Virtual meetings are here to stay and at some point you, Freelancer friend, will be asked to give a presentation on a virtual platform—so you may as well make it your business to learn how to do it right. Plan well and you’ll be able to give a talk that is delivered remotely but still connects you to your audience. The trick is to think of your talk as a TV show or movie, divide it into segments and assign them a role to play in the audience experience.

Obstacles

Talking to a webcam is probably not your idea of a satisfying communication process. You’re in a room intended for another purpose—-cooking? sleeping?—-but is now your stage and the audience can see you. You can see them, too, but only as a row of small images aligned along the perimeter of your screen. Everyone is together, except that you’re not.

In fact, you’re all isolated and some may be in another time zone or even another country. Still, through the miracle of technology, you’ve come together to share this experience. The speaker has the responsibility to make that experience rewarding.

Unfortunately, the speaker’s experience may not feel rewarding. Delivering a speech of some sort when using a virtual platform can be disorienting, whether one will discuss a committee report at a board meeting, teach a class, or give a quarterly earnings report to investors. The usual sensory cues are missing. The presenter can see everyone’s eyes, but is unable to make eye contact.

It is sometimes apparent whether or not audience members are paying attention, but feeling their presence and energy, which signal to an astute speaker when the audience is with you and when you are losing them, is not possible. In virtual communication there is no feedback, no way to confirm that the audience understands or agrees with the points you’re making. The presenter is hanging out there alone, sort of in a black hole. There are no familiar landmarks on the trip.

Solution 1: The voice

Presenting on a virtual medium is like being a television newscaster, talking to the red light and with no studio audience to interact with. Nevertheless, speakers working in a virtual medium must remain acutely aware that there is a listening audience that needs him/her perhaps more than does a face2face audience. The online audience urgently needs a responsive connection to the speaker, on whom they depend to lead them into the topic, earn their respect by sharing relevant and timely information and hold their attention so that they won’t be tempted to sign out of the event.

When talking to a webcam, there is often a tendency to speak in a monotone. Some may speak too fast, others will ramble on and on. It’s because talking to a webcam and a row of tiny pictures feels off-kilter. The normal exchange of communication between a speaker and audience, subtle but powerful, is missing.

The overall most effective solution is for virtual format presenters to rehearse the talk thoroughly, to ensure that the tone of voice is strong and confident and the pace of speaking is neither rushed nor slow. Diction should be crisp and the vocal expression pleasantly enthusiastic.

Solution 2: Technology —polls

The drop-off rate of virtual presentations is high. It’s easy for audience members to leave when the talk begins to seem boring. To combat the problem, speakers must prepare to work with the platform technology, rather than allow themselves to become lost and flailing within it. Speakers must always maintain control and this is especially true when the format is virtual and the ability to read the audience mood is severely restricted.

Presenters are advised to quickly capture audience attention and establish their control by engaging them at the start of the talk, perhaps with a fun activity that employs the platform’s polling function. When the speaker invites the audience to respond to him/her they’ll give back a helpful dose of positive energy, precisely what is needed to not just deliver a talk, but to communicate and connect with the audience.

Asking a question is a tried-and-true audience “warm up” technique, but your question must be more specific than “How’s everybody doing today?” The virtual presentation opening question should be devised along the lines of a survey question, to make taking a poll feel appropriate.

Presenters can create a question that’s related to the talk, or even ask about the weather. Since most of the audience may be working from home, staying indoors is easy. If local temperatures have been unusually cold or warm, a creative speaker might want to ask when’s the last time audience members have ventured outdoors? The question and answers received could be good for a chuckle and will pave the way to finding common ground between speaker and audience and also between audience members.

You may be able to take another poll or two later in the talk by asking a question about the topic and challenging the audience to predict what your data show. Once you’ve displayed the audience answers, then present your data. (“96% of you predicted that our customers would like this new product feature. Let’s bring up the official statistics now and see how customers responded.”

Solution 3: Technology —chat

Chat is tailor-made for Q & A and it’s the go- to virtual audience engagement tool. Every presentation includes time for Q & A, often structured as a forum at the talk’s conclusion. Some presenters will also take a question or two earlier in the talk and then address the rest in the Q & A forum.

Whichever format you feel will work best for you and your topic, the chat function will be useful. Presenters can invite audience members to type questions into chat throughout the talk, which may cause certain of them to be addressed during the talk. It will be wise for presenters to discreetly check into chat periodically during the talk because audience members could be trying to signal that something is amiss—-maybe a sound or lighting problem.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Walter Cronkite (1916 – 2009), lead anchorman for CBS-TV Evening News 1962 – 1981. During the 1960s and 70s, Cronkite was regularly named as “ the most trusted man in America.”