PRO SECRETS TO SUPERSTAR ONLINE PRESENTATIONSready2speak.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/PRO...same slide deck for their presentations. GET THE RIGHT SETUP To look professional, you

Ready2Speak.com Presentation Training and Design

© 2020 Ready2Speak • Tom Nixon Design LLC

PRO SECRETS TO SUPERSTAR ONLINE PRESENTATIONSHOW TO CONNECT MORE, MOTIVATE MORE AND SELL MORE!

READY 2SPEAK

.COM



You have a great live, in-the-flesh sales pitch or keynote speech or training series. When you

are in front of your audience you are amazing. You know how to move, how to gesture, how to connect -- all the things that make you a top-notch salesperson or speaker or trainer.

That all changes when you put your work on-line. If you have just taken your material, looked into your laptop camera and rambled on for an hour or so you are going to lose the customer, lose your attendees and lose your sale.

There are many similarities between an in-per-son one-to-many presentation or pitch and an online presentation. And there are a lot of very important differences.

Here is a step-by-step roadmap to get you up and running online delivering your message to your clients, team members and the world. If you are already presenting remotely you may intuitively know some of this, but I am sure there

will be a lot you will be able to improve on with a number of these concepts.

By the time you are done with this you will know how to create and deliver a killer presen-tation that will connect more, train more and, maybe most importantly, sell more.

I have broken this down into five areas we need to focus on. They are presented sequentially but I would recommend you overlap them somewhat as the lessons learned will all help with other areas.

The most important lesson though is to start

Tom Nixon founded Ready2Speak out a desire to help professional speakers, business leaders and subject matter experts connect with and motivate their audiences on a professional level. Over his long career as a presentation designer and coach, Tom has worked with CEOs and senior execu-tives at international corporations such as Visa International, Tata Consulting, Georgia Pacific and Coca-Cola. He has coached and created presentations for presidents and leaders at universities, major non-profits and even a corn-maze farmer in South Geogia. He has created and helped his clients deliver hundreds of powerful successful presentations to audiences of all sizes and in all industries.

Contact Tom at [email protected] to discuss how you can supercharge your next presentation.

All content © Copyright 2020. No part of this document may be reproduced in any form without permission of the author.

PRO SECRETS TO SUPERSTAR ONLINE PRESENTATIONSHOW TO CONNECT MORE, MOTIVATE MORE AND SELL MORE!



now. Record your pitch or other content in the platform you intend to use. Watch it. Write down a debrief. Change things. Re-record. Do it again and again.

You want to look professional and to do that you need experience with your platform, your content, your slides, your equipment and you.

Do not short-cut this practice -- it is critical to your success.

Here are my five focus areas to online presenta-tion success:

LEARN YOUR PLATFORM

Sign up with Zoom or GoToWebinar or any of the dozens of other online video conferencing ser-vices. Understand how they work and how you can use them to deliver your content. It is not all that difficult but if you are technology averse you may need to study up so that you can ap-pear smooth and professional on any streaming service. Learn how to switch from your image to your screen image. Understand how chat, com-ments, surveys and other forms of integration function. The goal is to appear smooth and pro-fessional when you are live in front of a remote audience.

REWORK YOUR PRESENTATION SCRIPT

If you are like me, you are great at creating an in-person presentation – building a solid open-

ing, introducing your topic or goal, offering solid examples to deliver supporting points while countering possible objections. You know how to wrap it up, deliver a compelling call-to-action and then tie it all up with a roaring close.

All of that needs to be rethought in the light of an online presentation where your audience is easily distracted, comes in and leaves throughout the time you are on and has the attention span of my dog spotting a squirrel. Your slow, thought-ful style with deep meaningful pauses doesn’t work well online. You might need to speed up a little and shorten the pauses to keep viewers engaged.

You may need to add points where you ask your audience for responses to your comments and questions.

UPDATE YOUR SLIDES

Slides in a remote presentation have to carry a lot more of the weight of delivering your message. There are three basic ways of structuring slides.

• Use only keywords for your topics. You verbally fill in as much content as is appro-priate. This works best for an experienced knowledgeable presenter who can effectively fill in all the important details.

• Use full sentences and enhance with your comments. This format works well with remote presentations. The viewers can under-stand the basic concepts from the slides but will get additional meaning from any added comments from you. This is optimal for com-fortable speakers who can easily go off script.

• Use the word for word script for your slide text. This requires you to write and fully edit your script ahead of time and then use it to populate your slides. Each slide is read word for word with the possibility of adding asides and other comments when appropriate. This



format works well with inexperienced pre-senters or when multiple people will use the same slide deck for their presentations.

GET THE RIGHT SETUP

To look professional, you will need some quality gear and a good location to shoot.

• You should get a quality USB microphone for your laptop. Good sound is critical – often more important than a quality image. This should cost less that $100-$150.

• Likewise, you should get a good USB cam-era. Your laptop camera is probably not going to give you a clear image. There are many op-tions under $100. Position it near your laptop screen so that you can look into the camera (and not the screen) as much as possible.

• Get some studio lighting. This is not that expensive either. You can probably get 3 fluorescent lightboxes with stands for under $200. Lighting makes a big difference. Posi-tion them so there are minimal shadows and high enough so they will not reflect off your glasses but not so high that you don’t get catchlights in your eyes.

• Find a professional looking area for a back-drop. If you are in your home, try to make it look as business-like as possible.

GET GOOD ON CAMERA

You may be terrific in person. All of that changes on the small screen. Some of your attendees may be watching on their phone. At the same time, you may need to amp up your energy and posi-tivity so that it comes across online. Record your-self and watch. When I was creating my online course, I shot and threw away at least a hundred videos before I got anything I liked. You will see things that you will want to correct, and you will learn how to be comfortable and natural with your audience – a super valuable commodity.

A final point: As I mentioned before, practice all of this beforehand. There are a lot of moving parts to a remote presentation – technological and personal. It takes practice to get comfort-able. Bear in mind you may be pretty rough at first and you will lack confidence. Push through. You will get better, more confident and more conversational.

Get a Zoom account and give your presenta-tion to your dog. And then watch the recording. And then do it again and again and again.

The good news is most everybody else’s online presenters suck. If you nail this, you can stand out from your competitors as a true professional. All of this will help you connect more, motivate more and best yet, sell more.

Three different levels of detail on slides. Left slide, with minimal text, works best with experienced presenters. Center slide, with short phrases and sentences, and right slide, with full paragraphs, work best when delivered remotely and most of the information needs to be contained on the slides.



BONUS: STEP-BY-STEP TRANSFORMATIONI think the lessons above can be learned and ap-plied concurrently and in almost any order.

That being said, I would suggest you should be-gin real practicing as soon as possible in front of a real camera, with real lights on a platform like Zoom. Here is a suggested scenario:

1. Order your USB camera and a set of lights today.

2. Today, fire up Zoom, practice and record any presentation you already have. At first, you should probably start without using slides.

Watch your recording. Note what went well and what needs attention. Edit your words and repeat.

Your first efforts will probably be pretty uncom-fortable. Too bad. Record, watch, edit and repeat. You will get better.

Dress the part. Make your practice as real as possible. Use your new camera, lights, find a nice background (do not use the virtual backgrounds that Zoom allows -- they make you look like a high school amateur).

Practice is the professional’s superpower. It will be yours as well.

3. Start to include your slides in your practice sessions. Try to make your Zoom transitions from live image to slides as smooth as possible.

4. As you become more familiar with how your video online presence is developing begin to reedit your script. Refer to the Rework your pre-sentation script section earlier in this eBook. As you make changes keep rehearsing to see how well your changes fit and flow.

5. Likewise with your visuals. Redesign them for maximum effect on a virtual small screen presen-tation. Continue practice and editing.

Bear in mind not every remote delivery demands this full treatment. Your improved on-camera and online skills will elevate everything you do.

This is an evolutionary process. Constantly reevaluate and tweak your presentations. Your efforts will pay off. Your new offerings will set you apart as a top-notch presenter representing a thoroughly professional organization.

BONUS: 24-HOUR QUICK-START GUIDEFollowing are some basic tweaks you can apply to your presentation tonight. These are ready to go to turn tomorrow’s presentation into a first-class professional event.

1. Find a suitable background in your office or home. Not too cluttered. Watch for strange back-ground objects growing from your head. Make sure there is good light on your face. Give your-self some room so that you can...

2. Stand. Everyone else sits and looks like a lumpy old frog on some rotten office chair. Stand tall.

Act like a pro. Your voice and your overall attitude will change dramatically. If you must sit or stand-ing isn’t appropriate make sure your sit up with good posture.

3. Position your camera at eye level. If it is on your laptop, put it on something to get it even with your face. Do not have your camera below you pointing up. You are not Frankenstein.

4. Right next to your camera put a Post-it note or index card with the big word SMILE. Then do it when appropriate.



5. Make sure you look into the camera. This is a critical issue. People want to see that you are connected to them even in a virtual setting. If you are not using slides and it will just be you on-line then cover your screen with some cardboard so that your eyes will not be drawn to any image there.

6. Step back just a little and use moderate ges-

tures if you are comfortable with that. Keep your gestures mostly within the frame.

7. Dress for the part. Business casual, Jacket and tie. You know best. You want to be as well dressed or slightly better dressed than anyone else. No tuxs but no torn jeans either.

On the next pages are over 40 tips, techniques and strategies I have developed over my long career. They are all field-tested. Consider using them for your online presentations

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

• Develop a student mindset. Unless you are very familiar with online presentations there will be much to learn about standard procedures, platforms, techniques and online best practices. This is what this eBook is all about.

• Rewrite your presentation for online delivery. If you have a solid logical presentation you will need to adjust some here and there, add a few more things and subtract a bunch. You will also need to totally redo your visuals. PowerPoint as a support for a dynamic live speaker is one thing. PowerPoint as a primary delivery system for an online audience is entirely different.

• There are a number of basic formats for delivery. All can be done live or pre-recorded.

1. A talking head, full frame image of you. This may include a whiteboard or flipchart. You will have to deal with how you wish to read or remember your script – either spontaneous, note-cards, cue cards or teleprompter. This is a viable option for an advanced presenter.

2. Full frame slides with your voice over. This is a very common format. It eliminates worry about not having to follow a script during an on camera appearance. But it also negates your most valuable asset – you.

3. Both you and your slides full frame switching back and forth as appropriate. This is fairly uncommon and requires the tech team to help you switch when needed. This can work well for a prerecorded and edited presentation.

4. Full frame slides with a reduced image of your talking head. This is fairly common. Most on-line webinar packages can do this for you. It put less emphasis on your presentation skills but still allows you to connect with your audience.

5. Equal size images of you and your slides side by side. This gives greater visability to you and your connection with others in your audience. This works well if your slides are not too compli-cated.

• Realize that in an online presentation you are losing most, if not all, of your most powerful com-munications tool – you. If you are showing your face, either in an insert or in partial or full screen,



you can still use your personality and your presentation skills to connect in a limited amount. If you are just showing your visuals, all the responsibility for engagement falls to your voice. This is a huge deal and it fundamentally changes the entire presentation from preparation to delivery.

• Another major consideration is that your audience will have lots of big and small distractions. Viewing in the privacy of their office or home means they will be free to pay attention to their phone, other online distractions and others in the room. You will have limited tools to keep them engaged. You must use them wisely.

• Familiarize yourself with the technology – especially the delivery platform. Each is slightly differ-ent, they use different terminology and each have their unique benefits and limitations. If you are presenting for an organized event you will probably be using their platform. Make sure you can practice with your presentation and your slides in advance.

• Understand how the chat, questions and survey functions work. Know the function and loca-tion of the necessary controls so that you can use them smoothly during your presentation. What is the attendees’ experience? If they can see you how large is your image? How will your slides look? Can you easily read the comments and questions? Can attendees see other’s comments?

PRESENTATION STRUCTURE

• A through line or central theme is critical. Use a single concept to anchor all your material, build a clear compelling goal, take-aways and a call-to-action. Additionally, you can use this theme to create and deliver what I call a BIG Idea. A BIG Idea is a short, super-memorable, tightly edited phrase that you can repeat throughout your presentation to burn your message into your au-dience’s minds. Think MLK’s “I have a dream.” Or Steve Jobs “Today, Apple reinvents the phone.” There is great power in the repetition of a simple clear take away message.

• Your audience will probably be logging in at various times. That means that your powerful opening will be lost on many of your attendees. Reintroduce your topic and theme frequently especially in the first 10-15 minutes.

• Use smaller, more frequent stories. Your audience’s attention span has been drastically reduced. Constantly ask yourself why should they pay attention to what I am saying right now?

• Solicit interaction frequently to keep their attention. Stop often and ask your audience for com-ments, facts, opinions or other interaction. Respond to a few in real time by repeating their first name and their comment and then your answer if appropriate.

• Stop your audience from checking their email, talking to their dog or checking out BuzzFeed. Do this by having relatively fast-moving content that they don’t want miss or by asking them to comment, take a quiz, enter an answer to a question or some other form of engagement.

• Tease them with upcoming value. Announce early on that you have something that is even more valuable than all the rest of your brilliant content and that you will give it to them or give them instructions as to how to get this later on in the presentation. This can be the number one secret to exponential something. Or the one thing nobody will dare to tell you about something. Or it could be instructions for how to download a factsheet or get the slides from your presentation.



• Use an agenda to get them excited about upcoming content. Show a multi-item agenda early on. Use a series of slides that reveal each item on the agenda one after another (a build). You can make a quick comment for each item if you wish. Then revisit your agenda at appropriate times to show what you’ve covered and what’s still ahead. Consider reviewing content covered to this point. Not everyone will be watching all the time.

• Finish the way you normally would with a recap and a call-to-action or repetition of the take aways.

• Take questions toward the end. Manage your time and don’t let questions drag on forever. Con-sider providing email access for additional questions and comments. Or possibly coming back on for more casual questions after your close.

• Finish with a super strong close or call to action. Leave them with a strong crystal clear message to remember.

• Start a little ahead of time, if allowable, with some happy talk to warm up and keep engaged early attendees. Consider a simple early poll or question. “Where is everyone logging in from today?” “On a scale of 1-5, how familiar are you with our topic XYZ?”

• If you do use a word-for-word script, practice, record and listen to it. Try to make your scripted words sound conversational and natural.

• A useful formula for me is to have a full script, word-for-word slides that match the script and then I add some additional spontaneous comments along the way.

• Ask your listeners to turn off distractions such as streaming services, messaging, etc.

• Don’t announce in advance that there will be a replay. Some will drop off if they think they can catch it later.

SLIDES, VIDEO AND AUDIO

• PowerPoint or Apple Keynote are usually more than enough to get the job done. While the ani-mated program Prezi is impressive it requires a fairly sophisticated design capability to effectively create a presentation.

• Keep slide colors, backgrounds and fonts simple and clean. Your viewers may be watching on a small (cellphone) screen).

• Consider using flashier slides with big images, bold colors and big title words for your opening slide, transition slides or when you want to make a big statement or use a big quote.

• Included video or audio segments are an effective way to break up a long progression of similar looking slides. Edit to keep video clips as short as possible (under 90 seconds). Download and embed the video or audio in your slide deck instead of risking live streaming problems. Always test clips on your platform beforehand.

• Consider putting all or most of your spoken words on your slides. This is exactly the opposite of what I tell speakers to do in a live engagement. I coach them to get as many words off their slides as possible and to never read their slides. The reverse is true in an online presentation where it is



just your voice carrying the message. Put most or all of your words on the screen and then read them. Making minor ad lib changes and additions can be effective but your voice and your slides should match closely.

• Avoid animations when building your PowerPoint deck. Many platforms do not support anima-tions and the ones that do can look rough and jumpy online. If you need to use a build or a slide that reveals item by item as you click to advance them consider creating separate slides for each additional item. You can do this by creating the final slide in the series. Then duplicate as many as you need. Then go back and delete the items from the individual slides that shouldn’t be shown yet. It takes a little practice, but it does work well. If you change any wording, you may have to go back and recreate the entire series.

• Avoid too many “big picture-few words” slides. I coach speakers to use this type of slide to provide a background for their live presentations. The speaker’s stage delivery is then the primary focus for the audience. In an online presentation it is often just the slides. Most, if not all, of the visuals should contain useable content.

• Change slides frequently. Don’t be afraid of using too many slides. It is much more important to keep the visuals and their content advancing to keep engagement high.

• Don’t give out your actual slides. Convert your deck to a .pdf file and make sure you brand it appropriately.

• Don’t ever give out your slides in advance. If your meeting organizer asks for your deck ahead of time, be sure to ask that it not be distributed to the audience before your presentation. If they have your slides, they won’t think it necessary to see your actual presentation. Unfortunately not all planners will be willing to agree to this.

• In PowerPoint or Apple Keynote use 16x9 format. Just about all platforms support this newer wide format.

• Two steps to effectively show large amounts of data: Quickly show the full data set on first slide to reveal the big picture data. Then zoom in on specific section with data on the second slide for longer discussion.

YOUR VIDEO PRESENCE

• Get good at on-camera presentations. If you are going to present as a talking head, or show your face as an insert on top of your slides or cut back and forth between you and your slides you should consider becoming excellent at on-camera skills. You have spent years developing your stage presence. Being on camera uses the similar skills but they should be adjusted for the small screen.

• Adjust your gestures and facial expressions for the small screen. This doesn’t mean to get rid of them, but big bold movements and dramatic expressions may need to be toned down a bit for video. Test.

• Try to make eye contact directly into the camera lens as much as possible. Avoid staring non-



stop at your screen. Viewers can tell.

• Practice a lot on the platform you will use. Most webinar providers will allow you to create and record a test webinar. Do not bypass this critical step. Be sure to record and watch. You will see flaws that are not visible any other way.

• Good enunciation is critical. Your audience will not be watching your face as closely as a live pre-sentation. Practice. Video and watch.

• Energize your voice. Your audience will feel your commitment and passion if you consciously add excitement to your voice. Test the necessary level. You will probably need to substantially amp up the energy – maybe more than seems comfortable at first.

• Consider standing and smiling when you present. It makes a difference in how you sound.

• Watch out for unconscious tightening of your throat. Under stress, many of us clinch our throats and raise our pitch. Learn to relax and lower your tone.

• Verbal ticks and filler words. While it is not a huge problem if you add an “ah” or “um” every now and then, some of us will use a few too many when off script. Fix this bad habit or use a script. If you have a tendency to “up talk” you may want to put some effort into correcting this as well. It can become very noticeable in an online presentation.

• Don’t speak too slowly. Avoid excessive pauses. Your poignantly delivered stories and messages won’t have your presence to make them powerful. Long pauses will just seem like dead air. Keep the vocal stream moving.

EQUIPMENT AND SPACE

• Get a good USB microphone. They are not that expensive (less than $100). Place it on a boom and use a pop filter. Sound quality is critical.

• Depending on your setup and your platform you will probably not need to wear headphones. Test.

• Get good lighting. A 2 or 3 light kit for video is fairly inexpensive (less than $200). Set it up so that your face is well lit without deep shadows. Keep the lights above camera level so that you don’t get reflections on glasses but low enough so that you can see catchlights in the eyes -- they make you seem alove.

• Get a good USB web cam. They are very affordable (less than $100) and are much better than the camera built into your laptop. Since you will probably be glancing at your computer during your presentation, place your camera as close to your screen as possible (usually where the built in camera is.

• Choose a good setting. Your background should add to your professional look and not be too distracting.

• You may want to consider using a second laptop or tablet that you can read your script from in addition to the device displaying your active platform. Position the camera close to your script so that you can make frequent eye contact into the camera.



• Pulling the camera back to show your setup can help the audience see that you are referring to a device to help you keep on track. Again be sure to put most of your eye contact into the camera.

• Wear professional clothing that doesn’t distract and is compatible with your background. If you are seated, which most speakers are for online presentations, you may want to unbutton the bot-tom button on a shirt of blouse so that it doesn’t bunch up. Pull down and straighten just before going live.

• Keep a large mirror nearby in your “studio”. Check clothing, hair, makeup, etc. just before begin-ning.

A final word...My long career in presentation design and coaching has taught me that becoming a capable and motivating communicator is an ongoing process. If you commit to being a student of this craft and working at it whenever you are called on to present you will get better. This applies to intro-verts, extroverts or any other vert. You will get better and better. It will change your life.

The best part about this is your competition, whether personal, among your peers or among oth-er organizations have set the bar very low. Everything you do will set you apart as a professional who will command respect along with higher fees and increased sales.

Best wishes to your success!

Tom Nixon

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PRO SECRETS TO SUPERSTAR ONLINE PRESENTATIONSready2speak.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/PRO...same slide deck for their presentations. GET THE RIGHT SETUP To look professional, you