Posted on 13 Nov '23

The Role of the Webinar in 2024 and Beyond

Online webinars were the bread-and-butter of the Covid era, allowing organisations and thinkers to reach an engaged audience with the click of a button. In a post-pandemic world, webinars remain a low-cost, convenient way to communicate your ideas with attendees anywhere in the world.

Our online webinar series has been running since August 2020, and we’ve been proud to host a wide variety of speakers from the higher education sector. Although our in-person Marketing Conferences are back in full swing (keep your eyes peeled for tickets to our spring event), we’ll be continuing to run free webinars on all things postgraduate recruitment!

We’ve taken a look at some of the biggest draws of online webinars, both for attendees and speakers.

Why attend a webinar?

Attending a webinar is, in many ways, the perfect way to spend an hour. What would once have been a day-long endeavour involving a lengthy commute to an in-person seminar is now a simple matter of clicking on a Zoom link. Here are a few benefits of attending:

#1 Keep up with industry trends

Postgraduate recruitment is a fast-moving sector, and attending webinars can be a great way to hear insights from those with their finger on the pulse of the latest developments. For example, our October 2023 webinar hosted representatives from University College London and Penna, who discussed new and emerging international markets for postgraduate study.

#2 Get practical tips that you can implement at your institution

Sometimes webinars let you down, they don’t go over what you think they’re going to, or you realise it’s a business that just wants to push their brand. This can be frustrating, but it’s not the case for all! Higher education focused webinars are more likely to provide you with tangible actions that you can get cracking with immediately.

For example, 93% of attendees say that our webinars offered learnings they could apply to their role! We stay laser-focused on providing insights, information and advice that you can translate into tangible recruitment results, including breaking down the data on how much a postgraduate scholarship actually needs to be, and providing practical tips on improving the readability of your content.

#3 Ask questions and share insights

Most webinar sessions (including ours!) will feature a Q&A at the end, so that you can ask questions and exchange ideas with speakers. This is very much a two-way street, and we encourage sharing your own experiences and expertise with speakers as well as benefiting from theirs! Asking questions also helps the other attendees to follow up with their thoughts to get even more conversations and ideas flowing.

Why speak at a webinar?

There aren’t just benefits for webinar attendees – speakers get a lot out of the experience as well.

We host webinars every month and are always keen to hear from potential speakers. Webinars can be hosted by one or more speakers – December’s event will be a panel discussion, for example!

#1 Get your ideas in front of a broad audience

Our webinars are attended by higher education professionals from across our wide customer-base, which includes every UK university as well as many international institutions. All our webinars are also available on demand to bring in more views post-event.

#2 Establish your expertise

Not only is speaking at a webinar a chance to share your insights with like-minded higher education professionals, but it’s also a chance to build your authority and reputation as a go-to source for information in the field. Attendees will be able to put a face to your name, and interact with you via the Q&A section of the session, increasing your profile within the Higher Education community. It could also encourage conversations to take place once the webinar has ended.

#3 Get more content for your social media

One webinar appearance can provide plenty of material for your social media channels, helping to amplify your presence even more! Savvy social media use can convert one webinar into Linkedin posts, X threads, blogs and more – plus, we’ll also be shouting about your webinar on our own platforms in the run up to your appearance!

Take it from previous speakers…

We host webinars every month and are always keen to hear from potential speakers. If you’re still on the fence about whether it’s worth speaking at a webinar then here are what previous guests have got out of the experience:

"Speaking for FindAUniversity was a rewarding experience, offering a platform to discuss the transformative power of digital prospectuses. It's an excellent opportunity for professionals to exchange pioneering ideas and lead the digital charge in education. I highly recommend it."

- Nathan Monk, Co-founder of SMILE and Prospectus+

Delivering a webinar is an energising and rewarding experience. You are invited to step into the spotlight (or ring light) to share your insights, successes, and challenges with peers. The round of applause emojis at the end is a nice bonus too.

- Simon Fairbanks, Head of Student Recruitment Events, University of Nottingham

What about attendees? Here are just a few examples of what they’ve had to say about our webinars:

Found this webinar incredibly useful. Easy to follow with clear examples. Full of useful takeaways!

Very engaging speaker with actionable tips and insights.

Well-structured and presented. Tips were really useful and I liked that examples were included - this makes it easier to explain the info when sharing with my team.

FindAUniversity take pride in being experts in postgraduate education. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram for regular insight, comment and case studies.