A VFAQ (very frequently asked question) is, “How do I keep my audience from multi-tasking?” And the first thing I want to say is, “Don’t be boring.”

A kinder, gentler response is this. We live in an era of Blackberries, iPhones, lap tops with mobile access and Twitter users tweeting in the middle of a presentation. The real answer is that you have to deal with your audience multi-tasking whether you’re in-person or virtual.

Consider this: Pilots are taught to fly both by sight and by instruments only, when they can’t see anything. These are two separate skill sets.

Choosing the right tools begins with realizing they’re your lifeline to connecting to the audience you can’t see. A complete set of presentation skills, when you’re going to present online, requires you to adapt to the medium.

And much like a pilot, you’re going to have to learn to fly by instruments for success.

As a speaker at an in-person event, the way you work the room depends on your audience, your objective, how many attendees are in front of you… even how the room is configured. And ideally you’ve been part of choosing how the tables and chairs are arranged.

Web and audio conferencing tools often allow you to choose different “seating arrangements,” too.

Like the in-person session, you’ll be more collaborative and flexible with a smaller audience. You can ask and answer more questions or even let others contribute (such as drawing on a whiteboard). With a larger audience you’ll need more structure.

As you grow in your virtual presentation skills, you will discover that different providers offer different configurations of tools to facilitate interaction. Some are better suited to large audiences, some for smaller audiences. Some providers give you a choice of configurations (often between “meeting” products and “webinar” products).

A great place to start is by thinking through how you would present and interact if the audience were in the same room with you. Would you ask for a show of hands? Would meeting members take turns at a whiteboard? Would there be a panel of speakers, or a moderator, or…? Would you use a microphone in the middle of the room, allowing a limited number of audience members to ask questions, or when many hands go up, respond only to a portion of them?

After you’ve thought through these questions, choose the best configuration of tools for your virtual meeting. Some solutions allow you to pick and choose what you turn on and off. Others offer a “meeting” option versus a “seminar” option.

And it’s worth noting…if you can’t choose the right tools for the job, do you have the right provider?

Audio: Listening In

Think about a seminar you’ve attended with hundreds of people in the audience. The presenter has a certain amount of content to get through in a specified period of time.

Now put yourself in the presenter’s shoes. You’ve planned your audience interaction, and ideally you’ve got a sense of how much time you will spend on it.

If you need to retain maximum control over your presentation, you need to be able to pick and choose which questions you respond to. Ideally you can choose questions that best support your point, best provide value to the broadest part of your audience, best set you up to be the rockstar.

The only way you can do that is to manage questions via text. This means that your best solution is keeping your audience on “listen only” mode, whether they’re on the telephone or listening over their computers. Put the audience on “listen only” for optimum control.

One-Way, or Interactive?

Full, two-way audio connections are sometimes valuable. They put every member of the audience in a co-equal place with the presenter. This might be ideal for a small meeting or training session when everyone is engaged and paying attention to what’s going on.

In most e-seminar settings, however, open audio lines are fraught with trouble.

First, many phone systems will play hold music if an attendee puts a conference line on hold to take another call. And the one thing you can’t do is ask the person not to do it…they can’t hear you.

Second, attendees may be tempted to put you on speakerphone, opening up the probability that you’ll hear typing, coughing, dog barking, or even the building air conditioner coming on in the background.

Finally, anybody can ask anything. This might be okay in many meeting settings, but as often as not in a presentation, you need to control messaging and deal with some questions offline.

For example, in nearly every presentation I make for a conferencing vendor, someone asks about price or how this vendor’s service compares to the competition. The last thing we want to be addressing in a public environment is some corner case, some off-the-deepend subject, or a value question that we don’t have an adequate opportunity to explore and answer correctly.

To VoIP, or Not to VoIP…

The use of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is on the rise. The technology has been around for a long time, but there are many reasons it has only recently emerged in mainstream usage.

The up side of using computer-based conferencing is price. It’s cheap, often available for a fixed fee, and often now built into web conferencing platforms and their pricing packages. This is especially good news for large audiences, and even better for international participants with high calling rates.

But there are some downsides, too. Early on, VoIP wasn’t terribly friendly with firewall technologies, and users external to an organization often experienced problems. It also it makes the local computer and its local internet service – the least reliable part of the web conferencing experience – a single point of failure. If the computer locks up, for example, both the audio and video components of the conference are halted.

Today the technology is better than ever. But remember these things:

Most attendees will listen over their computers, but won’t have a headset installed. This means, like the “listen only” audio model, that you’re going to want to be facile with text-based Q&A. Also, if your audience is of decent size, the odds are still good that someone will note, “I can’t hear the audio.” It doesn’t make any difference if this is a user-error or not (it often is – they don’t have their speakers turned on or their corporate network settings block certain kinds of traffic) – it will still be a distraction.

Still, the cost savings is alluring. Know your audience, know your goals, know your tolerance for perfection.

Integrate, Integrate, Integrate

Some conferencing providers have some form of audio integrated into their service – teleconferencing, VoIP, or both. A key benefit to this is the time it takes to set up a meeting.

Scheduling a meeting may seem like a simple task, but consider what happens as you increase your frequency of usage. If web and audio are separate services, you’ll schedule the web conference, schedule the audio conference, and then make sure attendees get the right phone number. Then you’ll have separate call details necessary for presenters – another scheduling activity. Worse, the minute somebody has to ask again for the details (not if, but when!), you go searching again.

Integrated audio options mean you’ll be scheduling one meeting. Further, the confirmation emails and reminder emails will have the correct audio information (no chance of copy/pasting the wrong thing).

Beyond this, some services allow you to schedule your web and audio conferencing through your calendar, Given that you would otherwise have to find or remember the URL of the web site you use to schedule your meeting/ presentation, navigate there, login, do your scheduling, and then put it on your calendar…this can be a significant time saver.

All told, when you do this frequently or repeatedly, you’ll see that the number of clicks it takes to execute a task can be reduced by fifty to seventy percent when you use an integrated audio solution. And who needs to add more tasks to their day?

Somebody’s Gotta Pay

Of increasing popularity, especially with the aforementioned integrated audio options, is audio conferencing that requires each attendee to dial a tollbased number. There are three reasons this isn’t always a bad thing.

One, most people’s domestic long distance costs are negligible. In many locales a home or cell phone has unlimited long distance calling.

Two, in a corporate environment, those costs are often even lower, and most employees have zero need to track costs. They don’t think twice about dialing a long distance call.

Three, the barriers to international calling are coming down. Toll-free calls for international participants are cumbersome and generally expensive, but dialing directly is easy…and inexpensive if they’re using Skype or a similar service.

Know your audience, and offer a toll-free audio conferencing option if it really would be a barrier to entry for them. Odds are it’s not.

Screen Sharing

There is nothing quite as defining and powerful in web conferencing as the ability to share anything on your desktop. From collaborating on a document or brainstorming on a whiteboard, to making a presentation or demonstrating a software program to a thousand people, screen sharing makes it possible to have a flexible, powerful visual element accompanying an audio dialogue.

A few quick screen sharing tips that will save you some heartache:

One, close other applications, especially email and instant messaging. More than one embarrassing moment has occurred when a message pops up while the presenter is sharing a screen.

Two, check your options. Many web conferencing vendors allow you to choose whether you share your whole desktop, or only a specific application (such as PowerPoint or Excel, the software or web browser you intend to demonstrate, etc). This may allow you to go back and forth between what you’re showing the audience and something else you want or need to refer to.

Three, remember there might be times when you don’t want to screen share. Some services integrate PowerPoint in such a way (such as uploading) that it performs better than when you share it from your screen. Often these services integrate polls or other media in ways that make your presentation flow much more smoothly.

Blooper Story

We had a client at Microsoft who was having a smallish seminar, and while he wanted all lines muted while he was presenting, he wanted open audio lines for the Q&A session. He’s paying the bill, so we reluctantly agreed.

In the middle of his Q&A session all participants the audio line was suddenly flooded with the sound of a woman in the throes of passion. As you might expect, all voices stopped, only emphasizing the NSFW (not suitable for work) noises.

While we’ll never know if one web seminar attendee was actually getting lucky or was simply multi-tasking in his browser with his computer speakers on, the presenter (to his credit) recovered quickly quipping,

Keyboard and Mouse Control

recommend presenting with a partner whenever possible. They might be co-presenting, answering questions in the background, or acting as a moderator and serving up questions and comments.

That said, be aware that different services handle multiple presenters in different ways. Some give every presenter co-equal access to controls (know who’s on first base!), while others provide different levels of access, or require presenters to pass control back and forth.

The biggest hiccups aren’t typically technological, they’re logistical. And logistics are easy to manage with communication…and a bit of rehearsal.

Questions to ask yourself: How will the call be kicked off? How is the person delivering the welcome going to introduce and pass control to the first presenter? How are questions going to be handled?

Attention Detectors

Some solutions provide services that allow you to keep an eye on your audience with an ‘attentiveness meter’ or similar tool. This typically works simply by detecting the active window on an attendee’s computer. Some conferencing providers in the e-learning space allow you to see this data on an individual-by-individual basis. This would be useful for smaller, collaborative meetings, without too many people to keep track of.

Other vendors simply aggregate this data and let you know what percentage of the audience is actively viewing at any given moment. For larger audiences this is more than adequate.

Either way, it’s a useful tool for monitoring your audience. If you see attentiveness begin to decline (just like you might notice a few surreptitious yawns when you’re in person), you can adjust, change the energy, ask a question or a poll, or take a break.

One note: Don’t expect 100% of your audience to be paying attention (and don’t take it personally). And if you want to watch the number jump, just mention that you have an attentiveness meter and are keeping an eye on it.

Polls

Polls are tools built into many web conferencing services. Usually they offer an opportunity to ask a multiple-choice question, and many offer you options about when to share the results with the audience.

Some services also offer the ability to ask an open-ended question. This can be handy if you’d like to solicit feedback or comments that aren’t easily put into a multiple-choice format.

Be aware of how the poll appears to your audience. Some appear in place of whatever you are presenting. That means that your presentation flow might include planning to share poll results between slides four and five, for example. Other polls may appear to the side of the presentation content.

Some services make it easier than others to create a poll on the fly. Depending on the nature of your presentation, creating a poll on the fly might be a valuable way to get instant, quantifiable feedback from your audience.

Finally, many services capture polling information by individual for the post-event report. Is it important to you know which people voted “yes” when you asked a particular question? Simply having a poll available doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get what you need.

Why Polls Are Your Friend

Polls are excellent, multi-purpose tools. Consider a few of the many things you can do:

Get people engaged right away.

When speaking, sometimes an opening question isn’t so much about the answer someone gives as much as a way to get them engaged and demonstrate to the audience that you’re going to interact. Polls make great opening questions.

Relate to content on a slide.

This is easier if the poll appears at the side of the screen instead of inline, but the principle is the same. Imagine, theoretically, that you ask the audience to draw a house. Then you put up four different pictures of houses and ask the audience to choose, A, B, C, or D, which one their drawing most closely resembles. You might even give them an E, soliciting freeform text entry that lets them share a description of what they drew (hint: you can use Q&A or chat function for this, too).

Learn how to frame your presentation.

Ask an early question, via poll, to assess the audience’s experience, desires, or expectations.

Chat

Chat is like instant messaging, and it generally comes in one of a few flavors.

Everybody can chat with everybody.

Everyone can chat with each other. This might be handy for a smaller, collaborative meeting or presentation. But the last thing you want in the middle of a presentation is some disgruntled heckler chatting with everyone, saying, “Competitor X is WAAAAY cheaper,” or something equally harmful.

Participants can only chat with presenters.

There are several variations of this. In some solutions, it’s a Q&A function. In others it might be a separate function so participants can only chat with presenters, and perhaps only if the presenter initiates the chat first.

Presenters chat with presenters.

Even when audience chat is turned off, it’s handy for presenters to be able to chat with each other. In the event of problems, giving a long-winded co-presenter a time check, or having a behind-the-scenes question manager serving up a question to the speaker, the chat option can be very helpful.

Be Careful!

A couple ideas for you when using chat…

As with email, double check who you’re sending your comment to before pushing the ‘send’ button. The last thing you want is to send the wrong thing to the wrong person.

And make sure you know what the audience will see. It’s not common these days, but there was a time when chat appeared as a pop-up for some vendors. If this is the case for you, it’s likely that it will simply appear as a black box to the audience. But in the really ancient days (a few years ago) that wasn’t the case. See ‘Blooper Story’ below.

Blooper Story

I was once asked by an account manager to join her on a call with a $700K-per-year client. The objective was to demonstrate an advanced registration system on which I was expert. “It’s a done deal,” she said, “and this is the final meeting to answer any remaining questions.”

After asking the client a few exploratory questions, I began screen sharing to demonstrate the system. Part of the way through the demonstration a woman in the audience started grilling me fiercely. And I don’t mean she was just asking hard questions, she was hostile.

To be sure, I don’t get flustered easily, especially when I’m expert at something (like I was at the time with

online registration systems). And I didn’t get flustered this time. Nonetheless, the account manager decided to use web conferencing tool’s chat function to send me a message…

It might have been funny, seeing the account manager get flustered and embarrassed in front of me, calling her client a b**** and all, except that (you guessed it), the chat came up while I was sharing my screen with God and country.

Needless to say, while we didn’t lose the entireaccount, we didn’t close that particular deal.

Hand Up

A ‘hand up’ feature is an indicator for audience members to use to give presenters a notification – commonly because they want to ask a question. Services with this feature allow the presenters to see who has their hand up (based on how the person logged in, so someone logging in as Santa Claus is, well, you decide).

Some services with integrated audio features allow presenters to respond by changing the attendee from listen-only audio to an open audio line (and back). If you need to control the audio environment but want to manage Q&A yourself (versus using an operator-assisted audio conferencing solution), this can be a valuable benefit.

Text Q&A

Text-based Q&A is your friend. If you learn no other tools, become facile with this one.

Text Q&A is the key to engaging an audience interactively while maintaining order and momentum. Seeing questions come in while you present is like watching hands go up in an audience, except better … you know what they’re asking and can decide whether or not to answer.

In terms of the tool itself, most vendors’ Q&A can be captured. Get to know what you’ve got – some are available in a post-event report, while others may not capture the goods this way (you can always highlight/ copy/paste before closing out of the event).

And often the Q&A view given to the presenters can be “undocked,” “floated,” or otherwise separated from other tools. This usually means you can expand the window, giving you a large view to keep an eye on – especially handy because you’re now going to be an interactive presenter and have lots of questions coming in, and because you don’t want to spend time scrolling through piles of them.

Make It a Habit

If interactively engaging your audience isn’t your thing, you’ve probably already put this book in the round file and aren’t reading this. For the rest of you, I’m going to exhort you to get that Q&A pane undocked and open in front of you.

It’s simple: If it’s open, you can glance at it in a fraction of a second…while audience members are answering a poll, while a moderator or co-presenter is speaking, or when you pause on purpose to do so.

Six Ways Text-Based Q&A Is Superior for Presenters

You can ignore respondents for a while without someone feeling ignored… or passing out from holding their arm up too long.

Have you ever heard the phrase “parking lot?” When a question comes in that you’d really rather answer later one-on-one instead of in front of the group, text Q&A is a very good thing.

You can pick and choose the questions you want to answer.

You can better manage your time.

You can use planted questions more easily

Your team can tackle questions as a group. For a big audience, you can enlist additional people to join the presentation team to answer questions. Let the event producer, moderator, or sales team tackle those FAQs that would otherwise take up your time.

Annotation Tool

Annotation tools are your instruments for pointing, highlighting, drawing, and writing on your screen. Since your audience can’t see you, they improve your ability to communicate visually in three ways:

One, they let you direct attention.

Two, they add visual interest to the presentation.

Something is moving, and your audience will naturally look at what is moving.

Three, when combined with a virtual whiteboard, presenters have a solid replacement for a flip chart.

To get started with annotation tools, consider finding one tool that suits you and your presentation, and get comfortable with it. Don’t sweat learning them all…over time you’ll naturally grow from grabbing the one you’re comfortable with to grabbing next one.

Handouts

Not all web seminar solutions make it possible to share a handout (and there may be other ways to distribute a handout, such as upon registration or in a follow-up “thank you for attending” email).

If you have the ability to use handouts virtually, ask yourself the same question you would ask if you were presenting face-to-face: “What’s the purpose of the handout?”

Some handouts simply summarize the presentation. Distributing these in advance of the presentation risks someone glancing ahead and then tuning out.

Other handouts are designed to give attendees a place to take notes, thus reinforcing your content as you deliver it.

Personally, I use post-event handouts to accomplish three things:

One, I summarize just the top-level presentation points.

Since I distribute handouts with a link to the recording, I don’t try to write out all the presentation points. The summary will be a reminder for those paying attention, and if someone wants all the goodies, they can watch the recording.

Two, I include additional links to resources that I couldn’t or shouldn’t cover in the presentation. This adds value, and creates “stickiness” for point number three…

Three, I always include my contact information at the end of the handout. It’s tasteful, but it also makes it easy for someone who might otherwise have forgotten “who made that presentation” to find me, my blog, my company, my book, etc.

One final note: GREAT presentation slides make AWFUL handouts. If someone can read all your slides, your slides probably suck.

Video

I am often asked about the use of video. Full-motion video is a tool like any other. The question I always ask inquirers is, “What are you going to do with video that you can’t otherwise do without it?”

There are completely legit reasons for using video. I once worked with an aftermarket car parts manufacturer who wanted to have a cameraman walk around a car – at the prompt of an audience question – to show the car part in question. Completely valid. And video is a great addition to a smaller, collaborative meeting.

More often the use of video is simply a crutch for the rest of the presentation not moving. You can fix that by fixing your presentation.

Another reason people ask for video is for the sake of personalization – to get their face out there. While I understand, I don’t think the “cost” (technological, not economic) is worth the hassle. Adding a picture of yourself at the beginning and end of the presentation is often sufficient, and if you can always add more in the middle.

Types of Video – A Primer

The primary reason I’m not a fan of video (and cover it lightly in this book) is this: In its current forms it doesn’t well serve the average presenter.

Your audience has a pretty high expectation for video performance. This is because video works well over the web…when it’s on demand. Whether cruising YouTube or ABC News, or catching up on the first season of Friday Night Lights, if you’ve got a broadband connection, it works pretty well.

But live, multi-point video isn’t so easy.

Consider the three general forms of video on the market today, shared here in pretty simple terms.

The best quality experience is delivered by dedicated video conferencing systems (for the knowledgeable among you I’m lumping telepresence into this bucket). Cameras are installed at two or more endpoints, and share their video with those same endpoints. The quality of that audio/visual experience is good because of how they’re connected. They may or may not conveniently allow presenters to share a presentation or other data content.

There are two downsides for average joe orgs. Dedicated systems range from moderately priced ($5-15K) to seriously expensive ($200K+). Worse, you still have to go somewhere to use them – it’s not available at the desktop. That leaves out teleworkers, travelers, etc., and it leaves out ad hoc communications.

The next two forms, peer-to-peer and streaming video, have some serious trade-offs. The good news is that they are available at the desktop. The bad news is that they rely on the stability and throughput speed of your desktop computer and local web connection – and those are the weakest links in the chain.

Streaming video is the oldest delivery mechanism, and commonly uses Windows Media Player or Real Media. Here’s how it works.

Nobody wants to watch video or listen to music that is choppy. To accommodate this, streaming media players “buffer” the video. In other words, the internet delivers bits of information (called “packets”) to your computer in a choppy way. It’s like a stream running down hill that flows into a pool, fills, then runs out the other side. Even when the input is uneven, the output is smooth.

The problem with streaming video is delay (“latency”). By definition, the buffering time causes some delay, and the availability of bandwidth fluctuates, causing more delay. This is okay for the video (and audio, which come through the same stream), but it doesn’t work well – or at all – for real-time dialogue. Text questions submitted by the audience are delayed because the audience is responding after they see the delayed video. And a live phone connection for questions would require a clunky workaround.

Peer-to-peer video solves this by making a direct connection from the video source to the attendee’s desktop. To make this work, though, the video is typically small and highly compressed, and it’s still not uncommon to experience a little choppiness or hesitation. Peer-topeer works much better for real time communication, but the downside is that it doesn’t scale to larger audiences.

Peer-to-peer video is can be used for smaller, collaborative sessions when you want multi-point video – everybody can see everybody. As you can imagine, you don’t have to have very many participants for this to become a useless idea for a presenter.

Finally, remember that most problems aren’t technological – vendors sell good products. Most problems are logistical (often on the side of the attendee). At least one benefit you gain when you lower the barrier to participation is that you increase the odds of a successful experience for your attendees.

Ask yourself, what do you really need video for?

Video is a tool. Use it only when it’s the right tool for the job.

Webcam

When a presenter stands at a podium or lectern, where do they look? Mostly at the audience… and they may occasionally glance at their slides or notes.

When at a computer, however, the tendency is to look at your slides.

But when you do that, what is someone watching via webcam seeing?

The surest way to lose an authentic connection with your audience (any audience, really) is not to make eye contact. Simply reading what’s on a slide only adds insult to injury

How Roger Presents

I cover up most of the presentation. ‘Tis true, and here’s why.

One: I generally use highly visual slides. I don’t need to read them.

Two: I have a printed copy of my slides, using PowerPoint’s “notes” view, so my notes are on the printed copy.

Three: I don’t use annotation tools (except when a presentation specifically calls for them). The reason is twofold – First, I have slides that I flip through at a rapid pace. Second, I don’t need to point to something on the slide, because my slides are simple, uncluttered, and communicate one point per slide.

Four: I stand up to present (or go back and forth between standing up and sitting down). It boosts my energy, and you hear it in my voice.

Five: If possible, I undock two tools. The first is the Q&A screen which I make as tall as my screen will allow, at a width of about a third of my screen. This usually covers up the left third of the presentation. The second is the presenter chat box. I don’t chat except in emergencies, but I have it available. I don’t want to go looking for it and have to open it in order to see it. This too covers up part of the presentation.

So with my presentation covered up with tools, what gives? Let me ask you the same question. If you’re not reading your slides, and assuming you’ve rehearsed and you know where your deck is going, what do you need to look at?

The reality is that all you need at this point is a ‘next slide’ button, whether that’s clicking on the slide itself, using the down arrow, or using a control on the presenter console.

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Section 5

Adapting Slides to the Virtual Stage

Text and Language

Remember that our goal is to influence and impact even those who are half asleep or two threads into a Blackberry email thread. To that end, one tactic for making it as easy as possible to communicate your point is to put the key point or concept in the title of the slide.

Other benefits to you:

It will help you keep content on the slide focused on the subject you present in the title

When you lay out your slides in ‘slide sorter’ view it will be easy to read from point to point to make sure the big picture of your presentation logically flows from idea to idea

Put the key point in the slide title.

Don’t Be Boring

When you include your key point in the title of a slide, use active verbs whenever possible to illustrate your point with greater power. Consider the following two titles:

Q3 results are down year-over-year

Q3 YOY decrease demands attention

Use active verbs.

Outlined Text (AKA Bullet Points)

Many presenters quip that bullets are for guns, and true enough, more than a few folks have died in their sleep from an onslaught of outline bullets. But sometimes they’re necessary, and a genuine few of you may not have the time or skills to get past them (okay, I don’t really believe you don’t have the skills, and if you don’t have time to do it right, when will you find time to do it over… but I digress).

A bullet point is simply using text in an outline format. The goal of bullet points, if you’re going to use them, is to make sure your content is quickly readable. If you’re going to use words, turn sentences into fragments that distill the essence of what you need to say.

Bad Example – Sales Order Process

[Download PDF to see Image]

Less Than Less Is More

You might have heard of a rule to guide the creation of slides, something like the ‘5 X 5’ rule – no more than five bullet points with no more than five words each.

Scrap it.

The goal of such an idea is laudable. It forces a bit of brevity, and the editing process usually crisps up the message a bit. But your core problems still remain because people:

Read faster than you speak

Glaze over when presented with text

Multitask and won’t be working hard to get your message

And our goal is influence, which only happens when we impart knowledge and change behavior.

The answer is to use even less. Maybe a key word or three. Or better yet, turn the content into something visual.

Poor Example, But Better Than Bad Example

[Download PDF to see Image]

This book isn’t a treatise on grammar, but it does have the goal of making you a better presenter. When using bullet points, don’t forget to pay attention to your grammar. Your content will be easier for your audience to grasp quickly, and you won’t have the English grads snickering.

Consider the following propositions in the following set of instructions… which one doesn’t fit?

Receive the faxed contract

Update the sales database

Internal routing form is filled out in duplicate

File the hard copy within 24 hours

If you imagine each instruction preceded by “you,” it’s easy to see that the third bullet point doesn’t read as cleanly as it could (“Complete the internal routing form in duplicate” would be better).

Visualize It

Continuing with the previous example, which words provide instruction? It’s the verbs – “receive,” “update,” “complete,” “file.”

So how could you turn this into a visual? In this case, the relationship is linear… you complete one action before the next. One way to represent this relationship visually is with arrows:

Before you’ve even added a single shape or color, you’ve already created a visual representation that quickly communicates a process. And you don’t have to be an expert designer to use the ‘auto shapes’ function in PowerPoint to create boxes or arrows around these words, adding a whole new dimension and level of impact to your communication.

More on Turning Words into Visuals

You don’t have to be an artist or designer to create visual slides, and a key benefit is that it will reduce your temptation to read slides as you present. What you will need to invest – on behalf of your audience – is your time.

Best Example – Sales Order Process

Auto-Mate

If finding “just the right graphic” is a time-consuming proposition (it is), an alternative way to create visual slides is to use auto-shapes. Built into PowerPoint, Keynote, et al, are simple-to-create squares, arrows, circles, etc. that can be used to add dimension to your concepts.

There isn’t always a relationship to be represented on any given slide, but look for one. Is there motion, sequence, parent-child or other relationship being represented that suggest what shapes to use and where to place them?

Get clear on the key concept of the slide and you’ll have a better idea what to create. Try to communicate too much on one slide and it’ll be confusing at best, a complete mess at worst.

Making the Best of Your Templates

Presentation software is based on the idea of templates. Graphic elements such as colors and fonts are chosen thematically for a template. If you’re not a designer (and you’re not starting from scratch), using the color palette in a template will bring a visual cohesiveness to your presentation without having to work at it or second-guess yourself. And the good news is that your organization probably already has a template provided by marketing that will ensure your auto-shape choices present the organization’s look and feel.

Don’t Date Yourself

A quick note about the tools built into your presentation software: While shapes are universal and eternally accepted as ways to represent ideas, tools like clip art that come with your software should be avoided.

The reason is this: Anything that is new is quickly used by many people, and it doesn’t take long before that “new” element is overused and looks dated. Fashion is a good example, as are movie special effects, and sounds in the music business (you can instantly tell an ‘80s tune, even if you don’t know the band, right?).

Charts, Data, and Graphics

Data overload in a chart is abused as often as the bullet point. The question to ask yourself is, “If someone just barely glances, what will they understand without having to work at it?”

The best thing to do is pare down the data and the chart to the bare essentials. If it’s not necessary to communicating the key point of the slide, cut it out. If it is essential to the presentation, make it the point of a different slide.

First Imagine Visuals, Then Find Graphics

It might be overused, but the truth of the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words” keeps it from becoming a total cliché.

Visuals (e.g., photos, illustrations, charts, etc.) can deliver impact that words alone on a slide won’t accomplish, and they usually have one or more of the following three qualities:

Easily grasped: Does the image help the viewer quickly understand the point you are making?

Memorable: Does the image improve your “stickiness?”

Tells a story: Does the image present your point with additional context that is persuasive?

To turn your key point into a visual, you need to have a clear understanding of the point you’re trying to make on that slide, as well as how your audience is likely to receive it.

Start by imagining the ideal image to create that “aha!” moment for your audience. Then go find the best image you can, create the chart that communicates that point, or arrange the content of your slides to achieve it.

Great visuals are easily grasped, memorable, and tell a story. The goal is an “aha!” moment.

Image Consciousness

When using images of people, pay attention to where the attention of those people is focused. If their gaze extends, by implication, to some point of observation beyond the border of the graphic, we as humans tend to be drawn – usually unconsciously – to follow their focus. When you have a choice, face the gaze of your graphic “people” toward the middle of your slide rather than away from your content.

Remain Consistent

When using graphics of various forms (e.g., photos, illustrations, clip art), give thought to the overall feel of the presentation. Do your graphics support the tone and message of your presentation?

If your designer’s eye isn’t strong, one thing you can do to increase the visual cohesiveness is to stick to one type of graphic element. For instance, use only illustrations… perhaps even from the same designer.

TIP:

Spend a little time perusing content at iStockphoto (www.istockphoto.com). Notice differences in style and texture from different designers. Choose a designer and notice how images from that designer have a similar look and feel, even when the images communicate very different ideas.

Rule of Thirds

To be completely fair, this book isn’t a complete treatise on slide design, but one quick principle that will serve you well is the “rule of thirds.”

In short, divide your slide into thirds both vertically and horizontally. Images placed at the intersections of those lines (whether imaginary or via PowerPoint ruler) are considered to be more interesting to viewers than centered images.

What I like about the rule of thirds is this: When you take any image, consider its key focal point, and position it on the slide with one of these points in mind, very often you will find perspective or tension enhanced in a way that makes it more interesting.

The question to keep asking yourself is, “What’s the takeaway that I want the audience to quickly understand, and if I were in their shoes, is this helping that cause?”

Increasing Visual Stimulation

Imagine you are watching television and the screen is showing still images that change only every two or three minutes. How long would it take before you figured out you could look at something else, just listening in, and check back every few minutes to make sure you hadn’t missed something?

There are two things we naturally do as humans. One is that we notice change. We’re wired for it. The second is that we’ll go to great lengths not to miss something.

You can use both of these to your advantage when putting together your slides.

To keep your audience engaged, keep change happening visually by creating more slides, not less. You will not only appeal to that part of the brain that notices change, but you will create an environment that screams, “If you look away, you’ll miss something.”

This may mean throwing out something someone else taught you about PowerPoint, but they weren’t teaching you to rock in a web seminar. It’s easy when you commit to having but one point (or less) per slide.

Test Your Font Size

One difference in the web seminar audience’s “environment” versus a live room is the size of slide they’ll be viewing when watching your online presentation. Obviously, text is going to be smaller on a computer desktop than when viewed on a screen from a projector in a room.

Text that is too small fails one of the tests we applied to great visuals: It’s not easily grasped. To succeed, make sure your text is large enough to be easily read when the slide is small.

Here’s a quick way to stress-test your text:

1. Put PowerPoint in “normal” mode.

2. Select the main slide area and resize it to 50%.

3. Imagine just glancing at that small area and ask yourself if you can quickly get what’s being said.

Note: Many web conferencing solutions offer presenters the ability to push the audience to “full screen mode” so they’ll see the presentation in full-size on their screens.

Those solutions also give audience members a way to close out of full-screen view or reduce their viewing area. Given that most people multitask to some degree, don’t rely on that feature and the complete, rapt attention of your audience.

Many years ago I moderated an event for Jeffrey Gitomer, author of best sellers like The Sales Bible and The Little Red Book of Selling. He showed up to speak with 109 slides to present in an hour or less. He got through the presentation in about fifty minutes, meaning he was pushing a slide about every twenty-nine seconds.

The lights went on for me. He’s used to presenting to an audience with a bad case of ADHD – salespeople.

He’d learned to keep the presentation moving, and not because he was presenting to a virtual audience that’s one click away from something else.

Subsequently I’ve discovered others who do this, such as Stanford Professor Laurence Lessig. Search the web (or use http://bit.ly/mn5vy if it’s still active) and you’ll find a famous presentation where he goes through 235 slides in thirty minutes.

I now coach people in this direction, and my friend Ray Taylor, President of sales consultancy Choice 32, recently did an absolutely amazingpresentation about mastering LinkedIn using 145 slides in a one hour web seminar – with time left for Q&A.

This might seem extreme, but it puts an exclamationpoint behind the idea. Invest in your audience, and they’ll be calling you the next presentation software guru.

Animations

Presentation software has a feature typically referred to as “animations.” An animation is an event that takes place on the slide when you click … a new element appears, or moves, or vanishes. Many animation elements are special effects, like the object flying into place or going away with a triple spin and half twist.

The Trouble with Animations

There are four problems with animations, at least for most presenters.

One, animations change the meaning of a click. At one point in the presentation a click advances a slide, while at another it triggers an animation. Unless you know your presentation cold, it increases the chance that you’ll make a mistake.

Related, point 1.5 is the question, “What happens when you want to go backwards?” You don’t do it a lot, but do you know what will happen? Does it reverse an animation or does it go back a slide? In some cases you may have advanced several animations, but going back takes you back a whole slide. Bah humbug.

Two, different web conferencing vendors treat animations differently. This is problematic enough for virtual presenters that I’ve given it separate treatment later (see “Caveat Presentor”).

Three, unless you’re facile with PowerPoint, animations can take a lot of time to create. I give a big tip later (see “Create Fake Animations”) that will change this for you.

Finally, many (most?) animations are a lot like clip art – a bit campy and gimmicky.

OTOH…

To be fair, an animation is a tool, and like all tools, there’s a time and place when it’s the right choice to help you make a point. Here are some examples of when I use an animation:

1. Demonstrating a directional relationship between objects. For example, I use a slide representing a conference call. Arrows point between phones, but to better demonstrate that conversation occurs sequentially, I animate the lines to appear at different times.

2. Demonstrating movement from one point on a graphic to another. For example, I make a point about an evolutionary shift in behavior, and a red circle moves from one part of the graphic to another.

I do, however, practice what I preach, using animations quite sparingly. The question for you is whether the animation is the right tool for helping you make your point or whether you’re just attempting to add eye candy.

Caveat Presentor

Adding to the challenges of using animations to create motion is the fact that all web conferencing solutions are not created equally.

Some allow no animations whatsoever, so that presentation you painstakingly created with a pile of them now needs a significant overhaul.

Others treat animations differently, both for going forward and backward.

Yet another challenge is that if you’re screen sharing there’s a risk that your animations will appear choppy to the attendees. Sometimes it’s because the web conferencing solution is slow, but most often it has to do with the attendee’s own internet connection.

If you’re searching for a web conferencing solution, it’s worth discovering how each option treats animations before making a commitment (relative to your style and needs, of course). If you always use the same solution, it’s worth noting how it works before you present…and if you often find yourself in different environments as I do, you’ve been warned.

Note that as presenters you already need to think ahead about your enviroment. When in person, factors such as brightness and resolution of the projector affect your presentation design and delivery. This is a similar exhortation with regard to all tools of the virtual presenter.

Create Fake Animations

I like the idea of PowerPoint animations because it makes the visual change more quickly. But I hate animations for two reasons.

One, they’re time-consuming to create. (Did I already say that?)

Two, most web conferencing software can’t deal with one uncontrollable fact: The least reliable part of your whole experience is your local internet service provider. Too often, audiences experience an animation as a series of jerky spasms across the screen. This doesn’t improve anything.

What I use a lot of are faux animations. Here’s what I mean:

Imagine you have a very simple slide with two images on it, and as you tell your story, you want one to appear immediately, while the other doesn’t appear until you “click.”

To achieve the same result simply create two slides:

1. Start with the finished slide, one that contains both objects (images) as you want them to appear.

2. Duplicate the slide

3. Remove the second object from the first of the two slides.

As you advance through your deck, the same story unfolds.

And for most of us, we achieved our objective much more quickly than by using an animation.

Speed up the process of putting together your deck. Use multiple slides to create fake animations.

Smooth, Daddy-o

A transition is a critical juncture in your presentation. The goal of a great transition is to set up your next point by creating a logical connection between where you’re coming from and where you’re going. It’s an opportunity to create anticipation for what’s coming next. Ignored, transitions will cost you momentum.

Newscasters are genius with transitions that create momentum. They don’t just say, “And now Colin will talk to us about the sports games on tap for tonight.” You’re more likely to hear something like, “So how will tonight’s snow affect players in that game at Washington High School? For a closer look, here’s Colin with…”

Consider the following:

“On this next slide you will see…

“So we have identified the problems caused by inadequate testing. The next step is to…”

“So we have identified the problems caused by inadequate testing. How are we going to improve our goto-market plan with a solution?”

There are many ways to transition, and this simply scratches the surface of possibility. The first step is to become aware of how you transition from concept to concept.

Plan strong transitions – between thoughts and between presenters.

Guy Kawasaki’s “10-20-30 Rule”

Let me start by saying I love Guy Kawasaki. I own several of his books, and I fancy myself a corporate evangelist – for the benefits of meeting and presenting online – much as he pioneered evangelizing the Mac.

That said, his “10/20/30” rule for presentations is oft quoted and almost always out of context.

Here’s why:

The idea of “10 slides that go for no more than 20 minutes and have no font sizes smaller than 30 points” is his response to business folk making pitches to venture capitalists. His message is to a specific audience in a specific context.

Simply: Get to the point, and here’s what I want to see as a VC.

As Mark Twain, who knew a little about writing, once said, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a longer one instead.”

And I harp on that point, too. It takes investing in your audience to develop a concise, clear message.

But that doesn’t mean that ten slides is the only way to accomplish your goal. You can have ten slides and ramble like a drunken idiot.

Putting a presentation together isn’t a formula (though there are a few notably good ones like Cliff Atkinson’s Beyond Bullet Points), it’s the telling of a story that gets your audience from Point A to Point B both aurally and visually. If there were only one formula, there would only be one way to write a book or produce a movie, too.

Section 6

Getting Yourself Ready

Professional sports figures often approach a moment of performance with some form of routine. Whether it’s a golfer preparing for a shot or a power lifter gearing up for a lift, what they have in common is some form of ritual that prepares them mentally for peak performance.

Actors, musicians, and yes, professional speakers similarly often have ways they approach stepping into “show mode.” Whatever it is, they’ve been purposeful with planning and practice, dedicated to their own commitment to being the best they can be.

Own It

Even if you’re not a professional speaker, or presenting isn’t your primary gig, I’d recommend determining in advance the things you need to do, and writing them down.

If you’re a guest speaker or presenter, your host may have a checklist of items to consider as you prepare for your presentation. Whether the list is theirs or yours, the key is to “own it,” meaning you arrange it in terms of two things:

First, you find an order of execution that makes sense to you. This means determining how one task flows into the next.

Second, you work out a sense of timing.

Owning your pre-show checklist has one key benefit: peace of mind. Your jitters, energy, or the last minute cell phone call from the boss won’t shake you. And as your list becomes more familiar – even automatic – you can focus your mental energy on your audience and content instead of sweating other details.

Print a Backup Copy

I know it’s fifty slides long (mine are a lot longer). Print a copy of your presentation before you present.

There are two compelling reasons:

The first is risk management. The question isn’t if, but when you’ll experience an internet slowdown or something that will affect the performance of your web seminar (web seminar providers don’t want to tell you this… though to be fair, it’s not usually their fault). If the visual freezes or experiences serious latency, often one of your other presenters or behind-the-scenes partners can push the slide for you. And you’ll have your printed deck to refer to. (We’ll talk about the wisdom of presenting with a team later.)

The second is access to notes. Print the “notes” view. Now all the text you moved off your slide into the presenter notes is yours to refer to. And those extra annotations, anecdote reminders, etc., are at your fingertips.

Tips for Great Rehearsals

Do What the Pros Do

Imagine a professional of any kind who hasn’t put in a boatload of hours perfecting their skills – and who doesn’t continue to do so – in order to excel at their craft. Can you think of one?

Even if you can, do you have that level of proficiency when it comes to presenting online?

Rehearsals don’t have to be fancy, but they do need to occur. And as Jerry Weisman notes in The Power Presenter, you really should verbalize (meaning speak the words) out loud.

If you’re really pressed for time and don’t feel like you can spare the moment, focus on making sure your opening and closing flow well. That will help create momentum both to kick things off and to finish strong.

Much like developing your story and designing your slides, a rehearsal is an investment in your audience, and therefore in your own success.

Not So Fast

As your adrenaline starts pumping, whether from fear or excited anticipation, you’ll have a tendency to speed up. The challenge is that you risk breezing by a key point that you really want or need to make. I’ll talk about delivery and the “pregnant pause” a bit later, but the point in this preparatory phase is to practice slowing down. Pay attention to your diction and clarity, and most importantly, bring to consciousness that unconscious drive to speed up.

Too Much Stimulation

Adrenaline, part two. My doctor once asked me what happens when I stop drinking coffee. I said, “I don’t know. I’ve never stopped.”

Years later I find myself reading every book I can get my hands on about public speaking, and a common exhortation of many is “just say no to caffeine.”

The reality is that I’ve noticed that controlled vocal delivery is harder when I’ve had coffee or a soft drink, even if I long ago quit noticing the boost I get from caffeine.

You probably don’t notice the effect of caffeine in your life, either, but you can notice that I’m adding myself to the long list of those who urge you to avoid it before speaking.

Don’t compound the effect of adrenaline. Avoid caffeine and other stimulants.

Reading Is Boring

A Marketing Sherpa survey once offered respondents a number of options for completing a question that began “How likely would you be to leave a webinar early if…” The top response was “if the webinar content was not as advertised.”

The second? “If the presenter read directly from the slides.”

May I extrapolate and venture that this would also include whether the presenter reads a script? Unless you’re Katie Couric or some other newscaster with prodigious skills in script-reading-while-sounding-natural, the audience will know.

That said, you need to nail your openers and closers. The first creates momentum and desire, and the latter sends your audience off to their next task with a sense of awe and accomplishment.

So the lesson is this: While you need to deliver (and really nail) some carefully chosen words, the audience will be able to tell if you’re reading. People tend to judge you most by the first and last things you say. Carefully choose your words … and don’t read them.

I Can See It Now… The Whiteboard

The whiteboard is typically an instrument of a collaborative session. In a smaller session, we might engage in brainstorming or taking other input, capturing those thoughts, and writing them down for all to see. In larger, more structured, presentations we typically don’t do that.

As natural as it might be to grab a pen when in person, the act of drawing on a virtual whiteboard is a good bit more computer tool-centric. You may have a pen with which you can draw free-form, but you’ll probably also have tools for typing text, drawing rectangles and circles, etc. Your goal is to become comfortable with the tools you’ve got, where to grab them, and how to get an idea out of your head onto the virtual whiteboard.

If you’re going to use a whiteboard, practice visualizing and drawing your thoughts in advance.

Like any other tool, the whiteboard can be useful if you think and plan ahead.

Record and Listen

Most people don’t like the sound of their own voice when they hear it recorded. At least one factor in this is because it doesn’t sound natural. We’re used to hearing our own voice through the bones in our head, in addition to through our auditory canals.

Short of some voice training, there isn’t much you can do about this. And even then, you have what you have.

What you can do, however, is get better at your delivery, and that’s easy to do:

Record yourself, and then listen.

You will quickly hear yourself – your tempo, your pauses, your ums and ahs – in a new way.

In a recent study I conducted of over more than six hundred professionals, “quality of the presenter’s voice when delivering” was cited as the second most important factor in the success of a live, online presentation (“ease of use” of the web seminar software was rated first).

Since making a recording in a web conferencing tool is push-button simple, there’s no excuse not to record and listen (my dog ate my mini-cassette recorder?).

Mitigating Common Risk

Present with a Partner or Team

Presenting online is truly better with a team of two or more, and it’s something I’d highly encourage. Consider some different scenarios:

One behind-the-scenes partner: Even if your presentation isn’t a major production, you likely can easily recruit one person to hang out ‘backstage.’ This person can assist with questions and chat, give you time checks, or even just provide peace of mind that someone is available to push slides for you if there’s a technical challenge.

You can define your partner’s role however you like. The point is simply to get some help, in order to decrease the number of things you need to pay attention to while presenting.

A behind-the-scenes team: For larger events, consider a team. You know you will get FAQs like, “Can I have a copy of this presentation?” and “What was the telephone number again?” (even when you’ve addressed it four times already!). One rule of thumb in the event production biz is to plan to have one helper for every fifty people you expect in the audience.

One especially common scenario is the presentation where you don’t want to answer direct product/feature or pricing questions. Recruiting a few assistants from your sales team is a great tactic. Just be sure to agree ahead of time on the nature of the answers, so that everyone will be on the same page. Examples may include whether to answer questions directly, possibly providing the sales team’s 800 number, or privately sending those prospects the contact name/number of the account manager.

Engage a Moderator

Even if you have a behind-the-scenes team, adding a moderator adds value. This ‘color commentator’ will amplify your connection with the audience, from delivering your bio with credibility, to teeing up questions and comments, to making the closing remarks.

A great moderator will join the virtual stage with you and make you look like a rock star. Use a kick-butt moderator.

The Set Up

The best way to get started on the right note is a great introduction (provided by that kick-butt moderator you engaged). Having a good bio delivered by a moderator or emcee will not only set up your credibility with authority, it’ll set the event in motion and give you a running start.

Get It Done. Now.

In the virtual world, it’s common for an event coordinator to ask for your slides to be delivered early, often twentyfour to forty-eight hours in advance. Their job is to make sure your slides are ready to go relative to the presentation technology. Treat this like the wisdom you’ve heard about showing up to an in-person venue early, checking out the room, and making sure your goods look great on the projector.

Here are a couple things I’ve experienced that you might run into:

I’ve found at the last minute that a company’s email servers had an imposed size limit. Minutes before the event I get a message saying, “Sorry, your email was rejected because it’s too big.”

I’ve had a deck become mysteriously corrupt. Mere moments before an event isn’t the time to figure out which of the last saved versions wasn’t corrupt, make some edits, and try to make it work.

I’ve had a deck that for some mysterious reason wouldn’t upload into the web conferencing software, despite the fact that it had worked fine during rehearsal.

Getting your deck to the coordinator doesn’t mean you can’t make last minute changes (though if you’re trying to make too many changes, you should probably reexamine your approach). I almost always make a couple final tweaks, but they’re typically so minor (e.g., a typo or slight change of phrase) that if needed I can easily describe the change to someone else who can take care of it.

Practice Properly

Different computers come with different configurations, from operating system to software – even within the same company. It’s one of life’s mysteries, so you have to learn to live with it. My goal is to give you every way possible to minimize the chances of something going wrong on the big day

To minimize those chances, practice your presentation using the same computer you’ll be working from on the big day.

Section 7

Delivering Like a Rockstar

It’s common to be nervous. You’re almost not normal if you don’t get nervous. The goal shouldn’t necessarily to avoid being so, but to have the presence of mind to know how it’s likely to affect you, and what to do about it.

The two most common things that happen when your adrenaline is flowing is that your tempo speeds up, and your breathing gets shallow. You might not avoid these, but you can respond to them.

First, remember to avoid caffeine. It increases your blood pressure, and increases the likelihood that you’ll speed up

Second, breathe. Deeply. Slowly. And from your gut (the diaphragm). Get the breath down below your chest. Feel your abdomen slowly expand and gently contract. The oxygen will do good things for you.

Third, slow down. You can’t speak as quickly as you can think, and you can’t speak as quickly as others think (or read, for that matter). But if you’re going too fast, you’ll barrel past great opportunities to pause for effect or provide other inflection that helps deliver your point with emphasis.

Close It Up

Close any application that is not directly related to your presentation. Web conferencing tools are software. This means they’re not perfect (no software is), and this means they potentially conflict with other software. At the very least, your computer has a finite amount of power available, and you want every potential ounce of computing resource focused on the success of your presentation.

Clear the Decks

Following the previous point, here’s something that I do every single time I present: Reboot. Just because you closed all other applications doesn’t mean that your computing power is now fully focused on the task at hand. It’s like insurance – you’re not counting on having an accident, but you’re prepared in case. Be prepared.

Prevent Popups

Depending on your computer’s configuration, there may be some things that start up (such as instant messaging) when you boot your machine. If you’re sharing from your desktop during a presentation, you do not want to get a message or calendar notification… especially when you thought everything was turned off.

Cotton Mouth

Even pros get a rush of energy or nerves when presenting. And a common by product of stress is a dry mouth. If you forget a glass of water and this happens to you, one experience of presenting when it feels like you have a mouth full of cotton balls should help you remember this proposition the next time. Or you could spare yourself the pain and…

Good Vibrations

Part of your backstage routine should be turning off your mobile phone, sort of.

Many folks will tell you to turn off your mobile phone in order to prevent an interruption, but I’ve got an alternative for you.

Most of the time when you present, the presentation team will be on an operator-assisted conference call. One thing most operators won’t ask, but are capable of doing, is calling you and patching you back into the conference call if your connection drops. Give the operator your mobile phone number, put your phone on vibrate, and know that you’re covered in the event that your primary line drops the call.

How often does this happen? Not very. The telephone system is one of the most reliable technologies available. For me I think it’s happened twice in ten years, but one of them was in early 2009 in front of several hundred attendees. It’s not fun, but it’s even less fun if you’re not prepared.

Plan Your Spontaneity

Assuming you want to sound natural and comfortable, here’s a technique for those moments of brain-freeze: Plan to be spontaneous.

As you move through your content, whether before rehearsal or as you verbalize your presentation, you will probably think of places where interaction would be natural (either asking the audience a question or the audience asking one of you).

Use your presentation notes to jot those places down.

If Necessary, Plant

But what if I don’t have a question from the audience? Plant one. Or make one up on the fly (“Hey, George has a pertinent question. He asks…”).

On occasion someone asks if I think this is being fake. I don’t think so, and this is why:

If you have any depth at all in the subject you’re presenting on (and you likely do… that’s why you’re presenting), you are intimately familiar with the most frequently asked questions. You probably also have some great answers to the most common objections. Bringing one of these up yourself is simply addressing the question head-on.

When you’ve demonstrated that you’ll answer questions this way, more will come in. No one in the audience has to feel like they’re the first or are all alone, and everyone benefits.

Prepare Your Moderator

Parallel to planning your spontaneity, don’t leave your planted questions to chance, either.

Before your presentation, ask yourself (and write down the answers) to two questions:

“What questions would I love to get from the audience?”

“What questions do I hope to avoid?”

Then make sure to share what you’ve identified with the moderator of the event. A good moderator will use them as a guide when s/he chooses which questions from the audience to ask you. Or s/he will ask those exact questions (the good ones, anyway) to improve interactivity if the audience is a little slow on the uptake.

A Moderator’s Confession

I was moderating an event for a client with an audience that was primarily in India. Registration was light, but they wanted to go through with the presentation anyway so they could make a recording to post on their website.

As is my custom, I told the presenter that my role and goal as a moderator was to make them look like a rock star, I felt out their comfort level with taking questions during the presentation, and I asked them what questions they’d love to be asked and what kind they’d prefer to avoid.

During the poorly-attended presentation the audience was silent, but that didn’t mean we didn’t have an interactive presentation.

“Hey Pete, Anoop asks...,” “Pradeep asks a relevant question, Pete,” and “Here’s one from Bhaskar…” were the order of the day.

At the end of the presentation the operator put the presentation team back into a sub-conference call so we could speak amongst ourselves. The event’s sponsor asked about the Q&A, commenting that she hadn’t seen any Q&A coming in and hadn’t noticed any Anoop in the audience. My answer: I’ve been in the software business a long time, and I know many Indian people as a result. I simply started calling out the first names of past co-workers and assigning them questions – those the presenter had given me in advance.

Voila! Interactive presentation!

On Stage

May I Have Your Attention? Please?

Quick poll: Do you have a cell phone, iPhone, Blackberry, or laptop? Have you ever used it during a meeting?

The reality is that today’s audience is multi-tasking during your presentation, perhaps even twittering about it in real time. Even in an in-person environment, where there’s more social pressure to look engaged, you can count on not having your audience’s undivided attention.

Details, Details

One handy way to share audio conferencing details with the audience is to use the chat function. You can do this just at the beginning of the presentation so it’s the very first entry in everyone’s chat log. This gives them one more place to find the phone number, and it beats someone being late because they can’t find the right email.

Another thing you can do is copy/paste a link into chat, perhaps as an on-the-fly way of sharing with the audience.

Show, Don’t Tell

Unfortunately your audience’s expectations for webinars is similar to the way they anticipate the average meeting. Meetings generally suck. This means that they’re going to assume that you’re going to be no more compelling than an ambient voice in the room from a speaker phone – unless you demonstrate otherwise.

Even if you plan to engage people throughout the presentation, you’ll lose them to a speaker phone and email if you don’t demonstrate early your intention to be different.

It’s not enough to have a welcome script in which the moderator states, “We’ll have an interactive session,” and “We’ll answer your questions.” They’ve heard that before.

Questions, Anyone?

A typical audience – again accustomed to presentation boredom – will not ask a lot of questions … until they see that you’re going to do something about it. Answer a question early, and you’ll usually see the quantity of questions asked leap up.

Call for a Vote

A poll is a great way to demonstrate interactivity.

When you open a poll it will take a little time for folks to vote. If we assume they’re multi-tasking, you’ll want to get their attention. A poll provides an opportunity to interrupt them. You’ve got an opportunity to increase the percentage of the audience that votes in your poll.

Know When to Say “When”

Someone’s not paying attention, that’s guaranteed. Someone else got a call on their mobile phone, and another got up to pay a visit to the water closet (U.S. translation: “the restroom”).

Most web conference solutions allow you to see the total audience population, as well as the quantity that has voted in the poll (though these data points don’t usually appear next to each other visually).

If you wait for complete participation you’ll likely be waiting too long… and testing the patience of those who are with keeping up with you.

Don’t expect 100% participation in polls.

FAQ: What percentage of the audience should I let vote before closing and sharing?

A: This is more an art than a science, and I usually expect something in the mid- or upper-80% range. I’d use this analogy as a guide: When you pop popcorn, if you wait for every kernel to be popped, you’ll burn some of it. Instead, you wait until the popping slows down, using intuition to determine when to stop. You might have instructions that say “when popping slows to about one pop per second,” or some such thing, but it’s still just a guide, and you have to adjust based on your own cooking tools. Same here.

Closed Polling

If someone thinks they have a “wrong” answer, especially if they think you can identify by person how they voted, there’s a chance they’ll change their answer to fit in with the group or a majority vote.

Many web conferencing solutions have a couple features that help you improve the accuracy of your poll result:

One, you can close the poll, freezing the results and preventing further votes or changes.

Two, you can keep the results from the audience’s view.

Make Friends with Annotation Tools

The first rule of avoiding multi-tasking is “don’t suck.” The second is a corollary: Provide visual cues for the audience, to show them what they should be looking at… which means you have to command and focus attention.

Even before you’ve become adept at developing slides that keep things moving visually, you can use a pointer or annotation tool of some sort to visually draw attention to the portion of the slide you’re speaking to. In a screen share the audience will see your mouse pointer. Most web conferencing solutions provide some form of annotation tools, such as pointers, arrows, or highlighters.

The ‘Hand Up’ Tool Is Good, Too

Unless you’re delivering a keynote, you’ll likely be delivering content in a way that encourages audience questions. Remember to use your Hand Up tool to keep an eye on when your audience might need some extra attention.

Use a ‘hand up’ tool for ad hoc answers.

A Couple Useful Hand Up Tips

Make the most of the Hand Up tool by explaining its how, where, and when to your audience.

One, even if it’s included in the welcome script, when you’re opening the floor for questions, remind the audience how to participate.

Two, if you can, give them specific verbal directions such as, “In the upper-right hand part of your attendee console, if you open the gray window you will see…”

Finally, if you’re not going to use Hand Up and you have the option to turn it off, do so. Otherwise, attendees will put their hand up and get frustrated when you don’t respond, even if you’ve demonstrated you’re not using it or are using other tools for communicating. I wouldn’t say ‘assume your audience is full of idiots,’ but I’d assume there’s one in the crowd.

Give specific instruction on how – or whether – the audience can use the Hand Up tool.

Grab a Pen

Another piece of advice about creating impact when delivering a virtual presentation: Tell ‘em to grab a pen.

When you’re coming up on one of your key points in a virtual presentation, remember a common 1080 Group exhortation: Assume they’re multitasking.

Q: So how do you get their attention?

A: Get literal. Pause; say, “Are you ready? Grab a pen.”

One, you create some anticipation. They don’t know what’s going to come next. In a world raised on radio ads spouting 800 numbers at you when you can’t write anything down, I find this tactic works.

Two, you’re communicating that ‘this is important.’ And, well, it is. Or it better be.

Tell ‘em to grab a pen.

Rhythm and Pacing and Flow (oh my)

Another easy way to add impact to your presentation is to employ a technique that storytellers, comedians, and news anchors have been using for eons: the pregnant pause. The late Paul Harvey was my favorite master of this technique, but you don’t have to have been broadcasting for sixty years to add it to your bag of tricks.

The pregnant pause is simply a pause or hesitation that heightens the tension or creates anticipation… …and then releases to deliver optimum impact to what is said right after the pause. The reason this is so powerful is simple. Our sensory systems are wired to pick up changes, differences, or disruptions to the expected.

Someone in your audience who is only half-listening is most likely to be drawn back when something interrupts their zoning out.

To start, become consciously aware of the tempo, or pace, of your delivery. Speak too quickly and you’ll sound frenetic or nervous; too slowly and you’ll put ‘em to sleep. Either way, having an awareness of how you sound to someone else is a step toward being a pro. Remember “record and listen?”

To use a musical analogy, just like a drummer sets the pace (tempo) of a tune, they also set forth emphases, or rhythms, that become recognizable… that’s how you recognize the beat as heavy metal, hip hop, or bossa nova.

This ‘rhythm’ element isn’t something you’re going to apply to a whole business presentation. But there may be elements – such as the three key points that you repeat – that you emphasize in a rhythmic way. Da da da da DA da DA da DA! I don’t suggest manufacturing something, but make it a point to consciously avoid the monotone and lean toward the drama already inherent in how your words flow.

Repeat Yourself

There are multiple ways to deliver a point with emphasis, and since web/audio conferencing events (mostly) eliminate the value of you waving your arms around wildly, it’s helpful to give the audience a visual clue that you’re making an important point.

One of my favorite speakers, whose personal mission is teaching, is a master at repeating his key phrases. Not only does he repeat the sound bite when he makes the point, he brilliantly transitions to the next point by repeating his first.

The lesson learned, if we feebly attempt to turn it into a formula, looks like this:

1. Literally repeat the phrase. If appropriate, change up where you place an accent.

“Sometimes the enemy of the best is the good.” “Sometimes the enemy of the best is the good.”

2. Use a repeat of the phrase both to summarize and close one point, but also to set up or transition to the next point:

“…sometimes the enemy of the best is the good. And what does this demand of us? We can’t say NO to good things until we get clear on the one thing. We can’t say no to good things…until we get clear on the one thing.”

When the Stuff Hits the Fan

Planning for the Unplannable – What Happens When It Goes Wrong

Fact #1 when using technology is that sometimes it fails.

Fact #2 is refer to fact #1.

The good news is that the POTS – the plain old telephone system – has been around for decades and is as close to bullet proof as technology comes. Computers aren’t.

Short of a complete failure, it’s not uncommon for many technologies to experience latency, meaning a delay of some sort. This is sometimes experienced as a delay between when you click “next slide” and when it advances. If you’re doing a screen share, your audience may experience a little choppiness.

There are two realities to be aware of here.

One, reliability is one thing that separates the major solution providers from the smaller players. The delta between the two is decreasing, but the fact remains that reliability is a sizable investment that only well-funded companies can take to an advanced level.

Two, the weakest link in any web conferencing system is a two-part quandary over which nobody has control. The first is your personal computer. The second is your local internet connection.

The question when presenting online is not if something will go wrong, but when. If you approach it as such, 98% of the time you’ll never have to worry. The other 2% of the time, remember the following maxim:

Professionalism isn’t what happens when everything goes right. Professionalism is what happens when everything goes wrong.

Keep an Eye on Q&A

If something goes wrong, your audience will let you know… but you have to be looking at the Q&A manager to see it. If you learn to keep an eye on no other tool, this is the one to know. Use it to keep track of dialogue of all kinds, including catching wind of trouble.

If there is trouble, you’ll need to make a quick value judgment. One person out of seventy saying “I’m not hearing anything” may not be worth stopping the show; but five people saying the same thing indicates that it’s not an isolated issue.

Related side note: When I was at PlaceWare/Microsoft we tracked support calls related to web seminars. Seventy percent of issues were individual, and most of those were user error (e.g., lost passwords, speaker volume turned down or off, trying to listen through the computer speakers when the event was only using telephone conference for audio, etc.). The takeaway:

Having an audience member experience a problem is never desirable, but it’s no different than if they got stuck behind an accident on the way to your in-person event. You’ll have to make a value judgment about what to do, but I’d suggest you serve well the other folks who are there and ready to roll, instead of worrying about the one.

What Not to Do

Now that you’ve been warned, you can be prepared to weather what comes along. There is no magic bullet or “one size fits all” response, but remember this: If you don’t draw attention to a mistake or problem, most people won’t notice.

To be sure, the presentation team will be sweating, a moment of silence will seem like an hour, and the voice in your head will want to start apologizing or explaining. But the audience will most likely never notice. I promise.

Stories from the Front

As Vice President of Client Services for a web seminar production company, one of the first things I’d teach new event producers was what to expect from a client if an event were to go sideways.

The client’s first reaction is to save face in front of their clients and supervisor(s). When a problem arose, our response needed to be silence and empathy in the moment, offering a promise for a full investigation. Once a little time had passed, usually a day, we’d deliver a full report of what occurred – no blame, just facts. And of course if we were at fault in any way we’d provide an offer to make good.

Our report was delivered in a written form that was easily shared, and written from a point of view that meant the document could be forwarded to supervisors or other interested parties, thus saving the client the need to remember and explain things themselves.

Inevitably, once the emotions of the moment had passed, all but the most obstinate clients could see things more clearly, accept the unchangeable facts, and prepare how to move forward.

What we should take away from this is a point of self-awareness. I’ve been on the other side of the presentation, and I’ve received email saying “that was the worst presentation ever,” when the problem had nothing to do with me as the presenter or with the content. To be sure, it stings. But nobody is served by pointing fingers, and while your own emotions will still roil, your next step to success is the same as any other time – have an attitude that little setbacks aren’t going to stop you from reaching your goals.

When the Inevitable Occurs

If something goes sideways, take a breath. The glitch will seem to last a lot longer to you than anyone else. If the slide still doesn’t move after initial attempts, that’s why you’ve got that printed copy of your presentation.

Better Still…

As you gain experience, you’ll become a little less flustered by latency or other hiccups, and will find you can even hide the fact that anything is amiss. An attentive team member will know exactly where you are, and you can simply give verbal nods that they’ll respond to. That’s why you have them there.

Moderator, Anyone?

Team member? Recall I’ve recommended presenting with someone else – for numerous reasons. Often the behindthe-scenes producers aren’t themselves presentation personalities. A rocking moderator will have the presence of mind and experience to cover you, especially if the delay is extended for any reason. They’ll feed you questions for an ad hoc Q&A or dialogue, they’ll have an unflustered sense of when to go ahead and continue with an audio presentation, they’ll deflect issues from you and give the audience instructions about what to do next…

Make It Right

If you’re charging a fee to participants, make sure you’ve got a policy in place spelling out what you’re going to do in the event of failure, their absence, their desire to substitute another attendee, and all the things you’d otherwise have a policy for. In this, web conferencing is no different than any other product or service you’d offer.

If the event is free, the participants have still paid you with their time. It’s still wise to figure out how you’re going to serve them. You reached out to them for a reason, and they responded for a reason. Offer another session or offer a personal demo or presentation – and do so with the same attitude that says, “Professionalism isn’t what happens when something goes right, it’s what happens when something goes wrong.”

Offer a handout, personal demo, or appropriate option to make good.

At the End of the Presentation

Stay On the Line

If you’re on an operator-assisted conference call, at the end of the presentation the operator can put you and the rest of the presentation team back into a private subconference call. Do it.

If nothing else, this is a great opportunity to indulge in a little congratulatory backstage backslapping. But I’d also recommend using the time for some constructive criticism. The event will never be more fresh in your minds, and it’s a great opportunity to review something that didn’t go well… to improve for next time.