MBA1140 Q&A Wednesday: What gear do you recommend for my webinars?

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Today's question is from Darren and Darren asks, what gear do you recommend for my webinars? Well, you've come to the right place, Darren. I've been running webinars for over six years. I've made every mistake possible. But I also learned from the experiences of our users from our webinar software, webinar Ninja Shameless Plug. But today's episode is not about software, it's about hardware. So in today's episode I'm going to share with you the gear I recommend, the minimal gear I recommend for you to run great webinars. Also, some tips when you're running webinars, where to position this gear and what Are some things I do that help me perform better live on a webinar. Can't wait to get into this one. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So Darren asks, what gear do you recommend for my webinars? So I'm gonna start with the bare minimum. And the first thing, the first thing I would recommend somebody get to run great webinars is a quality microphone. Yes, a microphone. You're like, hey, what about a webcam? Well, actually you can run webinars without being on camera. You can use slides, and even if you do want to be on camera, the webcam that you have installed on your laptop or your desktop is probably good enough. We'll talk about going pro or improving that camera quality. But bad audio is really, really hard to ignore. And when you're using your computer built in microphone, it brings in all the noise around the room, Your neighbors, your dog, all that kind of stuff, right? So I recommend getting a quality microphone. Now don't worry, it's not going to cost you an arm and a leg. The microphone I recommend for webinars is the Audio Technica ATR2100. It's about $70 on Amazon and it's great value. It's worth its weight in gold. It's a USB and xlr, but it's great because it's USB and you can plug it right into your laptop or your computer and use it for your webinars. This alone is gonna take your game higher than most. You're gonna sound so much better and it's gonna just sound pro. Now I do recommend you get a windscreen, one of those little foamy things that you can put on top of the microphone. You can literally get like a dozen of them for like $2 on Amazon. They're good to have because if you ever need to travel with your mic and the foamy thing gets dented or something like that, you can remove it and replace it. Now, since we're on the microphone, I highly recommend you also get one more piece of equipment and then. And that's a boom arm. A boom arm is basically a mechanical arm or extension to allow you to be hands free with your microphone. So you clip the boom arm to your desk and that way you can position the mic right in front of your face and you can just talk and use your hands when you're on the actual webinar. Now I use my hands a lot when I talk, but really what it does, it allows you to just put the mic up to your mouth so you don't have to bend down to the mic on the desk. And if you have to bend down, you're often gonna move around and then your sound quality is not gonna be so good. What you want is have the mic right next to your mouth, maybe six inches away maximum. And the boom arm helps. The boom arm is about 15 bucks on Amazon, so worth it. And it's great because you can use this on your desk all the time for your webinars and video calls and meetings and all that kind of stuff. All right, so we talked about a mic, we talked about a boom arm. And there's no brand for the boom arm. You can just get anyone. There's several that are made in China and they're totally fine. And the cool thing about the ATR 2100 mic is that you can clip on the mic to the boom arm easily. And actually the ATR comes with a little mic holder that you put on your desk. Again, I don't recommend that, but you can unscrew the holder and screw it to the boom arm. Nice and easy. Now let's talk about webcams. You want to up your game with your webcam so you look great on camera. There are two things I recommend. Number one, just get a good HD camera. The one I recommend is the Logitech C900. I know that Logitech has upgraded this model number somehow, but the one I like is a C920. But any Logitech HD camera is fine. Nicole has another Logitech webcam. It's totally fine. It's less expensive than the C920. And really, these external webcams, as long as it is a good brand name like Logitech, it's really about getting a quality lens that brings in a good amount of light. Now, the reason why I like the C920, it has a Carl Zeiss lens that is really, really great for bringing in light and just making you look even when maybe your room is not so well lit. Now, speaking of lighting, if you want amazing lighting and you don't have a window in your room or you're not going to do your webinars during the day, because that's the easy and cheap way to have great lighting, is just to face a window, an open window, so the sun is shining on your face. But another option is to get an LED light, just like a little square LED light. We have one that's about 6 inches in width. And it's just a rechargeable, battery operated it's made in China. Again, it's about 50 bucks on Amazon. And you literally just screw it onto a selfie stick or a little tripod and we just position the light right on top of the camera. And this just, you know, guarantees you have light shining on your face and you look great day or night. Now, I run a remote team, so I run a lot of meetings, video calls, and of course, a lot of webinars. So this is a great investment for me. It's so easy to use and, and I just recharge the battery when it dies. This is not an essential. If you have good lighting in your house or in your office, you should be okay, especially if you have a good webcam. But if you don't have a great webcam, just get the lighting, you should be okay. And you're just using your built in webcam. Now, any other equipment I recommend? Well, if you're gonna have co hosts on your webinar, meaning they're gonna have other voices, other audio sources on your webinar or you're inserting video into your webinar, I recommend you wear earphones. Why? Because you don't want the audio from your co host or from the video to come out of your computer speakers and into your microphone. This causes a reverb and an echo, and it's really, really a big disruption for your attendees. So you want to keep the audio in your ears, and that's why you can wear headphones. Now, any headphones will do. Wireless headphones with the headphones that came with your, you know, your smartphone, any pair of headphones, earbuds you have lying around the house, totally fine. The whole point here is, is that you're trying to keep the audio in your ears and not in your microphone. So it doesn't have to be stellar quality. Now, I recommend that when you run your webinars, you do them standing up. There's something about standing up that allows you to project your voice, to open up your lungs and allow you to breathe easily. A lot of people lose their breath when they're doing webinars, so this helps a lot. It also kind of mimics being on stage and having a public speech, right? Doing a public speech, I should say. And this also allows you to have a very, very steady audio quality. Cause when you're standing, you're not really going up and down too much as if when you're sitting. And that keeps your mic really positioned. Well, when we talked about with that mic and that boom arm, I recommend doing your webinar standing up. I do all my webinar standing and I find it really helps me perform better. Dear McDonald's, your breakfast menu Fire tens across the board. I could be happy with anything even though I order the same thing every time. Thanks for not judging me. I'll try something new next time.

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Couple more tips when it comes to your gear on running webinars and using them, make sure that you run through all your gear and test it before you do your live webinar. Most live webinar software wherever you use is going to have some sort of settings where you have to, you know, link up your camera and your mic to make sure that it's working with the software. If you're using a browser based software like Webinar Ninja, you can easily do this with your browser settings, whether it's Chrome or Safari or whatever you're using. In fact, with Webinar Ninja, we do it for you by when you enter the studio where you run your webinar, we have a little pop up that comes up that allows you to set up your camera and mic right there. No confusion and then you'll get to test the volume of your mic and all that kind of stuff. But doing a test run or even just doing a test webinar is a great idea to make sure everything looks and sounds great before you go live. Well Darren, I hope that answers your question and I hope that helps for all of you who are listening. Thank you so much for listening to today's lesson. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me at at omar@100mba.net I'd love to answer it right here on Q and A Wednesday. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I could have really geeked out when it came to the gear of webinars, I could have really gave you a whole lot more complex setup, but I don't think that's helpful. I think a simple, solid setup that gives you a quality, you know, experience for you and your attendees, that's all you need. You can spend a whole lot more money and really get tangled up in wires, but it's not gonna make a tremendous difference. And most people won't even see the difference. Yes, you can go multi camera setup and all that stuff, but why? But if your content's solid and you do it consistently enough, that's all that matters. What you want to do is make sure that your technology is not a distraction. It just augments your performance. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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