Connect With Your Clients Using Microsoft Teams for Webinars

Webinars can be great tools for educating customers, engaging new clients and raising your brand’s profile online. While an essential part of any webinar is the content, the technology is not far behind in importance. A frustrating webinar marred by technical difficulties can quickly ruin an otherwise excellent session. This is why many businesses should be excited to start using Microsoft Teams for webinars. The platform provides a simple, smooth and effective way to connect with your audience.

Using Microsoft Teams for Webinars

In May 2021, Microsoft started to roll out new features for its Teams unified communication platform to make hosting secure and interactive webinars and events more straightforward than ever. The year preceding the release challenged many teams to think about how that could connect online, so these new features are likely a huge relief for workers worldwide.

The webinar features can be used to host events of up to 1,000 participants. They are also helpful for interactive meetings. Due to the end-to-end organization, communication and hosting capabilities of Teams, users can manage the entirety of their webinar workflow from within the Office 365 environment.

Webinar Features in Microsoft Teams

Using Microsoft Teams for webinars makes hosting easier. The following are a few of the features included in the webinar updates for Teams:

• 1,000-Attendee Interactive Meetings/Webinars: Microsoft Teams users can schedule interactive meetings, events and webinars with up to 1,000 attendees. Creating these is as simple as preparing any other meeting in Teams. You also have access to moderation options such as disabling participant chat and video or accessing post-event engagement reports.
• PowerPoint Live: For decades, PowerPoint has been the go-to option for delivering slideshows and presentations. With PowerPoint Live, you can bring all that functionality straight into your virtual meetings, no longer having to make do with screen-sharing. It is easier to use with richer functionality designed for the world of remote work.
• Presenter Mode: Shortly after the other features, Microsoft also released a presenter mode for Teams. This gives PowerPoint users the benefits of slide notes and other tools from within the Teams environment. The webinar participants see the slides as a traditional slideshow, while the presenter gets special tools and information on their screen.

Advantages of Using Teams

Over the past several years, Microsoft has been working hard to make Office 365 more integrated, especially around the Teams platform. Remote work is here to stay, and more people are connecting virtually than ever before. With webinar tools directly inside Microsoft Teams, you can create, schedule and host your online events all from Office 365.

Traditionally, webinars have called for unique platforms and tools. The attendees may not be familiar with those platforms. Plus, the hosts need to get multiple moving parts to work together smoothly in order to put in a smooth event. In short, webinars have been rife with technical struggles.

Now, by using Microsoft Teams for webinars, hosts don’t need any extra platforms or tools. They can create webinars the same way they schedule any other meeting. Even first-time hosts can easily put on high-quality events like pros. Furthermore, the attendees can use the same communications platform they use every day to attend webinars. It is simpler for everyone involved.

Since most people were creating their webinar slideshows using PowerPoint anyway, having direct integration is also helpful. There are numerous great features for webinars already and others in the Microsoft pipeline.

How To Start Using Microsoft Teams for Webinars

Using Teams to host webinars is easy. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Create an Event: In teams, select Events in the left navigation pane, then press New in the ribbon. As you are creating your event, turn on the Stream This Event Online option.
2. Set Your Options: You can choose between a webinar, Teams meeting and Live Event. Each of these comes with different options to help you moderate the event. For webinars, you can select options such as muting attendees.
3. Invite Attendees: You can invite attendees as if it were a meeting. Alternatively, send out the link for the webinar.
4. Host: Hosting your webinar is a lot like running a Microsoft Teams meeting. Once people are in, just start running through your content. It doesn’t get much easier than this.

Use Microsoft Teams for Webinars and Other 365 Cloud Features

Cloudficient helps businesses like yours to harness the full potential of Office 365 and the Microsoft Cloud. Whether you want to use Microsoft Teams for webinars, host a SharePoint intranet or otherwise use Office tools, you will need to migrate your systems to 365. Contact us today to learn how we can help you to migrate and supercharge your team’s productivity with Microsoft.

With unmatched next generation migration technology, Cloudficient is revolutionizing the way businesses retire legacy systems and transform their organization into the cloud. Our business constantly remains focused on client needs and creating product offerings that match them. We provide affordable services that are scalable, fast, and seamless.

If you would like to learn more about how to bring Cloudficiency to your migration project, visit our website, or contact us.