Conference Leaders

It is time to present. You created a Power Point presentation. Set the date and time. Lined up the participants. Now what? What do you say? How do you say it?

Here are just a few hot tips and cool tricks to deliver an awesome online presentation.

1. Take a deep breath. Relax. Picture yourself talking with a friend over a cup of coffee at your kitchen table. You want to carry on a conversation with your participants, rather then lecture them. Everyone will be more at ease, absorb more of what you have to say, and they will want to join you in future events.
2. Do NOT send them a text version of your Power Point presentation in advance for note taking. Guaranteed, when you are on page two, they will be flipping through the pages and probably be on page ten. If you use Cool Conference Live as your web conferencing solution, your participants can use the CCL notes feature to take digital notes. If you want your participants to have a copy of your Power Point, send it to them at the conclusion of your presentation.
3. The single biggest mistake of any online Power Point presentation is that the presenter has created too many slides. You will bore your participants to death by showing slide after slide after slide. As a rule of thumb, no more than 12 text slides for every hour of presentation. They joined your presentation to listen to you, not to read slides.
4. Speaking of length of presentations, try to keep them less than an hour. The mind can only absorb what the seat can endure. After an hour, guaranteed, participants will abandon the room, surf the Net, or play with the dog while you are presenting.
5. Engage your audience. If all you do is talk, you will start to hear yawning in the background. Ask questions. Ask more questions. Did I mention you should ask questions? The more interactive your presentation, the more they will learn and the more likely they will return in the future.
6. If you have a large number of people on the phone and in the room, to avoid talking over each other, you should use “protocol” for Q & A. At the beginning of your presentation, advise participants to click the Q & A toggle. As moderator, the site will alert you to questions/comments in the order that they are made. You can then call on them.
7. Join Toastmasters. This is a great world wide organization that can help you hone your presentation skills. You will learn how to get rid of those ugly “ummmm’s. You will learn how to speak with confidence and captivate your audience, whether you are in an online conference room or standing in front of an audience of thousands. Guaranteed you will find a chapter in a town near you.

Ok, we have got you started. In future posts, we will take your presentation skills to even higher levels. In the near future, watch for my post titled: “Putting Pizzazz Into Your Presentations or Don’t be Afraid to Go Naked in Public.”

But we want to hear from you. We want to read about your ideas. So join our family of contributors, whether you are a novice or expert. Tell us what has worked for you….and what hasn’t. We can all learn from each other’s experience. We would welcome you as a contributor. Or add comments, suggestions and ideas to the posts. We are a community of conference leaders striving to help each other do what we do…better. Until next time.