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:

Advertisement

WebEx Training Centre – insider tips and lessons learnt

In this post, you’ll see the tips I found helpful (and the lessons I learnt) when hosting a series of internal training webinars in WebEx Training Centre. If you apply these tips and lessons, you should find it easier to host smooth events yourself (in WebEx or a similar system, like Adobe Connect).

You can click any of these links to jump straight to the relevant section of this post:

9 tips to design presentations for webinars – critique of Ellen Finkelstein’s post [Part 2]

When you prepare for an online session, do you wonder:

• How long should your introduction be, and what should it focus on?
• How much content should you show on each slide?
• Is it OK to use animations, and if so, what sort should you use – and when?

In this post, you’ll find answers to those questions, and more. It’s part 2 of a review of Ellen Finkelstein’s post called:

9 tips to design presentations for webinars

(Be sure to also check out part 1 for my review of Ellen’s tips 1 to 4.)

In this post, we’ll look at the last 5 of Ellen’s 9 webinar tips, which I’d summarise like this:

9 tips to design presentations for webinars – critique of Ellen Finkelstein’s post [Part 1]

Do you ever present online – at work or for yourself? If so (or if you’re about to for the 1^st time), you’ll find superb tips on Ellen Finkelstein’s blog.

Ellen’s a PowerPoint MVP who presents and hosts lots of webinars, including the annual Outstanding Presentations Workshop.

Below, you’ll find part 1 of a review of Ellen’s post called:

9 tips to design presentations for webinars

In part 1, we’ll look at the first 4 of the 9 tips (plus a few of my own), which – among other things – deal with using your webcam, and interacting through polls or other means.

(Be sure to also check out part 2 for my review of Ellen’s tips 5 to 9.)

I’d summarise the first 4 tips like this:

Best blogs for presenters & public speakers – 2016 edition

To find public-speaking wisdom, do you go to specific blogs? I certainly do. In fact, 3 years ago, I published a list of 6 of the world’s best.

But a lot’s changed in 3 years, and some of the blogs on my original list have gone belly-up. (In fact, you can still access most of those, but they don’t publish anything new.)

So I thought you might appreciate a fresh list.

Mind you, given that I’ve also listed 10 extinct public-speaking blogs, it’s not easy to find contenders.

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.

Free 1-hour “interactive” speech lesson by @DarrenLaCroix, former World Champ of Public Speaking [Video]

Do you ever struggle with knowing what to talk about when you give a speech? Or do you want a new perspective on the value you bring as a speaker?

If so, be sure to check out this 1-hour video by Darren LaCroix, who’s now a renowned speech coach, and was the 2001 World Champion of Public Speaking (in the annual contest run by Toastmasters International).

Note: If the video starts midway along the timeline, please just drag the playhead back to the start.

Also, there’s about 3 minutes of background at the start of the clip, including short parts of Darren’s acceptance after winning the world title. So if you like, by all means drag the playhead to the 3’10” mark, or skip to that point on YouTube instead.

Darren’s a great speaker, and his talk’s filled with both humour and powerful insight. In fact Patricia Fripp, former head of the National Speakers Association, is quoted as saying:

Improve each time you present – Great tips by @CharlesGreene3 on getting feedback

Hands up if you’d like to improve your public speaking – each time you do a presentation. Well here’s some great tips from speaking coach Charles Greene for doing just that.

He suggests you hand out a feedback form every time you present. And Charles even published the 8 questions he asks his own audiences after every talk.

To save time and effort, just use Charles’s questions

So to save yourself time and effort, you could just use Charles’s questions instead of “reinventing the wheel”. (Thank you, Charles, for sharing generously.)

I really like that Charles asks just 8 questions, so most people will be happy to respond. And most of his form simply asks people to rate his talk on a fixed scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” (a Likert scale) against various criteria. For instance, his 1^st question asks people the degree to which they agree that:

What’s the best webinar polling question ever? Maybe this…

In a webinar, what’s the best poll question you’ve ever heard? I just thought of a doozy, I reckon, yet I’ve never heard a presenter ask it. (It’s only “6½” words long, too!)

More on that shortly. But first, why not think for a moment about what might make a good poll question?