Web Conferencing - How to engage an audience

Have you ever tuned out or multi-tasked during a conference call? If you have been hosting a virtual meeting, were your attendees actively participating and listening to you…or were they focused on instant messaging, web surfing or a myriad of other distractions? At the end of the meeting, did you accomplish what you wanted with each of your participants?

Communicating virtually offers fantastic cost savings as well as offering significant improvements in worker productivity and efficiency. However, communicating with a remote audience is not always plain sailing. Below are a number of tips to help ensure better engagement from your audience.

Make an impact

If you don’t do something to stand out, your audience is unlikely to remember you or what you presented. You are branding yourself when you speak, so make sure you make an impact with something that’s unique, surprising and memorable.

Keep it short

People lose concentration and it can be very easy for your audience to switch off when they are a hundred miles away. Keeping your presentation short will ensure people don’t get bored and zone out. 30 minutes for the presentation and up to 30 minutes for a Q&A session is recommended.

Interact

Interactivity and engagement go hand in hand and modern web conferencing makes interaction easy. Presenters can interact with their audience by simply asking questions, allowing your audience to create and edit documents or post comments on a whiteboard. Sending out quick polls is another option and can be a great way of generating feedback.

Entertaining the audience

Although you want to educate your audience, you need to entertain them as well. In essence, laughter keeps the audience alert and they’ll learn more from you than someone who just educates.

Seeing is believing

When it comes to making a presentation it doesn’t matter whether you are doing a web conference, or a conference in the flesh, you will want slides and graphics to get your message across. Use graphics and charts to add interest and keep text minimal as your audience will tend to read that instead of listening to you.

Share the limelight

Giving members of your audience parts of the presentation to execute or feedback on is a great way to keep attendees involved and also gain valuable insights during the presentation.

Browse the web together

Seeing is believing so rather than trying to describe your latest web product or service using a PowerPoint presentation, why not take your participants directly to the web page and show it in action.

About the Author

This article was written by Stephane Guiblin, Netspoke Product Manager