We often forget how connected our world has truly become, from old rotary phones to an immersive experience where anyone with an internet connection can communicate and share ideas with each other.
In this new world that we live in, presenting in an online format whether it’s through a video call or even a podcast is going to be increasingly important and that’s why, I’m teaching you how to present online in this piece.
- Lock eyes with your camera lenses.
In a regular presentation, you would normally divide your eye contact between the members in a room, say there’s 5 people, you’d go 1, 2, 3, 4 and of course, 5, but in an online presentation, it’s as if you could look at everyone in the eye the entire time without moving your eyes in the same way I’m looking at all of you right now through this article. That’s why it’s so important that most of your presentation, you need to lock eyes with your lenses.
The more times you break the rules, the more times your audience will feel disconnected from your message, it’s a lot like a date in many ways.
If you’re not paying attention to your partner with your eye contact, they won’t really feel connected to you at all in same way that if you just move your eyes around the camera, your audience won’t feel a special rapport with you, so work hard to lock in your eyes with the lenses.
- Imagine the perfect in-person audience.
The struggle with presenting online is we can’t really take a pulse on how our audience is reacting to what we’re saying vs. if the presentation was in-person. For instance, let’s say I tell a joke that I know makes people laugh every single time, well when I present that with people in front of you, you see the smiles and reactions without having to take a break from what you’re doing, similar to a stand-up comic, when they tell jokes and see what lands and what doesn’t.
You don’t get this luxury in online presentations, which means you pretty much need to imagine as if everything you’re saying is landing perfectly to some degree, because you won’t be fully invested in the joke, as an example here, if you don’t do that exercise.
Imagine the best-case scenario and ASSUME that the audience is in love with you and wants to learn from you which is true or they wouldn’t spend time tuning into your online presentation anyways.
- Practice your online presentation offline first.
I fully believe in this idea that in-person presentations are in many ways much easier to deliver with enthusiasm and energy than online ones. The #1 reason for that is accountability and “the real life” aspect of it.
If you wake up in the morning for a 10,000 person conference, the nerves actually work to your favor in many ways, your mindset is shifting to, I need to be absolutely perfect, I need to wake up at 4AM, go for a run and get ready because the Olympics have arrived, you see the audience and you don’t want to let them down.
And…
There’s online.
Well, I mean the presentation is at 10AM, so I guess I can wake up at 9:30AM and well, they can’t see everything so might as well just dress up the top maybe, is this audio and video?
You get the idea.
It’s very difficult to recreate an in-person experience online, so instead, it’s more effective to simply practice your presentations in-person and watch the recordings to really understand what you’re capable of and replicate that in an online space, and every time you’re watching your online recordings, you have something to compare it to, so in that way you’ll be able to deliver exceptionally in any presentation whether it’s offline or online.
At the end of the day, presenting online gives us this incredible opportunity to share our message with more people. When we would’ve been able to give 3-4 in-person presentations in any given day, now that number could be 10-15 presentations to a much larger audience. In the same way Queen Rania talks about the idea of being online opening a window into other people’s lives, I hope you use this beautiful medium to impact as many people as you can in the short time that we have here in the world.
If you know one person that needs a bit of help with online presentations, be sure to send them this video so that they’ll be one step closer to mastering their talk.
This post was kindly provided by Brenden Kumarasamy, who can be reached at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendenkumarasamy/