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In today’s modern world, virtual presentations have become the new norm. Companies promote products, engage investors, and hold meetings all through video calls. But then, video meetings may not always guarantee the same results face-to-face meetings produce.
Everyone in a company must learn how to do proper online presentations. An ideal presentation should be engaging to ensure it gives desirable results. This article gives the best tips to help you engage your virtual audience when presenting a topic to them.
Check out the expert tips we’ve compiled below.
Make Yourself Visible
Presenters may sometimes struggle to see their audiences. However, the audience not seeing the presenter is worse than anything else. As a presenter, it is vital to ensure that your audience can see what you’re doing, which happens most of the time.
The easiest way to engage your audience is to make sure they can see you. We could talk about keeping eye contact if it was a live audience. Yet, it can be about keeping in contact with the camera lens as much as you can. Remember, your audience also needs to see nonverbal cues like facial expressions.
Start on Time
Virtual meetings can be challenging for several reasons. One of the biggest is the difference in arrival times for the participants or audience. The fact that a few people may come late shouldn’t make you keep the rest waiting. You can start as you wait for them to log on but ensure they do not miss anything.
Having a double opening is one of the best ways you can have your entire audience on board. Start on time, even before your audience gets full but do not get into the main presentation. Start presenting the main points once everyone logs in. Both starts should have brief introductory statements, but the second one needs to be stronger.
Speak Loudly and Clearly
Your voice is the primary communication tool during a virtual presentation. It even has a bigger role to play compared to during an in-person meeting. The physical separation makes it vital to ensure your audience can hear you clearly. That’s how to pass the message in a virtual presentation.
The first thing to do is to use the right equipment during the presentation. You can also record yourself and practice to ensure that everyone can hear you correctly. You can also try to find ways to improve your voice by checking for expert advice online.
Plan Interaction
Interaction is a critical aspect of online meetings. You need always to make sure that you not only engage your audience but make sure they’re actively contributing. Research shows that humans have a 5 minutes concentration span. The easier you can use that period, the better the results.
You can do that by raising questions or comments that will kickstart conversations. Aim at doing this once every five minutes, and your audience will remain lively throughout the entire period. Interaction sessions shouldn’t come accidentally. Ensure that you plan for them properly before the actual presentation.
Reinforce the Key Points
Reinforcing key points makes your presentation worthwhile. It is not always when your audience will keep quiet because they’ve understood you. Sometimes that happens because they missed the point. Proceeding with the presentation will be a wrong move in such times. Thus, it would be best if you took the time to reinforce your points.
The best thing you can do is recapping your points after every slide. Take time to mention the key points and ensure your audience gets them right before you proceed. Besides stressing the points in your presentation, this will get your audience out of confusion. It also presents an opportunity to take questions.
Take Short Pauses
Pauses are essential, and you shouldn’t overlook them during virtual presentations. The physical separation between you and your audience can make them passive. You will most of the time engage in monologues that do not add any value. That will make your audience switch off.
All you need to avoid such situations is a short pause. Pauses give your audience a chance to ponder on the points you’ve mentioned in your presentation. They also make it possible to build anticipation or even reinforce a key point. Thus, it would help if you never took short pauses for granted when presenting.
End on Time
It is not only in-person meetings that require presenters to end on time. Your virtual audience may also get distracted if you extend your presentation for too long. Planning your presentation properly can help you manage time better. Ensure that you do it early enough so that you don’t exceed on time.
Besides, it’s not always that you have to end at the designated time. Sometimes you can read your audience’s body language and know what they’d prefer. You should stop the presentation if they look tired, disinterested, or eager to hear your last word. Ending on time will make it more productive.
Create Simple Slides
Make your slides comprehensible to everyone watching you. The first step should be using fewer slides in the presentation now that it is virtual. It is also vital to ensure they’re great backgrounds and other elements on the slides. You can use timeline templates to achieve that.
Besides, you’ll need to optimize your slides correctly. Remember, not everyone in your audience will be viewing on a large screen. Optimizing them for smaller screens will make it easy for people to view the slides. You should also limit the use of graphics for the best results.
A smart way to include graphics is through diagrams. Visually engaging diagrams, like a, can be used to gather your audience’s attention. For example, a fishbone diagram shows cause and effect more understandably since your audience will be able to also process the information visually.
Conclusion
Those are some of the expert tips you should consider worth trying. Online audiences can be difficult to control and convince. However, you can do that easily by implementing the features we have mentioned above.
You should find the best ways to weave these tips into your plan. You’ll get better results if you can practice and implement them correctly. Your audience will stay awake through the entire presentation and also avoid multitasking.
