Today Roger Courville stops by to share the number two mistake made in online presentations. Roger spends his days consulting and training corporations on how to properly design and optimize webinars. You can connect with Roger over on Twitter and say hi.
Imagine for a moment that you were sitting down over coffee with a potential partner, and after
some get-to-know-you chit chat you say, "so, tell me about your firm?"
On that prompt, your coffee partner pulls out a data sheet and starts reading it to you.
"What?!!?," you start thinking. But it continues.
A half-hour later, when your heart is about as cold as your coffee, he looks up and says, "So, any questions?"
While a bit dramatic, this is essentially what happens every day in online presentations. Web seminars. Webinars.
In a recent study I conducted about online presentation best practices, in one section of the survey I presented respondents with a question asking them what annoys them most about online presentations with seven potential responses.
Their top two responses made it look like the other five weren't even on the list:
"Presenter reads what is on the slides" and "Presenter reads a script."
So why is this the number two mistake in online presentations?
I've incorporated this research into my public and private webinar skills training. In one session to a European audience, Alice (her real name) submitted a comment noting, "But I present to audiences for whom English is a second language and they like it when I read the slides to them. It helps their comprehension."
My response, "Good job, Alice! You're obviously not making mistake number one - know thy audience."
An old adage on the sales floor is "people by from people." But that isn't just a sales tactic. People aren't going to pay attention, engage, or trust your ideas if you speak at them.
And their message for webinar presenters is clear:
TALK with me. Talk WITH me. Talk with ME.
Photo by: James Jordan
Imagine for a moment that you were sitting down over coffee with a potential partner, and after
some get-to-know-you chit chat you say, "so, tell me about your firm?"On that prompt, your coffee partner pulls out a data sheet and starts reading it to you.
"What?!!?," you start thinking. But it continues.
A half-hour later, when your heart is about as cold as your coffee, he looks up and says, "So, any questions?"
While a bit dramatic, this is essentially what happens every day in online presentations. Web seminars. Webinars.
In a recent study I conducted about online presentation best practices, in one section of the survey I presented respondents with a question asking them what annoys them most about online presentations with seven potential responses.
Their top two responses made it look like the other five weren't even on the list:
"Presenter reads what is on the slides" and "Presenter reads a script."
So why is this the number two mistake in online presentations?
I've incorporated this research into my public and private webinar skills training. In one session to a European audience, Alice (her real name) submitted a comment noting, "But I present to audiences for whom English is a second language and they like it when I read the slides to them. It helps their comprehension."
My response, "Good job, Alice! You're obviously not making mistake number one - know thy audience."
An old adage on the sales floor is "people by from people." But that isn't just a sales tactic. People aren't going to pay attention, engage, or trust your ideas if you speak at them.
And their message for webinar presenters is clear:
TALK with me. Talk WITH me. Talk with ME.
Photo by: James Jordan
