- Choose a reliable communications provider: Yes, we know the title said ‘webcasting best practices’ but your earnings call is more than just a webcast. From conferencing to distributing your advisory release; webcasting to transcription, choose a company that understands how critical each of these components are to execute a seamlessearnings call
- Plan and promote the event: Do your research by analyzing when your peers and competitors are holding their calls and plan accordingly. Publicize your webcast with an advisory news release, email and social media communications, and post your conference date and time to any appropriate section of your website – homepage, news and events, and IR pages.
- Provide Information: Use a webcast event page to provide details of your event – the date, time, presenter information and supporting materials – all on one page. Be sure to make the webcast link easily accessible. A general rule of thumb is anything more than 3 clicks from the homepage is too many.
- Gather Information: Use a guestbook to gather valuable data on your participants. Capture their name, company, email address, how they heard about the event, etc. But keep in mind, asking for too much information during registration may have a negative effect.
- Distribute your webcast: Remember that the power of the Internet is more than just providing a webcast stream – it’s about reaching your investors, controlling your message, and increasing your brand exposure.
- Provide a seamless mobile experience: Across the 20,000 events that NASDAQ Corporate Solutions webcasts annually, we have seen the mobile audience grow by over 150% in the last 18 months. Ensure your content is accessible on mobile devices to extend the reach of your message to investors and stakeholders on the go.
- Engage your audience: Leverage interactive elements in your webcast such as polls and surveys to increase audience engagement. And make it easier for your audience to comprehend your presentation by adding synchronized slides to increase engagement and understanding.
Interact with your audience: Make it easy for participants to submit questions directly from the webcast player. Announce at the start of the call how participants can submit questions. For questions that you were unable to answer during your call, consider posting answers on your website for added transparency.
Provide your content in multiple formats: Un-biased summaries and full-text transcripts of your events can serve as the “official record” by creating an officially sanctioned copy of what was said on the call. Providing your audience with more choices on how to access information –secure web conference, webcast, brief, and transcripts – makes the information contained in your call more accessible.
Archive your webcast: Make replays available for a limited time in an indexed format and post appropriate disclaimers ahead of dated information. Indexing breaks the webcast up into sections, allowing listeners to go directly to the portions they want to hear. Providing an archived webcast and/or transcript allows potential participants who missed an event to tune in at their convenience. NASDAQ has found that for every listener to the live event, there is at least one listener to the archived replay.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
