Handling people who show up 15 minutes early to your webinar is a lot easier than handling people who show up 15 minutes early to your house party. For one thing, it doesn’t matter if your hair is still wet. For another, the omNovia webinar platform has lots of tips and tools to keep early-birds entertained:

1. Ask open-ended questions in the chat box. Early birds will answer, and as new audience members sign in they can read the chat thread and get involved.
2. Run a pre-event slide show to include housekeeping topics, presenter information, social media instructions like assigned Twitter hashtags and a schedule of upcoming webinars. This lets you get your message out without using valuable webinar time.
3. Launch opinion polls. When you are asking your audience to take action they are less likely to give in to other online distractions.
4. Play music to set the tone of your webinar. A rousing march, modern electronica or soothing new age will help get your audience in the proper mood to receive your message.
5. Entertain with videos. Sure, the sneezing baby panda may have nothing to do with your webinar topic, but dollars to donuts your audience will watch it – no matter how many times they’ve seen it before.