Writing Engaging Content for Webinars

I've published thousands of pieces of content in my career. I wish I knew these 3 things after the first 10. 1. Build with a narrative in mind. Most "capital C" Content programs—blogs, podcasts, ebooks, webinars, etc— aren't cohesive. They're repositories of loosely related collections of information. Maybe they organize topics by cluster, occasionally there will be a part 1, part 2, part 3, but by and large it's disparate information with no connective tissue. Building with a narrative in mind means remembering to keep a continual throughline through everything you publish. Build up to the problem the webinar solves with blog posts. Use video to show processes more efficiently than words can. Use podcast interviews to bring in outside voices. When everything is in service to the narrative, it gives readers, listeners, and viewers more reasons to explore the content ecosystem you're designing, and has been shown to increase return visits, shorten sales cycles, and improve customer lifetime value. 2. Focus on a single set of competing values. At their heart, most stories can be distilled into a simple "this vs that." Freedom vs Security Integrity vs Glory Simplicity vs Sophistication If your content doesn't feel like it has any direction, see if you can identify a set of competing values, —and if you can't, try this: Look at the reader's decision. What tradeoff are they being asked to make? A good story often hinges on a moment of choice. Zoom out from the tactic. Instead of “how to write better emails,” ask “what’s the deeper tension behind email strategy right now?” (e.g., automation vs personalization, scale vs intimacy). Listen for the emotional stakes. Behind most business decisions is a fear of getting it wrong. What are they afraid to lose—or desperate to prove? Test the polarity. If both options seem equally good or equally bland, you don’t have a story. You have a list. Raise the stakes. Once you name the conflict, everything else tightens. 3. Know what each piece is for. After you’ve got your throughline and your values in place, the next mistake is thinking every asset has to do everything. It doesn’t. A blog post doesn’t need to sell and educate and entertain and convert. But it should do something deliberately. Ask this of every piece: Is this meant to set context? Is it meant to build urgency? Is it meant to shift belief? Is it meant to help a champion make the case internally? Is it meant to close the loop? When you know the role a piece plays, the structure gets clearer. The scope becomes manageable. And the metrics make more sense. Your calendar stops looking like a backlog of “deliverables” and starts looking like a story arc with strategic intent. ---- These are lessons I’ve picked up on the path from freelance writer to Fortune 500 consultant. If any of this hit home, I’d love to hear what you wish you knew after your first 10 pieces. Drop it in the comments.

I led a webinar last week that included 17 moments of audience interaction — that’s one every 3 ½ minutes. How did we do it? Not through breakouts or fancy polling software, but through the humble chat window. Here’s how we used it and why I love it. We used chat: * 5 times for fill-in-the-blank answers to my questions. * 3 times for yes/no answer to my questions. * 3 times for sharing their answers in brainstorming exercises. * 2 times for answering a series of quick questions. * once for answering an open-ended question. * once for a quick individual exercise. * once where I invited a volunteer to walk us through an exercise; and * once at the end for 10 minutes of Q&A. And here’s what I love about it. The chat window is: * Active — the opposite of passive, it gives people something to do. * Simple — anyone can use it.  * Instant — no “dead air” while waiting for poll results. * Flexible — people can jump into the conversation or just read along. * Unfiltered — no moderator is screening the content. * Non-hierarchical — people can share their own ideas and talk with each other. * Enlightening — participants learn from each other. * Energizing — seeing and calling out the waterfall of comments lends energy to the occasion. * Validating — it’s a real-time indicator of people’s engagement. Remember: the best presentations are a conversation, not a lecture.

B2B tech companies are addicted to getting you to subscribe to their corporate echo chamber newsletter graveyard, where they dump their latest self-love notes. It's a cesspool of "Look at us!" and "We're pleased to announce..." drivel that suffocates originality and murders interest. Each link, each event recap and each funding announcement is another shovel of dirt on the grave of what could have been engaging content. UNSUBSCRIBE What if, instead of serving up the same old reheated corporate leftovers, your content could slap your audience awake? Ego-stroking company updates are out. 1. The pain point deep dive: Start by mining the deepest anxieties, challenges and questions your audience faces. Use forums, social media, customer feedback and even direct interviews to uncover the raw nerve you're going to press. 2. The unconventional wisdom: Challenge the status quo of your industry. If everyone's zigging, you zag. This could mean debunking widely held beliefs, proposing counterintuitive strategies or sharing insights that only insiders know but don't talk about. Be the mythbuster of your domain. 3. The narrative hook: Every piece of content should tell a story, and every story needs a hook that grabs from the first sentence. Use vivid imagery, compelling questions or startling statements to make it impossible to scroll past. Your opening should be a rabbit hole inviting Alice to jump in. 4. The value payload: This is the core of your content. Each piece should deliver actionable insights, deep dives or transformative information. Give your audience something so valuable that they can't help but use, save and share it. Think tutorials, step-by-step guides or even entertaining content that delivers laughs or awe alongside insight. 5. The personal touch: Inject your personality or brand's voice into every piece. Share personal anecdotes, failures and successes. 6. The engagement spark: End with a call to action that encourages interaction. Ask a provocative question, encourage them to share their own stories or challenge them to apply what they've learned and share the results. Engagement breeds community, and community amplifies your reach. 7. The multi-platform siege: Repurpose your anchor content across platforms. Turn blog posts into podcast episodes, summaries into tweets or LinkedIn posts and key insights into Instagram stories. Each piece of content should work as a squad, covering different fronts but pushing the same message. Without impressive anchor content, you won't have anything worth a lick in your newsletter. 8. The audience dialogue: Engage directly with your audience's feedback. Respond to comments, ask for their input on future topics and even involve them in content creation through surveys or co-creation opportunities. Make your content worth spreading, and watch as your audience does the heavy lifting for you. And please stop with the corporate navel-gazing. #newsletters #b2btech #ThatAshleyAmber

Sellers - stop giving webinars and start running Demos. So many AEs run demos like webinars. One-sided, feature dumps that lose the prospect fast. Great demos aren’t a presentation; they’re a conversation. It makes the prospect feel like they’re already solving their problem. Here’s how to use psychology to make that happen: 1️⃣ Spark Curiosity – People pay attention when there’s a knowledge gap. Instead of jumping into features, start with a question: “How are you handling [pain point] today?” or “What happens when [problem] breaks?” This gets them thinking and wanting a solution. I call this “setting the table”. Start with a pain recap, dig deeper, then tell them what you’re going to show them to solve it. 2️⃣ Make Them Own It – The endowment effect says people value things more when they feel ownership. Instead of just clicking through, ask: “If this were your dashboard, what’s the first thing you’d check?” Now they’re imagining using it before they even buy. These are 🥷 3️⃣ Pain First, Solution Second – Loss aversion is real. Reinforce the pain before showing the fix: “This takes your team 3 hours right now. What if it took 3 minutes?” That contrast hits harder than any feature list. 4️⃣ Drive Engagement & Validate Value – Demos shouldn’t be passive. Ask questions that make them process the impact: “How would this fit into your workflow?” “On a scale of 1-10, how valuable is this for your team?” “What’s the biggest impact you see?” If they say it, they believe it. 5️⃣Social Proof Wins – Nobody wants to be the only one taking a risk. Drop in proof: “[Big name company] had this exact problem. Now they [outcome].” Makes buying feel inevitable. 6️⃣ Themes – People won’t remember every feature, integration, or workflow you show. In fact they’ll probably forget more than 70% of the whole demo. That’s why you need to reinforce themes. Bring up 10+ times how this will save them time. They’ll remember that. A great demo isn’t a lecture. It’s a two-way engaging conversation that makes the prospect feel like they’re already using your product. Do that, and you’ll close more deals.

"How does Storylane use Storylane?" I get asked this all the time. Fair question. So here's our actual playbook (so far): 1/ Website: Interactive demos on our homepage, product pages, and landing pages. Adding interactive demos to enterprise pages soon (should've done that way sooner). 2/ Champion enablement: GOLD. Custom interactive demos for champions at target accounts. Instead of hoping they explain your product right, you control the narrative. They use these interactive demos to sell internally. We've closed deals way faster. 3/ Conference booths: Screen with interactive demos on autopilot. Simple but works every time. 4/ Demo QR codes at events: On slides or booth backdrop. Attendees scan, experience interactive demos on phones and take your product back home with them. Perfect when booth is packed. 5/ Outbound: Stop telling, start showing. "Here's a 2-min interactive demo" beats feature pitches. Response rates? Night and day difference. 6/ LinkedIn: For announcing new features, add interactive demos links so viewers click through actual product, then book/signup. Or show it as native content on LinkedIn (video/GIF) by downloading your interactive demos. 7/ Demo-led SEO (DLS): Targeted ICP's search queries with tutorial pages with no text and only interactive demos (like "how to merge a custom field in Salesforce"). Grew from 20K to 220K monthly visits in <6 months. Google is loving DLS content. 8/ BOFU blogs: For "Best X Alternatives" posts, embed interactive demos of competitors' products. Visitors evaluate options on your page instead of bouncing to other sites. Game changer. 9/ Product launch campaigns: Hard to time product release date with marketing launch date. So instead create interactive demos from the staging environment of the feature while in development and use it for your launch. Use these interactive demos in webinars and give waitlist early access to the preview with a demo of the feature. It worked amazing for us. 10/ Feature announcements: One-line email + interactive demo link beats lengthy explanations of your feature every time. 11/ Win-back campaigns: Show churned customers what they're missing with interactive demos of new features since they left. Works better than any "we've improved" messaging. 12/ Product validation: Not sure if a feature is worth building? Create quick interactive demos using Figma screens and demo it to gauge prospects' excitement. Saved months of development. 13/ Support: Replace long help articles with interactive demos. People prefer seeing how to solve problems with interactive demos. 14/ Sales Enablement: Give sales team persona-specific and feature-specific interactive demos. Reuse these interactive demos as YouTube content too. 15/ Social - Feature announcements with embedded interactive demos get way more engagement than standard posts. Our demo playbook is continuing to expand, but this is what's working well right now. Hope this helps!

Spent 40 min with one of the best founders I know yesterday (he’s personally selling all their deals himself right now). Entire convo focused on what to SAY during a demo (most sellers actually have no idea): 𝐌𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬: “we can do this… and we can do this… and we can do this… any questions?... and we can do this…” Great demos use features and functionality as *validation* that the platform can deliver the customer’s desired results (and solve the challenges currently blocking them). You want the customer thinking about buying the result, and the solution to the problem, not the features themselves. To do this effectively, before you talk about any feature, you want to contextualize it with the outcomes and challenges that matter to the customer (that you learned in discovery). For example, 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬: “so of course the main thing you guys are working towards is [outcome] and one of the biggest issues is that right now [challenge] so what I want to show you is how we [solve challenge] that should directly result in [outcome]” 𝐎𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬: “another thing I want to show you as we think about the issue the team is having with [challenge] is how we [solve challenge] which immediately start to free up your reps to be able to do more [whatever] which should then translate directly into more [outcome]” Think of yourself like a teacher. You’re helping the customer learn the relationship between your functionality and the results they want/the challenges they want to solve. Anything you swear by that helps you lead more impactful and engaging demos that I might be interested in?

I’ve spent the last 19 months building a tool that makes better product demos. It’s now being used by Turo, Jotform, Beehiiv and more. I learned a huge amount about what makes a good demo. I narrowed it down to these 7 things 👇 — 1. Storyboard the benefits The “flow” of a demo is super important. You want to highlight the features that add the most value and guide users through them in a way that makes sense. Doing this in storyboard format can clarify the goals of your demo before you start. 2. Zero in on “aha” moments. An “aha” moment is when value “clicks” for a user. Emphasize the moments when problems are being solved. Skip: context, explanations, etc. Use value to organize your demos into digestible sections. 3. Create different demos for different use cases. One-size-fits-all demos don’t work. The best demos are tailored to a specific problem a person is trying to solve and skip everything else. The last thing you want a demo to do is feel irrelevant. 4. Set expectations for length. Demos have a cost: time & mental energy. Good demos just tell people how many steps there are or how much time it’ll take. It's much easier for people to decide to walk through it if they know when it’ll end (or at least know that it won’t take forever). 5. Use design to keep & control interest. Callouts, colors, buttons, etc. All of that stuff should be used and tested. Good UI matters as much in product demos as it does in your actual product, and it can boost demo engagement (it’s also why Supademo has a ton of design options). 6. Add CTAs to your demo. And add more than one. Demos are very, very good at creating moments of inspiration. So put CTAs into your demo at those moments. 7. Personalize & track as much as you can. If you can, personalize to your customer’s name, company, brand, etc. Track the most engaged users to connect deeper. — Any demo is better than no demo. But GREAT demos can drive serious action. What else is missing? #saas #productmarketing #growth #plg

Most webinars are just sales pitches in disguise. And designers can smell that pitch deck from the opening slide. What we refused to do: My Digital Events team watched countless “creative webinars” that were basically 90-minute product demos with 5 minutes of actual value. We said *hell no* and built something completely different. The anti-sales event format we cracked: • Real workflows over feature lists • Diverse voices: emerging artists to industry veterans • Zero “seamless integration” and “scale content faster” buzzwords Why our digital event format worked: Jun Zee Myers from BuzzFeed didn’t talk about “animation solutions,” she showed how “The Land of Boggs” got made. Chris Snellings from the Golden State Warriors didn’t pitch collaboration tools, he walked through how his team delivered Stephen Curry content across continents simultaneously. Real case studies that solved problems. Real design-industry workflows. Real creativity in action. Delivered live and in real-time. The uncomfortable truth? Creative professionals have sat through too many “webinars” that were just thinly veiled sales presentations (in fact, I sat through a pre-recorded Canva one this morning, pretending to be live 🤦♀️ ). I’m sorry, people! But we are done with fake use cases and product manager-manufactured success stories. The surprising result is when you lead with craft instead of conversion, something magical happens. People actually watch, engage, get inspired, and implement what they learn. **I broke down the entire framework—what worked, what didn’t, and how to structure digital events that creatives want to attend.** Read it in the newest article of Together By Design: https://lnkd.in/gdgttQZq What’s the most painfully obvious sales webinar you’ve ever endured? Wait, don’t answer—I know, I know. #CreativeWebinars #EventStrategy #ContentCreation #DigitalEvents #AntiSalesy #CreativeConnections #CreativeWorkshop #DesignCommunity #HostLindsayRocks Lindsay Morris

You're hosting another webinar. The chat's dead silent. Half your attendees are probably scrolling through their phones. And you can practically hear people dropping off like flies. Sound familiar? It's time to wake the hell up and revolutionize your webinar game. I've been there. We've all been there. Boring, one-way presentations that put people to sleep faster than a bottle of NyQuil. But in 2024, if your webinars aren't engaging, interactive, and valuable as f*ck, you're wasting everyone's time - including your own. Here are 5 ways to turn your webinars from snoozefests into can't-miss experiences: 1. Ditch the monologue: Stop talking AT people. Start conversations. Use real-time polls, Q&As, and breakout rooms. Get people involved or get out of the game. 2. Bring the energy: If you're not excited, why the hell should your audience be? Pump up the enthusiasm, use storytelling, and for God's sake, show some personality! 3. Less is more: Cut the fluff. Focus on ONE core message and drill it home. Give people actionable takeaways they can implement immediately. 4. Make it visual: Our brains are wired for visuals. Use dynamic slides, live demos, and even props. Anything to break up the monotony and keep eyes glued to the screen. 5. Create FOMO: Exclusive content, limited-time offers, or guest experts. Give people a reason to show up live instead of watching the recording (if you even offer one). I remember when we overhauled our webinar strategy at VaynerMedia. We went from typical corporate snoozefests to high-energy, interactive experiences. Attendance shot up. Engagement went through the roof. And most importantly, our audience started getting real, tangible value. Here's the thing: Webinars aren't just about delivering information. They're about creating experiences that stick with people. That inspire action. That make people feel like they're part of something bigger. So here's my challenge to you: Take a hard look at your next webinar. Are you truly creating value? Are you engaging your audience in meaningful ways? Or are you just going through the motions? It's time to step up or step out. The days of boring, one-way webinars are over. Your audience deserves better, and frankly, so do you. What's one way you're going to make your next webinar more engaging? Drop it in the comments.

🔴 Facts fade. Stories stick. If your training feels dry and forgettable, your learners aren’t the problem—your content is. People don’t remember bullet points. They remember characters, challenges, and choices. Here’s how to use narratives and characters to make learning unforgettable: 1️⃣ Introduce a relatable character. Give learners someone to connect with— a peer, a mentor, or a “guide” navigating the same challenges they face. ✅ A new hire learning the ropes ✅ A manager coaching their team ✅ A customer making a tough decision 2️⃣ Frame learning as a story. Instead of dumping information, take learners on a journey. ➡️ Start with a challenge or conflict. ➡️ Show the character making decisions. ➡️ Reveal the outcome—good or bad. Example: Instead of listing customer service best practices, tell the story of Alex, a rep handling an upset customer. Let learners choose Alex’s responses and see what happens next. 3️⃣ Make it interactive. Give learners control— ✅ Branching scenarios ✅ Role-playing ✅ Problem-solving challenges 4️⃣ Tie emotions to learning. Stories make information personal. When learners care about the character, they remember the lesson. Engaging content isn’t about what you teach— it’s about how learners experience it. 🤔 How have you used stories in your training? ----------------------- 👋 Hi! I'm Elizabeth! ♻️ Share this post if you found it helpful. 👆 Follow me for more tips! 🤝 Reach out if you need a high-quality learning solution designed to engage learners and drive real change. #InstructionalDesign #StorytellingInLearning #EngagementMatters #LearningAndDevelopment