Welcome back.
Today we begin our series on “things to remember when presenting online”.
As we mentioned in last week’s post – impact, effectiveness and clarity are even more critical in today’s brave new world of business presentations.
In a pre-pandemic scenario, you would walk into a meeting room with your professionally-designed slide deck, prepared with your spiel and confident about handling all interactions face-to-face.
Now, you log into your meeting room, turn on the video and get ready to share your screen, while sipping coffee from your favourite mug.
Sounds so much easier, doesn’t it? What could go wrong?
Well, for starters, your internet connection could prove to be unstable. This could lead to your voice becoming garbled, resulting in your key points getting swallowed up. Which in turn would result in incomprehension, annoyance and breakdown of seamless communication.
I.e. impact, effectiveness and clarity could take a serious beating – and for no fault of yours – or your slide-deck’s!
That’s why we suggest you step back and look at first things first (if you haven’t already):
(a) be sure you have a good internet provider
(b) test your current internet speed, routers and settings – and reset/reconfigure if needs be
(c) scan for viruses, as well as on-system and external interferences
(d) if you’re using your mobile for the meeting (not ideal) do what the geeks call a “heatmapping test” – download a heatmapping app on your smartphone, then walk around your house to find the spot where the wifi is strongest
(e) ensure you have all your software and firmware updated, and consider investing in a power-line adaptor with wi-fi capabilities
(f) de-clutter your PC and delete files and programmes that could be slowing it down
(g) invest in a pair of good earphones
Despite all of these precautions, you could still go online and be stumped by some technical hitch or buffering issues. Therefore, to add one more point to our list:
(h) be prepared to turn off video any time during the call!
Which of course, will lead to the less than ideal situation of speaking into what seems like a void…
In the real-room you would have persuaded through eye-contact and body-language. You would be able to gauge the response and make alterations in your presentation as you went along.
In the zoom-room – especially if everyone’s videos are off – how do you know you still have their attention? And what can you do to ensure they are with you throughout your presentation?
That’s what we will look at in the next post…
Till then, happy setting-up and tech-checking.
PS: If some of it sounds too technically challenging, don’t worry – ask for help from the computer geeks at home, or simply go online for tutorials and guidance on any of these pointers. Trust us – next time you go online to make your presentation, you’ll know it’s been worth the extra effort!