Virtual Presentation Skills
What to consider when presenting virtually?
Now that you need to master virtual presentation skills, how do you do it professionally? This blog post looks at some of the main challenges you need to overcome to look professional when presenting virtually. For training on this subject click here.
Voice
When making a virtual presentation your body language will be limited. This has a number of implications. Firstly your voice becomes the main and most important form of communication. Secondly, the clarity of your voice in terms of diction and pronunciation really matters. And lastly the speed at which you talk has to be slow enough for people to hear your voice, bearing in mind all the technological challenges the sound of your voice has to overcome.
Because body language is limited with virtual presentation skills, your voice becomes even more important, which means reflecting on your voice is vital.
Video
If you turn your camera on to use video in your presentation, there are a number of things to consider. One, make sure your lighting is on your face so that they can see you clearly. Two, don’t have lighting behind you as this will usually cast you in shadow. Three, consider how far from the camera you are positioned, to make sure they can see your face easily. Four, take a look at your background and make it professional and uncluttered, so that they focus on you. To conclude, a key part of virtual presentation skills is to develop your ability to use your video to look professional.
Content
In the virtual presentation skills world, it’s my observation that you need to get to the point fast and make your point quickly. This means you need to limit your content to what is absolutely necessary to say. In other words Less is More. Less content will have more impact. This in turn means that your slides need to be concise.
And if you are using content you’ve used in face to face presentations, or you’re using someone else’s content, you will need to be more ruthless. Take a look at every point and ask yourself, how does this contribute to the overall objective you are trying to make?
Duration
It’s my observation that there is a correlation between duration and involvement. In other words, the time you can take and the level of engagement of your audience are linked. This means, the more involved and engaged your audience is, the more time you can talk for.
If you’re not involving your audience at all, and you’re giving a kind of seminar, then you will need to keep the talk to an absolute minimum. But I would say that a key part of virtual presentation skills is to involve your audience much more than presenting in the same room.
Message
It is vital that before you write any content, you start with an objective. What do you want your audience to be thinking, considering, reflecting on by the time you have completed your talk? Then consider this obejctive as you build your presentation. How does each slide or point you are planning to make contribute to your overall objective.
With virtual presentation skills you need to think even harder about your key message and the objective for your talk.
Conclusion
After training people from all over the world on presentation skills for over twenty years, my thought is that virtual presentation skills are more difficult than live presenting. You need to be more focussed, more concise and more engaging. You need to plan in meticulous detail about every step in your talk. And more than that, you need to consider how you will engage your audience at every step of the way.
At ITD we deliver virtual presentations skills training and online presentation skills training for participants all over the world. From China, Australia, Hong Kong, UAE, Europe, US & S America. Clik on th links below to find out more, or read reviews of our training , by clicking here.
