Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Anna, and today we're going to talk about how to deliver remote presentations. Are you finding it hard to adjust presentations to a remote setting? Delivering remote presentations isn't entirely that different from regular ones. The main challenge remains keeping your audience engaged so they're not tempted to look at their phone or browse the web or go down a YouTube rabbit hole instead. That's exactly what we're going to focus on through the following tried and tested tips for delivering effective remote presentations. Feel free to use these techniques when presenting remotely for your team meetings, online events, and webinars alike. Number one, always plan and practice ahead of time. Two, have someone else help you with the presentation. Three, invest in good visuals for your remote presentations. Four, improve your speech and sound when presenting remotely. Five, keep the presentation interactive and engaging for the listeners. Six, steer clear of annoying habits and mistakes. Seven, ensure you'll have enough time to take on extra questions or fit in unexpected tech and connectivity problems. Eight, find unique ways of adapting your presentation to every single audience. Nine, don't leave people hanging. First we'll discuss always planning and practicing ahead of time. While not everyone is naturally born as an amazing speaker, we can all practice to deliver a mind-blowing presentation that will be memorable, not only for the information you share, but also for your exposition skills. The first step is ensuring you've got the right remote presentation tools to work with. This includes your lights and any headset, microphone, and speaker you might need to improve the quality of your stream. Look through all the Amazon reviews, starting from the negative ones, to see how your options already perform for similar purposes. You can then use the CRISP app with any of the audio solutions to clear up the sound so that no noise passes through. To prevent unanticipated hardware or software crashes during the remote presentation, run a tech check a couple hours beforehand. Once you know there's nothing that could go wrong from a tech side, you'll be less stressed and can now focus better on your own presentation delivery. Practice the entire presentation from start to finish at least once, and write down any points you might forget to mention. If you think there's a high chance of something going wrong, like your camera stopping all of a sudden or audio lacking, put together backup plans. Have an extra camera or mic at hand. Ensure your phone's internet data allowances can cover in case your wifi connection drops, or even keep a secondary laptop at hand. Next we'll talk about having someone help you with the presentation. Depending on the scale of the remote presentation, you'll want someone to help you with a tech, design, or administrative task. From checking if everything is okay before the start of an event to monitoring everything during the actual presentation. In particular, if you're taking questions from an audience of over 100 active members, you'll need a moderator. This person can select the questions, send resources to people whose inquiries can be answered through an existing post of yours, and even remove spam from the chat. To maintain full control of the discussion, have this person establish the ground rules and etiquette before people even sign up for the event. They can receive a brief list of conditions to attend the presentation and only receive an invite once they accept the terms. And the moderator's duty doesn't stop there. They'll be responsible for all the follow-ups, sending a recording to everyone who missed the presentation, or putting together a blog post summary of the event. Next we'll talk about investing in good visuals for your remote presentations. Long gone are the days when plain text on a white background was enough to support your claims. Today, every single slide you create matters. Use visuals as proof of your statements and to build trust in your expertise from the first seconds of presenting remotely. Here are all the best practices to keep in mind when creating your slides. First, opt for a good design that matches your brand. It's now time to consider delegating this task to the designer in your team, or outsourcing this duty to impress your audience. For stunning virtual presentation layouts and templates, turn to Dribbble and Behance, where you'll also be able to find top designers to help you with this. Next, you'll want to diversify the layout of your slides. Having one slide only with three sentences on it is fine, as long as the next one is image-centric. Opt for a slightly different layout for each slide based on its purpose. Quotes, facts, statements, images, videos, lists, contact information, etc. Imagine you're creating the layout for a magazine. Would its pages be repetitive? Then you'll want to use a template as a last-minute option or for small team presentations. Large-scale events where your presentation can help you score a partnership or client will always be better off with an original design. Consider no more than 20 seconds on a slide. To do this, you first need to distribute your facts evenly. Having less than 15-20 words on a slide will ensure that you don't have too much to say, so you'll naturally move on to the following section. Having a top-notch design doesn't mean you're not supposed to show your face as you're presenting remotely. The majority of people consider face-to-face interactions vital for any business partnerships, be it within meetings or networking events. With virtual presentations, in-person communication will never be possible, but you can still put a face to your name and voice, as well as maintain eye contact through the camera. Next, we'll talk about improving your speech and sound when presenting remotely. What people hear is more important than ever when presenting remotely. Keep in mind that a presentation doesn't flow like a meeting, so people can't just drop anything to ask you to repeat something. Practice your speech beforehand, and record it so you can identify any things that might not be heard correctly. For larger events, remote or not, a transcriptionist is a must. Having everything you say written down takes away the audience's burden to strongly focus on what you're saying. Plus, it removes any misunderstandings that could lie behind an accent, or if you're not speaking loud enough. Another thing that could literally annoy your audience is constant background noise. Traffic, dogs barking, kids yelling, and people just chattering in general are four of the most common disruptors that will get listeners to think about where that sound's coming from instead of what you're saying. Will someone please muzzle that mutt? A solution like Crisp automatically removes the background noises from your live or recorded virtual presentations. It works with any tool you're using, from Zoom and Google Hangouts to Slack and over 800 more apps. For extra clarity, learn to slow down. You don't have to finish everything in five minutes. The coherence of your remote presentation has priority, so take sentences one at a time, with breaks in between to give people a couple seconds to fully comprehend what you're saying. Now, keeping the presentation interactive and engaging for your listeners. To differentiate your remote presentation from those that other companies have created, find your own ways of keeping your audience engaged. As many as 70% of marketers believe interactive content is what keeps audiences engaged, while 64% of people see a two-way interaction more effective at engaging people compared to a linear one. You've got infinite options here. Ask people to share their feedback after a section of your presentation. Get people to prepare questions before the start of the remote presentation. Have your audience share fun or informative bits of the presentation in real time via Twitter through a common hashtag. Set up a chat where people can share their ideas and ask a question. Add in useful activities to gather insights, act as a survey, or just test if your listeners were paying attention. Steer clear from annoying habits and mistakes. The worst thing you can do to have your listeners close the presentation, and yes, that's easier to do compared to leaving the room for in-person presentations, is to keep your presentation repetitive or unintelligible. Common mistakes during remote presentations include simply reading from the slides, speeding up your speech, speaking too slowly, or moving back and forth between slides because you forgot to say one thing at the previous one. All of these small habits confuse participants and give you a bad virtual rating. Other frequent errors that can compromise the remote presentation's success include forgetting to introduce yourself, or not explaining complex topics some of your listeners might not be familiar with. Not everyone will be aware of who you are, and the main reason people are signing up for the presentation is to learn something new from scratch. Clearly give a definition of any new terms or concepts you're using and highlight the exact element or images you're talking about using the on-screen drawing pen tool or shapes and arrows. Ensure you'll have enough time to take on extra questions or fit in unexpected tech and connectivity problems. Have you ever held a presentation and realized you forgot to mention one important thing only after it was done? When announcing the presentation's length or an event's schedule, add at least 15 extra minutes to the time you first estimated. This helps you avoid rushing the presentation and allows you to take on enough questions at the end. Plus, if you think you forgot anything, you can fit it within the context during the Q&A session. Find unique ways of adapting your presentation to every single audience. The top and flow of your remote presentation should be motivating to the participant. To ensure people will want to interact with you, you can't keep the same format for all audience types. Some aspects to take into consideration here are pre-existing knowledge of the topic, expectations, presentation setting, demographics, audience size, and more. Next are two distinct cases with their own particular approaches. For small groups of fewer than 10 people, you can take the time to ask every single person one or two questions. In other words, when time allows for it, initiate the engagement yourself. You can also gather their feedback via the chat so you can adapt the presentation as you go and keep it in tone with their topics of interest. What about people who want to see your presentation but can't attend? Make recording your remote presentations a habit. Let them know from the moment they sign up for the event that you'll send the recording to everyone on the list. This takes away the pressure to make it on time and allows them to easily review the presentation at any time after. To improve your own remote presentation skills, review these yourself from time to time and reflect on the things you can improve. Lastly, don't leave people hanging. For effective remote presentations, give attendees a call to action or CTA, a link to a free resource they can check out to learn more. Don't forget to download our guide, or we've prepared a special ebook for all participants, or join our free community and take part in the discussion there are all good CTA ideas to use. So whether you created the presentation to sell, expand your network, or just increase brand awareness, use that core goal within your CTA too. Tell them what they're supposed to do next and how they can use the information you just shared. If you want them to take part in a project you run, instruct them on the general outline and send them a detailed guide to what their role could be. Don't forget to leave them your email address or social media account so they can contact you for future questions or opportunities. To keep things more personal, make time for brief meetings with people who are interested in learning more. You can also send a follow-up together with the recording of the presentation to remind them of a resource they didn't download or a survey they haven't yet completed. Prepare to start preparing your next remote presentation. These might seem like a lot of remote presentation tips to apply all at once, but taking them on one by one will ensure that you've got all points covered in a timely manner. The number one best practice to keep in mind, though, is making sure you would enjoy your presentation if someone else showed it to you. Practice the presentation ahead of time and record it so you can analyze it and see if there's anything that needs to be changed or if you can fit in some fun activities to keep your audience engaged. To truly exceed everyone's expectations, stay away from the this-will-do mentality. Invest in good design and tech equipment that will turn your boring remote presentations into professional ones. This is the first aspect that will capture people's attention and get them eager to hear what you have to say.