CHAPTER 20Engaging online audiences
In 2020, when we all had to make the obligatory move to virtual meeting and presenting, I was inundated by business journalists seeking the ‘secret sauce' on virtual presenting. Their number one question was always, ‘What's different when presenting online?' Interestingly my answer to that question remains, ‘Not much!' The three phases to a persuasive presentation outlined in this book — analysis, design and delivery — remain the same. You still need to perform the five-step analysis (refer to chapter 2), answer the 4MAT System questions (chapter 3), design your message with storyboarding (chapter 4), and script your presentation using my Persuasion Blueprint (chapter 5). And you still need to deliver with a complete focus on the audience and serve them. As you can see, if you already knew all those things when the move to virtual presenting happened, you'd be pretty nicely set up to do a great job of your virtual presenting.
Moving from live to virtual presenting does create some specific challenges, and these can be grouped into four key areas:
- boundary setting
- eye contact
- slide design and delivery
- interaction.
The good news is that I have proven time and time again that you can make your virtual presenting just as engaging and ...
Get How to Present, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
