The differences between virtual presentations and face-to-face presentations have such dramatic psychological implications that presenters accustomed to face-to-face presenting are sometimes disappointingly ineffective. To be effective in the virtual environment they must reset their expectations and alter their practices and behavior, both technically and psychologically. The goal is audience engagement. The strategy is to gain and keep audience attention.
Here's Part I of a collection of tips for achieving audience engagement in the virtual environment.
- Deliver just one big idea
- Virtual presenters are competing with the goings-on in the audience members' environments. The audience is weeks behind on everything, and flooded with stimuli. They can't handle seven, five, or even three big ideas. Pick one. Develop it fully.
- Having too many big ideas causes audience multitasking — not good if you want 100% of their attention. If you have three big ideas, make three presentations. Deliver them one after another with big breaks in between, or on three consecutive days, or make them available for viewing on demand.
- But "one big idea" doesn't mean "one idea." Include smaller ideas within that big idea, if they fit snugly together.
- Keep it short
- Brevity is easy if you have just one big idea. Presenting for more than 20 minutes in a virtual environment, using only voice and possibly slides, risks audience boredom. When they start checking their inboxes or voicemail, or tweeting, you've lost them.
- Get to the point
- Suspense is your enemy. Deliver the headline first. When the audience can't tell where you're going, they start multitasking. After the audience has the headline, only then can they receive supporting and motivating information.
- Use videos to add interest
- Still photos are Virtual presenters are competing
with the goings-on in the
audience members' environmentsOK. Videos are better. A two-minute video every 7 or 10 minutes is about right, if it's relevant and well-produced. Fluffy or amateurish video causes multitasking. - Break it into three- to five-minute bites
- Think of being interviewed. The interviewer poses questions. You deliver crisp, full replies, with at least one "sound bite." A few of those and a wrap-up make a presentation. Segments must be small because a 15- or 20-minute story can't compete with email clients or smartphones that beep, chirp, or play swatches of pop tunes whenever new messages arrive. If you're recording for a podcast, this short-bite structure lets audience members pause if they must, resuming when they're able.
- Stand, don't sit
- It's tempting to present while seated, but standing elevates your energy level, and you're more likely to be captivating. Standing for a long time can be uncomfortable — yet another reason to keep it short.
OK, I'm guessing that you have other things to do right now. I'll be back next week with more on this. Next in this series Top Next Issue
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Related articles
More articles on Effective Meetings:
- Take Regular Temperature Readings
- Team interactions are unimaginably complex. To avoid misunderstandings, offenses, omissions, and mistaken
suppositions, teams need open communications. But no one has a full picture of everything that's happening.
The Temperature Reading is a tool for surfacing hidden and invisible information, puzzles, appreciations,
frustrations, and feelings.
- Remote Facilitation in Synchronous Contexts: II
- Facilitators of synchronous distributed meetings — meetings that occur in real time, via telephone
or video — encounter problems that facilitators of face-to-face meetings do not. Here's Part II
of a little catalog of those problems, and some suggestions for addressing them.
- How to Ruin Meetings
- Much has been written about how to conduct meetings effectively. Here are some reliable techniques for
doing something else altogether.
- Is the Question "How?" or "Whether?"
- In group decision making, tension sometimes develops between those who favor commitment to the opportunity
at hand, and those who repeatedly ask, "If we do that, how will we do it?" Why does this happen?
- Would Anyone Object?
- When groups consider whether to adopt proposals, some elect to poll everyone with a question of the
form, "Would anyone object if X?" It's a risky approach, because it can lead to damaging decisions
that open discussion in meetings can avoid.
See also Effective Meetings and Effective Communication at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
- Coming May 8: Antipatterns for Time-Constrained Communication: 3
- Recognizing just a few patterns that can lead to miscommunication can reduce the incidence of problems. Here is Part 3 of a collection of antipatterns that arise in technical communication under time pressure, emphasizing past experiences of participants. Available here and by RSS on May 8.
- And on May 15: Should I Write or Should I Call?
- After we recognize the need to contact a colleague or colleagues to work out a way to move forward, we next must decide how to make contact. Phone? Videoconference? Text message? There are some simple criteria that can help with such decisions. Available here and by RSS on May 15.
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