What is a Webinar Moderatoration and Do You Need It?

Written by Eman Rieza | June 8, 2020

Are you on the verge of launching your own webinar? Perhaps you should take the time to equip your live online informative presentation with webinar moderation.Before discussing about how to moderate a webinar, here is a quick elaboration on what a webinar is:

A webinar is a typical presentation or meeting that uses the internet as its backbone for implementation. Webinars are commonly used by businesses to conduct seminars remotely. It is one of the few viable ways to lessen the time and budget spent in conducting a face-to-face seminar. It is also safer, considering the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis.

Webinars are currently dubbed as one of the most indispensable tools for enhancing one’s marketing efforts to attain success. It has become a convenient alternative for typical face-to-face seminars, social gatherings, and events meant for exchanging information about a particular topic, line of expertise or field of interest. It allowed brands and industry leaders to continue imparting valuable knowledge and staying connected with their staff across the globe.

Why Do You Need Human and AI Moderation For Webinars?

There are key features that make webinar an essential part of modern day communications among companies, businesses, and experts. These features make moderation for webinars all the more essential:

Enable hosts to share video clips and presentations
Chat freely with all the participants
Enable hosts to conduct polls and/or surveys
Share screens securely
Stream and record videos

Although webinars and virtual meetings are closely similar, there are still specific differences that separate that key context of a webinar from a virtual meeting.

Additionally, unlike in virtual meetings, webinar participants don’t usually interact with each other. Instead, they listen to a host who facilitates the whole session from start to finish.

On the other hand, that does not mean that participants and hosts of webinars are 100% safe. Given that it is conducted digitally or online, there lurks the dangers of hackers and scammers infiltrating internet-powered video conferences.

If you recall, on March 24, 2020, a so-called ‘Zoombombing’ incident took place. It involved non-participants and unauthorized individuals barging into ongoing webinars and video conferences conducted through the Zoom app. Most Zoombombing incidents were fueled by strong extremist beliefs (dubbed ‘hacktivism). In a separate but similar incident, a group of 50 students were shocked after hackers streamed pornographic content featuring a young child during a public virtual meeting. There have also been other users who reported a similar incident.

It is this breach of privacy in webinars that make using moderation as an added layer of defense a must. Also, some webinars have young audiences, and unfiltered and disturbing images or videos could traumatize them.

At the same time, intruders in online video meetings could share phishing links or corrupted files that when opened or downloaded by participants, exposes their private information and infects their computers or gadgets with a virus.

Webinar With Live Moderation: How it Works

Now that social distancing and face-to-face interactions are still being strictly observed, all the more vigilance is needed when it comes to digital get-togethers. Hackers and Zoombombers are lurking everywhere, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike and cause inconvenience on their next set of victims.

The core objective of content moderation is to maintain a smooth flowing digital seminar without the risks of being mobbed by hackers and individuals with malicious intent. The presence of an expert webinar moderator increases the assurance of the people who join online video conferences. It means that there is someone ensuring unauthorized individuals cannot freely enter or barge into ongoing webinars or even private video meetings.

Human moderators provide protection against inappropriate content and actions in the form of inappropriate messages, videos or images, pornographic and offensive content, and other misdemeanors that clearly undermine the rules and regulations established for the presentation.

Some webinars are usually open to the public, and so some users create fake accounts to intrude, stalk, or disrupt the ongoing activity. You can take advantage of the services of webinar moderator to verify that invited individuals are the only ones who have access to your conferences. By doing so, checking the attendance of your attendees becomes fortified with a stringent filtering system to ensure that all individuals who join your webinar are those with invitations or who have booked and reserved a slot for your presentation in advance.

Moderators will also serve as the gatekeepers who will keep private conferences private and prevent suspicious groups or individuals from forcing their way into your online seminars. Some users tend to attempt joining webinars without the administrator or host’s permission, and it is the job of moderators to safeguard links to your video presentation and prevent other people from accessing it.

Artificial Intelligence contributes greatly to securing your digital conferences, too. A feature or function akin to a webinar moderator script enables automated moderators to filter text or links that users send on the video conference’s chat box. As mentioned, spreading infected files and links across online accounts is easy. A person simply has to click on the link or download the file into their system and before they realize it, they are already spreading and sending these links non-stop and in bulk to their friends.

On the other hand, zoombombers are not the only ones who are notorious at spreading hate and inconvenience in webinars. Webinars that are accessible to the public attract both interested audiences and individuals with ill intentions for the participants. They will send profanities, inappropriate images, and try to bully other people joining the event using the conference’s chat feature.

With a human and AI moderator in place, they can easily detect these unsavory comments, delete it, and ban users who are causing discomfort to others.More importantly, webinar moderation is instrumental in promoting healthy conversations and interactions among the hosts and the participants at all times. Topics and discussions deviating from the presentation’s main topic are minimized and attendees feel more at ease to share and join the activities prepared for them.

Webinar Moderation Services On-the-Go

New Media Services is your go-to place to find the finest and most suitable content moderation services based on your targets and objectives. Whether you need a zoom webinar moderator or moderation assistance for your specific webinar platform, the NMS team has the capacity to align with your requirements.

With well-positioned content moderators that can aid you in real-time, the risk of exposing your participants and your presentation to inappropriate content is significantly diminished.

New Media Services’ webinar content moderation services offer cost-effective countermeasures to help you present your webinars in a safe and flawless manner.

Our expert moderators can handle all your webinar moderation needs through the following range of services. You can count on them to boost audience engagement rates, track the flow of your events from start to finish, check and validate profiles, eliminate spammers and scamming attempts, and even act as a real-time virtual help desk if the need arises.

As such, expect to have high-quality, engagement-driving webinars that can set a lasting impression on your audiences.