Are online presentations different?

Not long ago I asked in one of the remarkable Sarah Arrow’s private groups what people needed to know about when it comes to presentations. I got a lot of questions: this blog is a response to the first of them. :)

Do you do things differently when you’re presenting online compared to face to face?

• Short answer: yes
• Longer answer: yes, obviously.

Okay, time to be less facetious.

I’m not going to talk here about the technical issues such as making sure you have enough light, with no background noise and a plain background etc. Surely those things are obvious these days, right? But if not “google is your friend” :) Or for some thoughts on the more subtle stuff, see this recorded google hangout with Marlene Hielema

Remember, when you’re live, in front of an audience it’s much easier for them to get a feel for your personality and your passion. And while it’s true that the technology is always getting better and the ‘personal’ of online presentations is improving it’s still true that interacting with someone through a computer is less engaging than interacting face to face (although there are some people I’d rather mitigate via the medium of Skype, for example,  where for example, I can turn them down! :) )

That means you need to turn it up a notch. Just a notch – you don’t want to over-do it.

While this sounds easy, on a technical level this isn’t quite as simple as it sounds because the camera-based nature of an online presentation means that movement is exaggerated. If all you can see of someone is their face, a simple raising of an eyebrow is as big a gesture as waving your arm is, in a live presentation. And it’s harder to control things as apparently subtle as your facial gestures as it is to control your gesticulations.

Which brings us to the fact that your audience might not see your hands and how you gesticulate when you’re online – if they see your face at all because some videos can just be screenshots etc don’t forget. Like a lot of professional speakers I use my hands to reinforce what I’m saying (note: that’s not the same as waving them around!) The worst thing, from an audience’s point of view, is for your hand to occasionally slide into view: don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world if you do it a few times but don’t do it all the time – that way it gets distracting.

My suggestion is to look at how far from your body the camera is and to make sure you know whether your hands are in-frame or not. In or out – pick one… don’t have them on the edge or periphery of what’s visible.

I said earlier on that you needed turn it up a bit. That is, essentially, because without the You In The Room, energy gets lost between you and your audience. A few of the things I’ve found to be handy when doing online presentations that help a bit with this are:

• faster moving slides: when you’re live your slides should be designed for whatever you’re saying and that means if you need them to move on quickly they should… but if you need to linger on one image, you should. In fact there’s a very strong (very!) argument for using simple image slides and talking over them, but that doesn’t work so well online. Online you need change not only when you ‘should’ (as above) but also when your audience needs to be nudged. Whisper it – but I even resort to bullet points online sometimes, just so that there’s something visual happening more often than there otherwise would be
• use technology like google hangouts so that you can flip between showing slides and showing your talking head. Both are handy in their different ways, but by now we’re all sick to death of the video-capture of someone’s screen as they provide a voice-over for what they’re doing. YouTube is over-full of this kind of stuff. If you’ve got a second screen where you can have your slides pre-loaded, so much the better
• don’t sweat the perfection. Now… brace yourself…. because this goes against my advice on face to face presentations, where I talk about “doing the swan thing” and not letting your audience see you sweat. (What I mean by this is that you shouldn’t show them the hard work, it undermines your credibility and authority) Online what you need to add is personality. Don’t get me wrong, being bloody amateur isn’t a good idea, but just a little hesitation can do wonders in terms of your personalisation. Absolute perfection can look false
• a second person helps.  This person might be handy in terms of running the technology so that you can concentrate on what you’re saying or – more often perhaps – they can be handy in terms of asking questions and keeping the presentation more like a conversation. Interviews are an easy example. If the interviewer is good the audience will identify with him-or-her so that they feel they’re “represented” and that their questions are being asked by the interviewer and (hopefully) answered by you.

One final, important note…You’ll also find you need to be more explicit and literal in online presentations. Using a machine means that subtleties like irony don’t work nearly as well in your audience’s heads as it does in yours. Spell things out – in words of one syllable. (Actually it won’t be nearly as blunt and blatant as you feel it is, trust me on this: it just feels like that.

So there you go – this isn’t a comprehensive list, but it’s a start! :)