How to Optimize Your Online Presentations (For Beginners)
How to Optimize Your Online Presentations (For Beginners)
Experts estimate that 77% of the population fears public speaking. So you’re not alone if you feel nervous before giving online presentations.
There are plenty of ways to calm yourself before giving an online presentation. One of the best ones is to make sure you’re prepared. Doing so should give you a boost of confidence.
How can you make your online presentation perfect? There are plenty of methods you can use to achieve this. Read on to learn about these.
Practice, Practice, Practice
A lot can go wrong while you’re giving a presentation. You may forget what you want to say. You may have put your slides out of order.
What’s the best way to make sure that this doesn’t happen? You need to practice a ton before you give your presentation. Consider trying out the following methods as you practice.
Record Yourself
Record yourself while you’re rehearsing your presentation. You then need to go back and analyze how you’re performing.
Framing
Are you framing yourself well? Watch your recording and try to put yourself in an audience member’s shoes. Is your camera pointing too low or too high?
You might also want to consider the rule of thirds. This is a photography and videography trick that can make an image or video more attractive. Consider trying to use it with your video presentation.
Natural Speaking and Moving
Does your presentation seem natural or does it seem robotic? Figure out if your presentation is one or the other. Then adjust how you’re giving the presentation if necessary.
You should also make sure that you aren’t speaking too fast or slow. Doing so can make it harder for your audience to understand you. Pause if you feel yourself speeding up, and then take a breath before moving on.
Show Your Peers
You may benefit from getting a second opinion. Ask your coworkers or some of your other peers to watch you practice your presentation. Then ask them to suggest ways that you can improve.
Use a Timer
Remember that your Zoom meeting should only go a certain length. Use a timer while you’re practicing. See how long it takes you to get through your whole speech.
Adjust Your Time
Ideally, you should leave time at the end of your presentation. This is the time you will use to let your audience ask questions. Adjust the length of your presentation until you have this amount of time available.
Create Notes
You don’t necessarily need to create a whole script for your presentation. But you should at least create some notes as you build your presentation. Adjust these notes as you adjust your presentation with practice.
Don't Rely on Notes
Try your best to memorize your notes. At least make sure that you’re not relying on your notes too much. Doing so will make you look more competent.
Plus, you need to keep eye contact with your audience. They’re more likely to pay attention to you if you do this.
Rehearse With an Audience
Here’s another way you can use your friends and family: ask them to watch you rehearse. You can ask them to join you in a Zoom meeting in the same way that your audience will. Then you can give the presentation and ask how things are going on their end as you work.
This won’t just help you get some feedback. This will also help you get familiar with the presentation software that you’re using. If you have any issues, you can learn how to adjust them before the day of the presentation.
Do Your Research
You’re gonna need something to fill those slides. They can’t stay empty. But you also won’t have much success if you put the wrong information into your slides.
How can you make sure you’re getting the right information? You need to do some research. Specifically, you need to do some research on your topic and audience.
Research Your Topic
Most of your research will help you fill your slides with information. But don’t stop researching when you’ve done that. You need to make sure that you know your topic of choice backward and forward.
This is important because audience members will ask questions. Many of the answers can go beyond what you’ve put in your slides. If you don’t have the answers, you’ll look incompetent.
What if you already have some knowledge of the topic? You can use this knowledge but don’t rely on it completely. It’s better to have more information than you need.
Research Your Audience: Business
Who are you giving your online video presentation to? Try researching your audience and tailoring the presentation to their needs. Doing so will make it far more likely that you will achieve your presentation’s goal.
For example, you may be pitching a project to potential investors. You can learn exactly what they need from this particular project. You can then discuss how your project will help them get what they need in your presentation.
Research Your Audience: Teaching
Online teaching presentations have different goals than business presentations. The goal when you’re teaching online is to make sure your audience absorbs the information. Adding the interests of your audience into your presentation may help you achieve these goals.
Do you have younger students? If so, consider trying to look up which media is popular for that age group. Add images from that media to your presentation.
Just make sure you understand this media well enough. You don’t want to look too out of touch.
Take It Seriously
Will you be giving your Zoom presentation from home? If so, you may feel the temptation to approach the presentation casually.
Ignore these temptations. Act as though you’re giving a presentation from an official school, office, etc. This will help your audience take you and the presentation seriously.
Clean Your Space
Remember that you’re acting as a representative of your school or business. Your audience will associate you with your school or business. If your space looks unorganized, your audience will think your school or business is unorganized.
And if they think your organization is unorganized, they won’t trust your integrity. They’ll be less likely to trust you, and your presentation won’t reach its goals. So make sure that your background looks neat and organized.
Dress Formally
Formal dressing is another way that you can show your competence. And if you show your competence, your business will look competent. You’ll also look like you and your business care about the opinions of your audience.
Plus, psychology experts have proven that people believe attractive people are more competent. For example, beautiful people get hired more often. You want to take advantage of this natural bias.
Keep Pets and People Away
You must keep your presentation on track for its duration. You can’t waste time. If you do, your audience may miss part of your presentation and not get your full message.
So make sure that your presentation won’t have any interruptions. Keep any pets out of the room where you’re giving your video presentation.
Interact With Your Audience
Are you shy? Unfortunately, a lot of people aren’t. Most people prefer having strong social interactions with others.
You will probably need to take this into account with your presentation. The best presentations are as personable as possible. Do the best you can to prepare yourself for a lot of social interaction.
Use Your Webcam
Yes, your slides will probably be the most important part of your Zoom presentation. But don’t try to hide behind them. Eye contact and body language are also important parts of communication.
Turn on your webcam and make sure to look directly at it from time to time. Pay attention to the messages you’re sending out with your body presentation. If you do so, your audience should remember your presentation’s content more easily.
Interact With Audience
What’s the best way to keep your audience engaged with your presentation? It’s to make your presentation as interactive as possible. You should have your audience leaning in, asking questions, and interacting with you.
Don’t just give the audience room to ask questions at the end of your presentation. Give them space between different sections to ask questions. You can also ask them questions.
Set Up Your Presentation Well
Of course, doing all this prep work will be for nothing if you don’t create a killer presentation to go along with it. Try following these steps while you’re building your presentation.
Have a Goal
Why do you need to give this presentation? What do you hope to accomplish by giving this presentation? You need to answer these questions and other similar ones before you build your presentation.
Guide Your Creation
If you have a goal in mind, it will be much easier to create your presentation. You can think about what would bring you closer to your goal. Then you can add that to your presentation.
For example, say that you’re teaching online. Your goal for one lesson can be to teach children about taxonomy, the American Civil War, etc. Whatever it is, write that purpose down.
You can then write down what points you want to cover. Then you can think about techniques you can use to help your students learn. You can then put all this into your presentation.
Create an Excellent Start
You must start your presentation well. Remember that your introduction is the first impression that your audience will get of you. Make sure that you make that first impression great.
Clear and Detailed
Your introduction needs to be clear and detailed. Go over all the points that you’re going to speak about and why they’re important. If you do this right, you should gain the attention of the audience right away.
Talk About Yourself
Introducing yourself can also add to the level of competence that your audience will assign to you. Give details about yourself that tell your audience why you’re the perfect person to give this presentation.
For example, say that you’re pitching a graphic design project. You can talk about how many years you’ve worked as a graphic designer. You may also want to talk about the terrific team that you work with.
Use Visuals Well
The internet has made human attention spans extremely short. You need to make sure that your presentation is as engaging as possible. Adding pictures, graphics, and videos can make people pay more attention.
Learn the Tech
Also, make sure that you learn about the technical aspects of sharing videos and such during a Zoom meeting or other similar online meeting. Doing so will lessen the chance of something going wrong.
Share a Recording Afterward
Don’t let your audience forget about the presentation that just took place. Make sure that you record the presentation while it’s happening (let your audience know you’re doing so, of course). Then send a recording of the presentation to the people in your audience.
Business
In a business situation, having this recording will help entire companies see the message. Not everyone will be able to attend the meeting. Company leaders can review your video and decide if your project is worth investing in.
Teaching
In a teaching situation, your students can review what you covered many times. This can help them get ready for any upcoming tests.
Perfect Your Online Presentations
Online presentations aren’t as impossible to tackle as you may think. There are plenty of ways that you can prepare yourself for the big day. As long as you use them, you should leave your audience incredibly impressed.
Of course, even if you use all these tips, there’s one pitfall you could still run into. That is bad software. If your software fails, you can’t give a presentation.
Our online whiteboard won’t fail you. It will make online teaching and presenting several times better than before.
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