Inspiring Virtual Speaking: 7 Tools To Project Authority And Confidence On Video

1. The Basic Public Speaking Adage Still Applies: Never Give A Presentation (Or Meeting) You Wouldn’t Want To Sit Through Yourself 

Whether your audience is live or watching the recording later, respect their time and make sure your delivery, content and presence are high-quality. It’s so easy to get lazy when we’re at home in our pajamas and slippers, but just because we no longer see people in person doesn’t mean that public speaking has changed. There are still real things at stake and lasting impressions made (or lost). We as speakers and leaders have the opportunity to take responsibility for how a meeting, talk or workshop goes. These further tips will help you do your best! 

2. Your Body Speaks Louder Than Your Words

Have you heard this before? It’s so true. In fact studies show that your body language is 55% of what an audience is responding to. Wow! That’s a lot. Your voice is about 38% what they are impacted by, and your content is only 7%. If you really take that to heart than you’ll pay a lot more attention to your body language when the camera turns on. I don’t share this to make you self-conscious and awkward (sorry!). But, to bring your awareness to an often-unconscious reality– speakers sabotage their credibility and impact through incongruent body language. 

This is even more impactful over video because the audience is zoomed in on you on their screen. This is something I learned a long time in film acting class at theater school. The camera picks up every physical cue– a lift of an eyebrow, shift of your eyes, twitch of your finger, etc. For more specific body language tips for virtual speaking check out the webinar recording below. It’s best to see these techniques in action. We’ll cover things like: the angle of your head, eye contact, posture and hand gestures.

3. Your Voice Speaks Louder Than Your Body (Sometimes)

Like I just said, your body speaks louder than your words. However, it’s really common with virtual speaking that an audience member doesn’t see your body. They only are listening to your voice. They might have another tab open to research what you’re saying or they might be looking at your powerpoint presentation more than at you. This makes your voice much, much more impactful (much more than 38%). 

Your voice communicates through pitch, pacing, volume, emphasis and tone. There are an infinite number of variations and everyone has a very unique voice. I’ll share more about this on the webinar, but to get you started be really aware of the energy in your voice. Do you tend to go into vocal fry or trail off? That means you have low energy in your voice and breath. This translates into low engagement from your audience, no matter how good your content is. 

4. Technology Can Be An Enemy Or A Friend 

Technology is great when it works, right? There are so many creative ways to use technology to facilitate connection, engagement and credibility. It can be overwhelming. My overall suggestion is only use the online tools that you know inside and out. If you feel unsure about it, than simplify. 

Zoom is great. So is WebEx and GoogleHangouts. You can add a Slack room to increase connection and engagement. You can have a moderator handle the chat box. You can do break out groups and polls. I’ll share more about engagement techniques below, but start by only taking on the technological challenges you can realistically handle. Your speaking and presence make a bigger impact ultimately than any fancy technology. 

5. Be The Most Interesting Thing In Their Room 

Let’s face it. Your audience is distracted. They have 100 tabs open, emails coming in, texts popping up, and Facebook memes passing by. Perhaps there are other people in the room or yelling from the other side of the house. Maybe they didn’t plan ahead so in the middle of your presentation they need to go get a glass of water. How can you compete with all that?

You must be more interesting than the distractions all around them. The biggest speaker strategy for this is to raise your energy level higher than your audience’s and make what you are saying sound urgently important. You do this through your physical and vocal expression. You can raise your energy in their eyes by things like: being louder with your voice, smiling more, speaking more quickly (without mumbling), strong eye contact with the camera, bigger gestures, improvising a bit so that you make impromptu exclamations or sound-effects of excitement. You must make yourself higher energy than every day (virtual) life to have even a chance of retaining their attention. 

It might feel like play-acting at first. No need to go over the top but do push your comfort zone a little until you are 5-10% higher energy than your everyday self.

6. Your Audience Will Still Not Pay Attention, Unless You Do This

No matter how much energy you have and how passionate you are, you are still going to struggle with a disengaged audience. Online, even more than in person, it’s essential to use strategic engagement techniques throughout your presentation or meeting. This will significantly boost the audience retention (i.e. who stays until the end) and the retention of information throughout. But, what can you do? 

Well, there are so many great articles out there about this that can help you brainstorm. Here’s one about virtual ice breaker exercises.   And, here’s one about virtual engagement strategies throughout a presentation or meeting. The basic idea is you as the speaker/leader/facilitator must require your audience’s engagement through soliciting their response through the chat box, a slack room, hand raising, polling, partner sharing, etc. I recommend having at least one engagement exercise every 5 minutes (they can be really simple and short, like 15 secs). 

7. Take Control And Maintain Authority 

Even if you use all the techniques above, a meeting or presentation can still go haywire and prove unsuccessful if you don’t establish and maintain authority. The best way to do this is by setting clear, value-driven agreements at the beginning of the event. Let me explain.

For example, if you want people to be able to ask questions it is important to set up guidelines of HOW they can ask questions or else you will probably be interrupted by someone saying, “Excuse me, can I ask a question about that?”. So, a good example of a clear, value-driven agreement is to say something like this at the beginning of the meeting/presentation: 

I have a lot of great content to share with you today that I know is going to help you in this way and this way and this way. And, I want to be able to address all your questions along the way too but we only have a limited amount of time. So, I’d appreciate if you could write your questions in the chat box as I’m presenting and when I’m finished each section of the talk I’ll pause to answer them. Sound good?

I share the benefits of my talk to them (selling them on the value!) and then enroll them on the mutual, common challenge (there isn’t a lot of time), state the structure I think will help deal with this challenge and then request their agreement. Once everyone’s on the same page, you’ll be free to lead.

Virtual speaking has a lot of unique challenges and I hope these 7 tips have helped you clarify where you can improve. 

Completely NEW gift for you, the Confident And Comfortable Communicator Roadmap! Get yours here:

This article is just the beginning of your training to be an excellent virtual speaker.