spaces or online meeting platforms from remote locations. Using digital technology, attendees of meetings located in any part of the world can connect, share, and collaborate with attendees residing in other parts of the world via audio and video tools over a digital platform.
What are the benefits of online meetings?
Anyone can conduct a virtual meeting, whether you are a team leader leading a team or someone who wants to connect with their family and friends located remotely. Using an online meeting platform, you can easily connect and share with them. Let us quickly see the advantages of online meetings.
- Online meetings eliminate the boundaries between the remote team and encourage attendees to join seamlessly.
- It lowers or eliminates business travel expenses.
- Online meetings are the easiest way to bring remote teams closer together.
- Attendees can easily join the online meeting using the URL link provided by the host. It is why they are simple to join.
- Online meeting tools offer features like chat, audio calls, video calls, and screen share features for effective collaboration between the remote team.
Webinar:
A webinar is a seminar hosted and attended digitally over internet spaces. Webinars are a well-known and convenient way of marketing products and services and sharing a piece of information with audiences. In webinars, the host, speaker, or presenter connect with a large group of audiences regardless of their location.
There are many online event platforms available in the market on which you can host online meetings, webinars, and online exhibitions.
What are the benefits of a webinar?
In the webinar, the host, speaker, or sponsor can connect with the audience via speaking, showing slides, images, videos, screen sharing, asking questions, running polls, and conducting surveys creating an engaging online environment.
- Webinar eliminates the travel expenses and rent of physical venues. Moreover, the webinar also reduces the time that is generally wasted on traveling.
- A webinar platform offers several tools to increase the engagement of attendees.
- A webinar provides businesses an excellent opportunity to build brand awareness and promote their brand in a very effective manner.
- Along with this, the webinar also helps businesses in making a more personalized relationship with their targeted audiences.
- Webinar software also allows organizers to get insights into the webinar.
- Moreover, webinars provide organizers with a valuable asset to upload on their website.
Now that you know what is an online meeting and what is a webinar? Let us know how these two are different from one another.
- Online meetings allow businesses or organizations to connect with their remote teams and involve them all in a common objective or to stay in touch with their remote employees, employers host online meetings. On the other hand, webinars allow the business to connect and share with a large group of audiences.
- In an online meeting, all the attendees can see, hear, and talk with each other via audio-video tools. They can actively participate in the discussions and share their screen and ppt with fellow attendees. While in a webinar, attendees usually do not talk with others and often are on listen mode. Using interactive tools offered by an online platform like chats, polls, and Q&As audiences participate in the discussions.
- Scalability is one of the prominent features that differentiate virtual meetings from webinars. Generally, online meetings are hosted by businesses or organizations to connect with their small remote teams. In other words, we can say that online meetings are small online group meetings. Whereas, webinars are hosted by a business or organization for a large audience, regardless of the location of attendees. Best webinar platforms provide immersive experiences to attendees. That brings them closer to reality.
- Online meetings provide more interaction opportunities for all attendees. However, webinars are often less interactive than virtual meetings. Generally, a speaker addresses or educates the audience, and attendees view or listen to the speakers, occasionally participate in the discussions, or interact with the speakers using chats, polls, and Q&As.
- One of the well-known purposes of hosting webinars is to make attendees aware of a specific topic. The host selects the topics for the webinar. On the other hand, in online business meeting, host alone does not decide the agenda of discussion
- Hosting an online meeting is super easy. An online meeting tool, any device like a laptop, desktop, or mobile phone, and a reliable internet connection are necessary for hosting an online meeting. While hosting a webinar is not that easy. For hosting a webinar, reliable webinar software, dedicated organizers and hosts, and well-polished presentations or slides are required. Most importantly, you need to schedule a date and time which is convenient for most attendees.
Online meetings and webinars are two different terms and serve distinct purposes. They both satisfy different communication needs. Online meetings are just formal meetings held over the internet, whereas webinars are strategies for marketing products and services to generate sales leads. Businesses also host webinars for sharing globally relevant valuable information with the audiences. For attending webinars, attendees have to do registration, while for joining virtual meetings, there is no need for registration. Attendees can join the meeting by simply clicking on the link provided by the host of the meeting.
