A Wider Net

As virtual events gain in popularity, there’s a good chance that you (yes you!) will be asked to speak at one. The prospect of speaking to an audience that isn’t’ staring you in the face is somewhat daunting, so here are a few tips that will help you out:

1. Keep it short. 20 Minutes is all that you should be shooting for and sometimes that can be too much. Make sure you’re only saying what you need to say and serve up something more in depth via a downloadable document or a link over to your blog (you have one of those, right?).
2. Your powerpoint is twice as boring online, so make sure you spice it up with images that support your talking points rather than just listing them. I can’t tell you how painful it is to hear someone read back their entire presentation as if their slides were cue cards – and believe me, the audience will be far less forgiving that I am.
3. Practice, practice, practice. You’ll likely be recording your presentation ahead of time either via the phone or, if your event organizer is smart, in a studio on camera. This is your live day, so better make it perfect. I advise most speakers to actually write out their entire presentation and then read it back via paper if by phone or via teleprompter if by camera.  Doing this will help keep you on point and on time.
4. Solicit questions and feedback verbally. During your 20 minutes of fame it is critical that you ask for participation rather than assume that your viewers will take the initiative. I equate this to the moment in a physical breakout session when you ask “are there any questions” and the room is dead silent. If you remind everyone that they can ask questions later they will start thinking of them right away, which is excellent because you can actually submit questions early during a virtual event.

And if you didn’t catch him, check out fellow awidernet.com blogger Scott Kiekbusch who spoke at Building a Virtual Engagement Strategy Through Social Media a few weeks back.

So, have you spoken at a virtual event recently?  What are your tips and tricks for success?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Marketing Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.