How do you deliver great virtual presentations?
How confident do you feel when presenting to a group remotely?
Many of us have only been delivering virtual presentations since the first lockdown in 2020.
I have been involved in delivering virtual presentations and virtual training for nearly 2 decades and before that was performing professionally in the theatre, film and radio. We are all on film now and it is key to recognise that we need to learn new skills to have a real impact when communicating ideas, information, and our authentic selves to remote groups, teams, colleagues and partners.
Most of our relationships are being maintained and nurtured in the remote environment. We are motivating our teams and sharing our passion remotely too - so we should not be trying to improve virtual presentation delivery – we should be brilliant at it! It is now one of the main ways we are communicating and sharing often very complex information.
You can pick up tips for delivering great virtual presentations ‘on the job’, yet there are many techniques that are difficult to uncover and learn that way. It takes a long time to do so with many costly mistakes along the way. Learning from a professional coach allows you to leap forward and feel far more confident in achieving your objectives with your virtual presentations every single time.
To draw on an analogy, I have been skiing since I was 16 and would rate myself of a reasonable intermediate standard. A few years ago I had fallen into some bad habits and so organised a one hour lesson with a coach. In that one hour session, my whole skiing experience was transformed and since then I have been enjoying the benefits across many weeks of ski holidays – a fantastic result by spending a short time with an expert! (see my blog Little Changes Big Improvements)
If you want to make some rapid, giant strides in your virtual presentations I strongly suggest investing in some Virtual Presentation Skills Training.
In the meantime, here are 5 Top Tips for delivering engaging virtual presentations
1. More slides / less on them – Think about being kind to your audience instead of ‘fire hosing’ them with information. Slides are there to support and enhance an easy understanding of what you are saying. Using slides as a prompt is an insult to your virtual audience.
2. Up the pace – speak a little faster. Most of what you will be communicating will be transmitted through your voice and human beings can cope with a lot of audio. Think about radio and how fast broadcasters speak. Upping the pace will also help keep people engaged.
3. Engage your audience – it is important to get people’s attention and for them to stay attentive and engaged throughout your virtual presentation. You can use the chat pane, polls and hands up. There are lots of third party interactive tools you can use too.
4. Make sure you are well lit, you should be front lit from above.
5. When you speak, imagine you are talking to just one person. This is a subtle broadcasting trick. It makes everyone feel you are speaking to them personally and is more engaging. If you talk like you are speaking to a group it sounds far more impersonal.
We have been teaching people from the utility sector, banks, universities, government, NHS and law firms how to deliver highly interactive, engaging virtual presentations for nearly 15 years. If you want to learn how to deliver complex information to large remote groups attend one of our renowned courses. Just click here to find out more.