Presenting online can be just as fun as speaking in-front of a room full of people. There is however a lot of background work that needs to be done, set-up and preparation. Follow this outline and you will already be making much more of an impact on your team, your client or your audience. Because for them, it’s all about the take-away anyway right?
Do research on your audience.
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience, and see what their problems, dreams and desires are. If you can interview the organizer or client to find out more about the audience that is ideal.
Do a survey monkey or google form research survey and send it out to your ideal audience, to see what their dreams desires and goals are, so that you can make that message right for them.
Tweak your message to speak to them.
- Move away from a “spray and pray” mentality. Your message, training or speech is not for everyone. What problem is it solving? What do you want the audience to do afterwards?
- Ask them, tell them, inspire them and you will have much greater success.
Have fun and be you.
Allow your personality to come out and have fun while speaking or training. Imagine as if you are in the room with them. Last year I had to do a pre-recorded 1 hour talk on: “Acing the most important presentation in your life, stepping into your power, for Smart Procurement”.
Allow them to forget that it’s online and to enjoy the experience
Yoke van Dam
Look into the camera.
We often get distracted and look at the video images of our audience right? I was recently interviewing Nikki Quinn and had to force myself to gaze into the camera. This makes the audience feel a sense of connection and that you are making eye contact.
Stop reading the audience’s body language and engage them by asking questions.
Mark Bowden, world wide body language expert says stop assuming what the body language means of your virtual audience. Don’t allow this to overwhelm you. Rather ask engaging questions to see if they are understanding what you are saying and if you are on the same page. Have positive and open body language yourself, get closer to the screen, make it feel like a conversation.
Plant engagement in your training or speaking slot by doing a Poll or asking for answers in the chat bar.
Be very pro-active. If you are speaking for an event, put questions together that you can send to the Master of ceremonies that they can run as polls for you. Arrange when you want these polls to go live and how you will communicate this with them. This creates great interaction with the audience. You can also ask the audience to type into the chat bar.
If you are having a confidential conversation, and people in the room cant’ hear what you are saying, you can also use the chat bar for private conversations.
Lighting
Set up your lighting at ten to two
If you could imagine the hands of a clock at (ten to) and the other hand at two, that is where you should be placing your lamps or your lights for speaking.
Block out sound and close doors.
The moment I close my sliding door, and shut my block out curtains a lot of noise gets illuminated. If I am doing an important talk, training or interviewing over Restream, I alert my husband so that he can minimize noise and not use too much bandwidth.
If you have children and animals-see if you can close or lock the door so that they can’t disturb you while you are doing an important talk, meeting or training session.
Sign in on a separate device.
If you sign into Zoom on a cellphone, tablet or a separate laptop you can see how things look for the audience and make changes as needed.
Have your camera or webcam at eye level or just below.
Stack books, files or even a short little step underneath your laptop or webcam so that it can be inline or just below eye level. This is the most flattering for you and then easier for you to make eye contact with the camera.
Stand or sit depending on the energy you want to convey.
I like standing when training or speaking, it feels more like I’m speaking at an event, than if I’m sitting. Do see what your background looks like, we call it framing. If your frame doesn’t allow you to stand rather sit. If you are training or speaking for long periods wear comfortable shoes and have water handy to hydrate you and for your voice.
Have a decent microphone and switch off notifications on your laptop and cellphone.
Sound has even a greater impact on the success of your speaking than visuals or video. People want to listen to what you have to say. Make sure that your microphone carries your voice well, and that you eliminate background noise as much as you can.
When you turn of notifications on your laptop, your delegates won’t see when emails come in and you won’t have irritating sounds stealing from your talk or session. Be present in the room with those people, switch off from the rest of the world.
Dress for success.
You are what you wear, what you eat, what you read. What does your clothing say about your personal brand. Does it look like you are respecting the client and yourself by dressing in a professional manner for work? As a speaker, the general rule is-be the best dressed person in the room, should that also be the case for a facilitator, I guess so.
How to create engagement in a online space?
Have a quiz
Quiz the team members on a current project, product knowledge or the company values. This will make sure that they are listening and engaged to your meeting or training.
Do a poll.
For bigger groups polls work really well. Outline your polls before hand and send it to the MC or meeting organizer, or upload them yourself before the meeting. Also indicate on your own slides where you want to launch them.
Use tools like Mentimeter for engagement.
Mentimeter is a great tool to get the group to all write comments that becomes one giant world cloud. This can become a nice visual that you can share afterwards in your feedback on the meeting, plus people love seeing what they contributed.
Address people by their names.
Instead of just asking questions to the entire audience, pick a specific person and ask them a question.
If you want to up your Virtual presentation skills, become a confident presenter on stage, or virtually join our 6-week Power of Persuasion program. Join the waiting list today.
If you want to up your Virtual presentation skills, become a confident presenter on stage, or virtually join our 6-week Power of Persuasion program. Join the waiting list today.
This bootcamp can be offered to teams as well, or you can book individual presentation coaching.
Written by Yoke van Dam
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