I monitor many news feeds to keep track of the latest webinars and I'm seeing a poor practice that is very, very frustrating. Many companies are issuing press releases to announce that they're going to have a webinar they day before the actual webinar and in some cases - the same day!

The goal of a webinar is get as many viewers as possible and you're not going to that by announcing your webinar to the world the day before it happens. The internet may move fast, but not that fast. You need to give some warning for your webinars.

Why give time?

Well, as people discover your webinar, it will get disseminated across sites like this, across Twitter and other social media sites. These are all great ways to get word out about your webinar. And this word of mouth will happen without you having to actually do it.  But quality word of mouth takes time and you will have a better return if you issue your press release with much more lead time.

Also, people are generally very busy and don't have time to fit a webinar in at the last minute. They're more likely to be able to attend your webinar if they have 3 weeks to plan it into their schedule.

How much lead time should you give?

I recommend announcing your Webinar 3 to 4 weeks before it actually occurs. It gives people plenty of time to find your webinar and for it to make the rounds on the internet. It will also sit in the Webinar Central Calendar for an extended period of time, so more casual browsers will see it. Press releases are a great tool to announce your webinar, but it's got to be timely, or you've wasted your time and money distributing a press release.

A good general rule of thumb is to send out your press release on a Wednesday or Thursday - the days people will usually notice something in their e-mail and have time to read it.

My policy when I enter webinars into Webinar Central's extensive database, is that when I discover it, I don't post Webinars that are happening tomorrow. It's not fair to my readers who may not have time to plan a webinar into their schedule on such short notice.