Virtual Presentation Polish
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This is not a how-to-use-Zoom/Teams course. This program focuses on how to be more engaging in a virtual environment, capturing and keeping interest, up-leveling your presentation delivery, upgrading your slides, refining your setup, and integrating your virtual platform’s seldom-used tools.
Virtual presentations are harder than in-person ones because it’s so easy for audience members to turn off their cameras and multi-task. Presenters are left talking to their slides — unless they know some simple techniques to get audience members engaged — even those who always turn off their camera! Yes, you can even engage them — if you know how!
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This course is for you if you:
- Dread virtual presentations. You put off preparing for them because they are so odious. They’re no fun. You’d love some new ways to make them more compelling not only for you, but for your audience.
- Present virtual reports to your team, peers, other departments, management, your board, investors, or at conferences, and want to make them more compelling, interesting, and memorable.
- Would rather not just talk at a screen of PowerPoint slides.
- Would like to have some interaction with your virtual audience, and see and hear their responses throughout your presentation. You’d like to have some meaningful dialog — and not just through chat.
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This program is customized to your team’s needs. Contact us to discuss your situation.
In each of the three 2-hour sessions (1-2 weeks in between to implement and practice):
- You’ll learn simple, yet seldom-used techniques that will drastically increase your effectiveness and your audience engagement. Even the most jaded and cynical audience members have shown more involvement. Even they may be surprised they aren’t multitasking!
- You’ll experience myriad audience engagement tools you can adapt to keep your virtual audience enthralled. You’ll choose the ones that will work for your situations.
- You’ll begin to apply the ideas in a small group discussion and get some suggestions on how to implement refinements specific to you.
- You’ll identify how you’ll implement all the great ideas you learned to transform your presentations into memorable experiences. You’ll articulate what you need to implement before the next session.
- You’ll meet briefly with your learning buddy to set up a time to talk for 30 minutes before the next session to show your progress and get suggestions.
- Rebecca will use examples throughout, and she’ll pull back the curtain to tell you the nuances, when to use them, and any caveats.
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Session 1: Show Your Best Self — Create a Virtual Setup So You Shine, and Your Audience Stays Focused on You
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You may think your setup is just fine. After all, no one’s complained, right?
Just because no one has told you that they can’t see or hear you clearly, they’re looking up your nose, you’re not making eye contact, or your background is distracting, doesn’t mean you couldn’t benefit from some refinements. Your audiences may feel you just aren’t that professional based on your setup. And that could be costing you business, or your colleagues’ respect.
You know how critical eye connection is, whether in person or virtual. When you, the presenter, rarely looks directly at the audience, you lose credibility and their attention. If you are continually looking off to the side at another monitor, your audience doesn’t feel seen and they tune out.
You want to stay connected, even when showing slides or reading the chat or a script. There are easy ways to ensure this, but few know how. The results are worth a little effort on your part, as you’ll not only feel more connected to your audience, they will feel exponentially more connected to you. Which means they will pay more attention to your message. Which may change their lives. And get you more business.
Learn the tricks a professional presenter has figured out so you don’t have to. It will allow you to be at the top of your virtual presentation game.
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You’ll learn simple, yet seldom-used techniques that will drastically increase your effectiveness and your audience engagement. Even the most jaded and cynical audience members In this session, you’ll learn how to:
- ensure your virtual setup shows you at your best
- know the nuances of lighting, background, camera angle, and microphone
- avoid the worst place to point your camera
- explore different places in your home/office/studio to present from
- see what attendees see (hint: it might not be what you see on your screen)
- use a simple technique few presenters use to help your audience feel more connected to you
- manage your windows (chat, slides, gallery) so your audience feels you’re always looking at them
- move the cells in gallery view so you’re always looking at the camera and the person talking
Everything we’ll discuss can be done without OBS, ATEM, Epoccam, ManyCam, Streamdeck, Mentimeter and other tools. In fact, we aren’t even going to discuss any of those.)
1-2 weeks in between to implement and practice
Session 2: Create Dynamic, Engaging Slides for Maximum Engagement and Retention — Turn Unreadable, Boring Slides into Ones that Keep Your Audience’s Eyes on You, Not Their Email
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You feel your slides are fine. After all, you use a PPT or Keynote template and you don’t see any problems with them.
But you need enhanced slides for virtual, even if you use just a few. On some platforms, your slide takes the majority of the screen. Your viewers see your slide much larger than they see your expressive face. You want your slides to be exemplary and engaging.
When was the last time you put any time into learning how to make your slides a true tool to cement your key points? If you haven’t invested time into learning new techniques in years — if ever — it’s time to seriously upgrade them. Even if you have someone else create your slides, you need to know how to direct them, unless they have experience as an instructional designer, and even then, they may not know what is possible.
Did you know you can design your slides so that your audience interacts directly with them? Do you know how to make them mobile-friendly? Do you know how to design slides to keep everyone’s attention? You don’t need a graphic artist to create compelling slides.
You want your slides to match your great points, not detract from them. If they are hard to comprehend, they make you look mediocre, at best. There are tools you can use that even slide-design professionals don’t use.
What’s stopping you from using them now?
Mostly, it’s knowing what’s easily available. Then having the creativity to know how to use them to enhance your presentation without being gimmicky. Business audiences hate frivolous activities, but they love creative ones designed for engagement that enhance the presentation.
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In this session, you’ll learn how to:
- mitigate “Zoom fatigue” (feeling exhausted from attending many virtual meetings)
- reduce people’s itch to multi-task
- use little-known Zoom tools for maximum engagement. (We’ll show Zoom-specific tools [not Zoom apps], but the concepts apply to Teams, Webex, GoToWebinar, Google Meet, Adobe Connect, BlueJeans, and other platforms, although we won’t dip into specifics of other platforms.)
- integrate nuances to make breakout rooms work well, even for keynotes or large groups
- utilize non-Zoom brainstorming and interaction tools
- shift in-person presentation techniques to virtual
- apply relevant adult learning principles to ensure your audience remembers your points
- use at least 12 ways (many you’ve not seen before) to get your audience involved
Session 3: Audience Engagement Tools — Keep Your Virtual Audience Enthralled
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The vast majority of virtual presenters think that using polls and chat make their program “highly interactive.” That’s chump change. There are so many other tools at your fingertips you could easily utilize to keep their attention.
What’s stopping you from using them now?
Mostly, it’s knowing what’s easily available. Then having the creativity to know how to use them to enhance your presentation without being gimmicky. Business audiences hate frivolous activities, but they love creative ones designed for engagement that enhance the presentation.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In this session, you’ll learn how to:
- mitigate “Zoom fatigue” (feeling exhausted from attending many virtual meetings)
- reduce people’s itch to multi-task
- use little-known Zoom tools for maximum engagement. (We’ll show Zoom-specific tools [not Zoom apps], but the concepts apply to Teams, Webex, GoToWebinar, Google Meet, Adobe Connect, BlueJeans, and other platforms, although we won’t dip into specifics of other platforms.)
- integrate nuances to make breakout rooms work well, even for keynotes or large groups
- utilize non-Zoom brainstorming and interaction tools
- shift in-person presentation techniques to virtual
- apply relevant adult learning principles to ensure your audience remembers your points
- use at least 12 ways (many you’ve not seen before) to get your audience involved