Presenting online? These 5 words make you sound nervous

Suppose you’re presenting on­line. You might be using Zoom, or Microsoft Teams, or one of the older tools like Adobe Connect or WebEx.

Whatever the platform, if you want to share your screen, what do you say?

Most presenters I’ve heard – myself included – say something like this:

“I’ll just share my screen…
Can you see it yet?”

But thinking carefully about it, I realised that approach has 3 problems:

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6 tips for great videos of your presentations or demos

Do you record videos of your talks, presentations or demos? Videos can be a great way to spread your message, while building your credibility and experience.

The 6 tips in this post should save you lots of time, because I’ve refined them over about the last 5 years. (And my most popular YouTube video currently has over 200,000 views.)

You can use the tips (as I have, too) for all these types of videos, and more:

• Slides being presented by a speaker
• Someone talking directly to camera – often called a talking head
• Demos of how to do something (like use software) – often called explainer videos

The names of the 6 tips form an acronym (“ASPECT”) which I hope’ll help you to recall the tips, and also to be systematic when you approach your video-based projects.

If you’d like to jump straight to any of the 6 tips, you can click these links:

How to rock at webinars – 9 concrete tips to keep people engaged

Think back: How many of the webinars you’ve attended were worth your time?

Sadly, I find they’re often time- wasters, and I’m sure many people agree. (If you have a strong opinion either way, please say so.)

So, to stand out from your competition, here are 9 tips to help you rock at webinars! (Each tip’s marked as being easy, medium, or hard, so you can choose the ones that suit your current skills.)

2 kickass training activities – put your learners’ needs 1st, and last!

You can use this pair of audience activities or interactions to “bookend” your training:

• The 1^st is a superb addition to your session’s opening.
• The 2^nd is an engaging way to get feedback at the end.

Interaction #1: Let the “attenders” set the agenda^(*)

Have you ever seen a trainer do something that stayed with you for decades?

More than 20 years ago, way back in the 20^th century, I saw a trainer use such an awesome technique that I’m still talking about it now – in the next millennium! So before I start to feel too old, let me share it with you.

10 tech tips for webinars and online meetings

Short of time? Get to the tips.

As a presenter, it’s increasingly likely that you use webinar tools (like Zoom or Adobe Connect or Cisco WebEx) – or that you soon will. And you might well hold virtual meetings or training workshops using those or similar tools.

Whatever type of online events you run, you’ll find some useful tips in this post.

Still, you’ll want to choose which tips to use according to factors like the size of your audience and your comfort with running the online event in the 1^st place. That’s because some of the tips (notably numbers 6 to 10) require more effort than others.

You can click any of these links to scroll to a specific tip: