Social Webcast Technology Offers More Opportunities For Interaction, Networking

Seventy-seven percent of participants in a recent webcasting beta program said that a social webcast is either better or far better than other webcasts at providing increased opportunities for interaction and networking, while 80 percent feel that social networking tools within a webcast are “somewhat to very” important in webcasting today.

The survey, conducted by ON24, a provider of webcasting and virtual event solutions, polled webcast participants on their webcasting preferences and on the value of new interactive elements.

 The survey found a preference for interactive elements in a webcast for the following reasons:

–  Nearly half (49 percent) prefer social webcasts because they allow the viewers to tailor their own experiences.
–  In addition, nearly half (48 percent) said that they make the content more interesting.
–  Over 40 percent (43 percent) prefer the greater control over how webcast content is used.
–  Other advantages: added entertainment value (32 percent) and an ability to share content with others (26 percent)

The features that the respondents liked best are:

–  User controlled layout of the webcast (62 percent)
–  Toolbar with additional functionality (52 percent)
–  Social networking features (32 percent)

The respondents were also asked to indicate the event functions they actually used during their own social webcast experience. Cited most often were:

–  Maximized the slides (69 percent)
–  Changed the layout of the event (40 percent)
–  Opened the Twitter feed (27 percent)
–  Viewed the presenter's bio (25 percent)

Comments from ON24 CMO Denise Persson: The extensible, next-generation webcasting platform provides a new tool in the marketing cloud arsenal. This open platform offers the enhanced interactivity and custom options that we envisioned when developing social webcasting. We believed that these options would enhance engagement, and our customers and many industry analysts agreed with that assessment. Our primary objective with the beta program study was to confirm that belief – that attendees prefer a webcast that offers many widget-based choices for a more customized experience. The survey results have confirmed that loud and clear. A full 80 percent of the beta users said having social networking tools within a webcast to allow you to share and comment on the experience is important. Customers want increased interaction and social networking integration to make webcasts more engaging without distracting the attendee. The research shows that the so-called “distraction factor” is not an issue, as 86 percent of the respondents think that adding interactive elements to webcasts makes them more useful and interesting. This new cloud solution enables social webcasts today but will in the future enable a wide variety of third-party applications. The result will be even more applications for which webcasting can be used.

ON24's new webcasting platform is now available from ON24 direct sales and channel partners throughout the world.

Contact: http://www.ON24.com