Create More Interactive Virtual Presentations With These Five Tips

This year, many conferences, seminars and online presentations will be conducted in a virtual setting. Giving a lecture with slides can cause your audience to disengage or wander off to take care of other tasks.

Use these virtual presentations tips to grab and retain your audience’s attention.

Eliminate distractions before and during your presentation.

Testing your technical equipment, lights, background, and internet connection prevents disruptions in your presentation. Wear professional outfits in solid colors to eliminate distractions by drawing your audience’s attention away from your presentation. Schedule child/pet care in advance and turn off distracting notifications. Prepare slides and visual aids ahead of time, so that you can move from one element to another in a timely manner.

Grab your audience’s attention when the presentation starts.

Start your presentation with a poll or question. This opening hook serves as an invitation for attendees to participate and interact with you. When presenting your information, make sure to change the pitch and inflection in your voice. Reading from notes or slides can cause you to conduct your presentation in a monotone. Using your voice to convey excitement about your chosen topic makes your audience excited to hear what you have to say.

Create a friendly competition for your participants.

Another virtual presentation tip we have is to select a number of random winners for a prize drawing at the end. Add even more interaction by asking a question or giving your attendees a short quiz to test their knowledge. Pick the top three attendees who answered the question(s) correctly to win a prize. Attendees will want to stick around to see if their names are picked as prize winners.

Make your presentation concise and easy to understand.

Creating a presentation containing large amounts of information can overwhelm your audience. Choose the most important key points you want attendees to take away from the presentation. Use images and animation to attract your audience’s attention. Using visual aids helps you illustrate key points. Describe your images and animations to make them accessible to blind and visually impaired participants.

Allow participants to ask questions at various intervals throughout your presentation.

Breaking your presentation into smaller segments helps attendees retain the information you provide. Pause between each section to allow attendees to ask specific questions either by raising their hands or using the chat feature in your web conferencing platform. If no one has a question during a break, use this time to invite participants to share their experiences or takeaways related to the discussion topic. 

Invite participants to share takeaways on social media.

Provide participants with a presentation-specific hashtag they can use to share their opinions and takeaways on social media. Sharing snippets from your event keeps the conversation going long after the presentation has ended. Provide links to your website and social media channels so people can connect with you and tag you in their social media posts.

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