STEP 8

Excel at Virtual Presentations

Overview

• Create the atmosphere.

• Engage your virtual audience.

• Get the technical details right.

• Practice, deliver, and follow up.

Presentations have always been a staple of how we communicate. Leaders need to share information, so they gather people in a room and speak to their audience. Professors speak in front of a class or facilitate a discussion. Salespeople host a client for a product demonstration. Technology, however, has made it possible for meetings to take place regardless of geographic location. Presenters now can gather groups from all over the world in virtual “rooms” that far exceed the capacity of any office conference room or hotel ballroom. Our ever-increasing technical capabilities ensure that virtual presentations—whether webinar, online training session, video conference, or other—are here to stay. If you have not yet been called upon to facilitate a virtual presentation, chances are it’s only a matter of time.

Even as the technology continues to improve, the fundamentals of good presentation skills will remain constant. In general, the same rules apply for in-person presentations: plan, prepare, develop the right content. When delivering your presentation, state your purpose, have a memorable opener, use transitions, summarize your points, and wrap up with a conclusion that sums it all up. You wouldn’t show up to an in-person presentation a mere five minutes early and expect everything to be in place. The same is true for your virtual presentations. Just because you can wear shorts or host the meeting in your kitchen (if people can’t see you), don’t mistake a virtual presentation for a casual presentation. In many ways you have to be more prepared.

It’s especially important to understand the audience because you won’t be able to read their body language during your presentation. Who are they, and why are they here? What do they expect?

Ask yourself:

• Why is this virtual? Why is this presentation being done virtually, rather than in-person?

• Why is this a presentation? Why is this information being shared via web conference rather than a conference call or shared document? Why didn’t the client send the information out in some written form?

Sometimes the answers to these questions are obvious—the required audience is spread out over the world and can’t get together in person. Or you’re trying to reach as many people as possible and hosting a virtual presentation is easier for that scope. While the questions will help you clarify your purpose, you should always strive to cultivate a welcoming atmosphere in the virtual space.

Create the Atmosphere

Watching an online presentation isn’t the same as being in a room full of other people receiving the same information. An in-person presentation is an event, even if it’s somewhat routine. Virtual presentations can lack some of the dynamics and energy that add to it. Therefore, as much as possible, try to create a group setting, making your audience feel connected to both you and the others attending the presentation.

For small groups, if possible, host your presentation on a platform that allows everyone to see everyone else. You’ll remember that you’re speaking to real people, not just other computers. They’ll not only get to see your facial expressions and body language (making your presentation more interesting) but those of other audience members as well. It humanizes everyone and makes for a better presentation. Because livestreaming individual people takes up bandwidth and may affect the quality of your broadcast, consider asking everyone to turn their webcams on just at the beginning of the presentation, to introduce themselves. Then, participants can turn their webcams off and focus on you and your presentation for the remainder of the time.

Sometimes the group is too large to livestream all audience members. It’s still important to create human connections not only for you (so you remember you’re presenting to a group of individuals) but for the rest of the audience, so they feel that they’re part of something. Introduce yourself via webcam, even if you plan to turn it off for the rest of the presentation. If that’s not possible, at the very least offer a photo of yourself on one of your first slides. Some presenters show a photo of a celebrity or comical cartoon character instead of an actual photo of themselves. It’s a fun way to introduce yourself and offer a bit of personal detail, but it also runs the risk that your audience will picture that character giving the presentation, rather than a professional.

If video streaming is not possible—either because your audience is too big or the software isn’t available—there are other ways to create the right atmosphere. To get yourself in the mindset of a presenter, without live video:

• Find a picture of an audience and post it near your computer. Look at it every once in a while to remind yourself you’re presenting to real people, even if you can’t see them.

• To ease anxiety, post a picture of your best friend near your computer and imagine you are delivering the presentation to them.

To create a welcoming, interactive environment for your audience, even without video:

• If possible, use polling software or the chat function to ask:

○ Who’s in another time zone or country?

○ Who’s the farthest away? Participating at the weirdest hour?

○ Who’s heard about, read about, or experienced the topic?

• Use the words “you” and “we” often throughout your presentation. It will help foster group dynamics and socialization, even though you can’t see each other.

Finally, you need a quiet room to host the presentation. Attendees can sit in a coffee shop with headphones if not much is required of them beyond listening. The presenter, however, cannot. You cannot mute yourself, so all background noise around you will be heard. Find a room with a door, and plan to keep other people and distractions outside. Make sure your Wi-Fi works (or you can hardwire in) and make sure your voice is clear and consistent, whether using the virtual software, your cell phone, or a landline.

Engage Your Virtual Audience

Your main role as a presenter is to help your audience understand and—hopefully—recall your main message. The best way to do this is to engage your audience. This is still true as a virtual presenter, but it’s harder.

A virtual audience’s attention span is shorter than that of a live audience. As such, keep your presentation as brief as possible. As you approach the 40-minute mark, you can be sure their focus—and probably yours—has begun to wane. If the content requires more than an hour, it’s better to break the material into two presentations rather than one long one.

In order for your audience to be engaged, they have to see the relevance of your message. It has to be important enough to inspire them to pay attention and fight the urge to check email, work on another document, or leave the room altogether. This goes back to your audience analysis. Understand what the audience needs and expects, and deliver that content.

Give people a reason to stay to the end. If they were a member of an in-person presentation, their departure in the middle of your speech would be noticed and considered rude by others. In a virtual presentation, that incentive to stay is gone—they can slip out without anyone noticing. In addition to engaging audience members throughout the presentation with good questions and interactive visuals (such as polls and chat functions), consider holding a contest and announce the winner at the end of the session. It could be as simple as randomly selecting an audience member to receive a complimentary business book. Or, use one of the web tools to ask a question and offer a prize to the first person with a correct answer. Be sure to announce the contest at the beginning of your presentation to encourage people to stick around.

If you have a co-presenter, consider hosting the presentation in a radio-host conversation style. If that’s too complicated, plan to switch presenters every five minutes or so to keep the audience listening. Also, consider asking a guest presenter to join, if even for only several minutes of the presentation. The guest speaker could be a surprise or could be publicized, but they should be someone the audience will look forward to hearing.

Many engagement techniques are similar to in-person presentations—asking questions, using visuals aids, and respecting the audience’s need for breaks. They just require you to understand how to use the tools. Let’s focus in on virtual visual aids.

Visual aids are significant in a virtual presentation. Unless you want the webcam directed at you the entire time—which is not advisable unless you’re a real entertainer—your audience will need something to focus their attention. A good rule of thumb is to change out the visual (even just moving to the next slide) at least every three minutes. Consider these tips when planning your visual aids:

• Think beyond PowerPoint; virtual presentations allow you to share documents that would be difficult to project during an in-person presentation. For example, if you’re discussing a new workflow, share the old one on your screen and make the changes in real time.

• Too many buttons and options can sidetrack or confuse both you and the audience. Virtual conference features can increase audience engagement, but at a certain point, they can become distractions.

• As with in-person visual aids, keep your slides simple. Avoid loud, distracting colors and a variety of fonts and text sizes. Emphasis should come from your voice, rather than confusing typography.

• Your visuals should support your message, not be your complete message. We can read almost twice as fast as we can listen. Your audience will be able to read the text on your slides faster than you can speak it and will quickly get bored. Include some main ideas, data, charts, graphs, or an illustration—but the cohesive message should always be delivered by you.

• Ask audience members for their opinions via chat or live polls, showing the results immediately.

• Show a quick video that illustrates a point; it could be a product demonstration or a clip from a relevant TV show or movie.

• If you’re using presentation software like PowerPoint, web platforms can change animations and some of the fun features. Run through your presentation on the platform and check for any deviations.

• PC and Mac computers can behave differently with virtual conference platforms. Make sure to practice your presentation and see if adjustments need to be made to any visuals so they display adequately on both. (In addition, some web platform features may not work with Macs, including the ability to record the presentation.)

• If you are working with a co-presenter, decide whether you will share their screen during parts of the presentation. If so, make sure you understand how to switch presenters seamlessly.

Get the Technical Details Right

There are hundreds of web presentation platforms available. It would be impossible to detail all of them or their features, because they’re being updated so frequently. The good news is it’s easy to go to the source for information. Any reliable platform offers demonstrations, training, and support for new or experienced users. Your IT department might also be able to offer technical help, show you some shortcuts, or reduce frustration with the web platform. Another great way to learn about the features of each is—you guessed it—attending a virtual presentation about the platform.

There are some features common to most, if not all, platforms that are especially useful for virtual presentations. If you’re a novice and only have time to master a few, use Tool 8.1 below to decide which tools will work best for you.

Just as you have to portray yourself as an expert on the topic of the presentation, you have to appear to be an expert on the technology. Unfortunately, very few audience members will have much patience if you try to learn the platform as they watch. While they might be sympathetic to the story later (technology can be hard!), at that moment they’ve given up valuable work or personal time to hear your message. They’d like you to be as efficient and respectful of their time as possible. There is just no excuse for not knowing how to run the presentation. In fact, if you’re asked to give a virtual presentation and do not have sufficient time to get up to speed on the technology, politely decline or postpone. Poor execution of the technology will undermine your credibility as an expert overall.

TOOL 8-1

COMMON VIRTUAL PRESENTATION PLATFORM TOOLS

In addition, well, if your audience has technical problems—can’t connect, or can’t see, hear, raise their hand, and so on—they will unfairly blame the presenter. It is, after all “your” presentation. Send out details about how to contact technical support days before the event. Offer a pre-presentation checklist including a practice run of their own. If you can’t host it, see if a support person can. Include directions to download any necessary software and to make sure their operating system and any other software is up to date, and include common FAQs. The day before, send these reminders out again. And the day of, make sure everyone understands how to get in touch with a technical support person should anything happen.

Just as with in-person presentations, it’s part of your role to address any housekeeping details in the beginning. The housekeeping details for virtual presentations are different. Request that attendees close other programs on their computers, including email. In addition to reducing distractions, the presentation platform will run more smoothly if no other programs are open. Ask participants to make sure they are on mute, refrain from answering calls during the presentation, and let their co-workers know they are in do-not-disturb mode. Remind them (if relevant) that their participation will be necessary, so they need to be ready to answer questions and so on. Let them know how long your presentation is and assure them they can get back to email and other tasks before too long.

If you think the audience might not be familiar with the meeting platform, offer a quick tour of any important features they might need. Include in your introduction whether you’ll ask them to participate in a poll and how to do that, where their audio controls are and why they’re on mute, how to send you a message, or any other important feature. Definitely spend a minute outlining how participants can ask questions and how you will answer, whether through the chat function anytime, at the end of the presentation, or through individual follow ups after the presentation has wrapped up. Finally, make sure your audience can see your presentation and hear your voice. If they can’t, direct them to support.

For large groups, you may want to limit questions from the audience or have them wait until the end of the presentation. For much smaller groups, you may enable participants to speak, so they can jump in and ask a question. Or you can pause periodically—after one of your supporting points, for example, or a particularly complex point or illustration—and ask if there are any questions. Or just watch for “raised hands” and call on people throughout. The size of your audience, your comfort level with the technology, and preparation for questions determines what you can do. If you do take questions in the middle of your presentation, keep it to one or two, and then be prepared to state you must move on but you’ll take additional questions at the end. Go down a rabbit hole for more than several minutes or engage in a debate with one audience member and you can be sure the rest of the audience is checking email and has moved on to other things.

Again, make sure participants know how to contact a tech support person—either IT at your company, their company, the presentation software company, or even a co-worker you’ve asked for help—beforehand in case of technical problems. You won’t be able to act as IT troubleshooter and host the presentation at the same time, so make sure they know where to go for any (inevitable) problems.

Practice, Deliver, and Follow Up

With virtual presentations, you not only have to focus on what you’re saying, you have to focus on what you’re doing. In-person presentations have visual aids, but they typically involve flipping through slides or a nontechnical aid, like a prop or a flipchart. When you practice your virtual presentation, keep a checklist of everything you need to do or keep track of. Add to it if necessary during your practice run and keep it nearby during your delivery.

One advantage of virtual presentations is that they can be recorded and viewed at a later date. This could cut down considerably on any anxiety about delivering your presentation. Of course, this eliminates some aspects, like live video of attendees or live questions during the presentation. But you can have a live Q&A after the presentation. Or, record a session with an audience and their questions to use for future presentations to different audiences. Attendees can access the presentation at their convenience, which is especially appealing for participants in other time zones. And, the audience size is now restricted by the number of attendees the web platform can handle (usually in the thousands) rather than the number of seats in a room (typically far fewer). In addition, you don’t have to worry about a virtual audience watching you look at your notes (unless you’re using a webcam). While you still don’t want to read your presentation, it’s easier to review notes more frequently.

Co-presenters are great with virtual presentations. Not only can two people share the technical work of checking for questions, setting up polls, and switching visual aids, but it gives one presenter a break from speaking. The presentation can be set up like a conversation or an interview, or you can alternate based on expertise, experience, and so on. Two voices, especially in a conversation, can be much easier to pay attention to and will increase engagement.

Make sure you’ve told your audience beforehand how you will answer questions. Will you take questions throughout the presentation or wait until the end? Should they use a “raise hand” function or the chat function? Because people are often hesitant to be the first to speak, especially in a virtual environment, prepare a few questions in advance. You can read the question without saying who asked it, and give the answer. Plan to have at least three to five questions ready. If no others appear, those questions should take up the time allotted. If the audience asks more questions than you have time for, make your contact information available and ask them to follow up with you after the presentation.

Do you want your audience to do something after the presentation? This is no different than in-person presentations. Are you inspiring them to join a cause? Asking them to sign up for the company’s volunteer program? Ensuring they understand new compliance measures and will maintain new safety standards? Do you want them to follow up with additional virtual presentations? Should they ask their employees to attend related virtual presentations? What’s their call to action? Make sure it’s clear and, if relevant, that there’s a way to follow up with you to ask additional questions, or for you to follow up with them and offer additional information and resources.

End your presentation with a slide that gives clear next steps: their call to action, or ways to ask questions, contact you, or find additional resources on the topic. Leave them wanting more and capable of finding it.

Use Tool 8-2 to make sure you—and your technology—are ready for your presentation.

TOOL 8-2

VIRTUAL PRESENTATION CHECKLIST

The Next Step

In-person and virtual presentations require tremendous effort to plan and prepare, but all that work pays off as you start to deliver them. The steps leading up to this one stressed the importance of audience engagement, which holds true in virtual settings as well. Next let’s move on to the most common form of audience participation: the question-and-answer session. To master the Q&A you’ll need to brainstorm potential audience questions, practice your responses, and figure out the best way to receive the questions.