One of the most helpful virtual presentation tips is the management of the chat box. This is one tool many presenters overlook and can leave participants feeling disengaged and neglected.
Some webinar presenters don’t even seem to notice I am “in the room.” Do you ever wonder why you don’t seem to receive acknowledgment during a webinar, even if you send a question or comment through the chat box?
[Tweet “The answer to that is the presenter has not been properly trained.”]
The Key Interactive Element
As most trained webinar moderators and hosts already know, chat is one of the key interactive elements during a webinar. However, if the moderator/host doesn’t respond to chat questions and comments, it does your presentation no good. People will mostly remember they were ignored during the presentation, not how much they learned, or how effective the presenter was. Management of the chat box is a critical part of an effective online presentation or webinar and one of the most valuable virtual presentation tips.
Event Commentary
While hosting a recent webinar for 3Plus International on behalf of Wendy Kerr, I decided to use the WebEx Event Center chat box for commentary. [Tweet “While Wendy was speaking I was chatting the key points to the virtual audience”]. Not only did chat commentary increase interactivity in my chat box, it spurred new comments from those attendees who were otherwise inactive according to the attention tracker.
Paying Attention
After the debrief I asked the presenter if she minded my chat commentary and she said “I loved it!” She felt as though her key points were really being driven home in a way she could not deliver on her own. I polled a couple of audience members and one comment was “I was multi-tasking but when I heard the speakers’ point and it was reinforced in the chat box I paid attention.”
Most of us are using a virtual collaboration provider such as Cisco WebEx, Adobe, Citrix, TalkPoint, On24, etc. Most of these services have interactive features.
Before you considering presenting in the virtual environment check out our upcoming training programs at Everything Webinar