Setting Up Your Home Studio for Ultra-Effective and Highly Impressive Webinars

You hang up the phone and your arms shoot to the sky in celebration. The event organizer accepted your full fee, without hesitation. You just landed your first virtual webinar.

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There’s just one tiny problem. As you look around your home office, you realize it’s going to need a major upgrade if you’re going to deliver a highly impressive webinar here. 

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You might be tempted to run to the store and buy the best camera you can find. In fact, after a quick internet search, you’ll realize that's exactly what many people suggest. However, when it comes to setting up your home studio for ultra-effective webinars, there’s a lot more to consider than just the quality of your camera.

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Audio, lighting, and the layout of your space can have just as much impact, if not more, than a great camera. All of these elements work together to create the ultimate experience for your audience.  

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Setting Up Your Home Studio: Four Simple Steps 

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Optimizing your home studio for webinars and virtual events can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Follow these four simple steps to create an outstanding virtual performance. 

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#1 Quality Audio: How to Sound Your Best

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As a professional speaker, your voice is your instrument. Pristine audio gives you an overwhelming advantage for virtual events. 

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You see, studies have shown that people will watch a bad video with good audio longer than they’ll watch a good video with bad audio. In fact, high-quality audio also increases credibility, trust, and perceived intelligence of the speaker. That’s why sound matters at least as much (if not more) than video quality.

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While laptop built-in microphones have come a long way, they just aren’t enough for winning the virtual game. To sound your absolute best, consider investing in a high-quality microphone. There are many options to choose from: 

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• Lavalier microphones—these clip to your clothing so they stay with you as you move. They’re fantastic for speakers who include a lot of motion in their presentations.
• Condenser microphones—very sensitive; in pristine studios these offer superior audio quality, but you need to be relatively close to them or they might pick up a lot of background noise.
• Dynamic microphones—can be more expensive, but great for webinars because in noisier environments they reject background noise and provide clear vocal audio. 

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I started off with a Blue Yeti condenser microphone that cost me about $100. While it emitted good audio quality, I realized that I had to position it very close to me to capture the sound. And it caught a lot of popping sounds—whenever I said sounds like “t,” “k,” and “p,” it created a “pop.” 

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An easy solution for this is usually a pop filter: a thin noise protection screen you can attach in front of your microphone. But it takes up space and isn’t the most appealing visual solution. I found that positioning the microphone slightly off-axis and talking across the side of it helped reduce the harshness and popping sounds. 

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I later invested in a top-of-the-line Shure SM7B dynamic microphone. It’s a vocalist mic with superior audio quality. In fact, it’s the microphone that professional singers use to record songs. I love it—I can position it just out of frame so the audience can’t see it, and it still captures fantastic audio.