Online PowerPoint Presentation.com

When you have a presentation to make, the first thing to do is to get all of your ideas and important information into PowerPoint and organized in a logical manner. If you are familiar with the subject you are presenting on, this is usually a quick task, and deciding what not to include is usually more difficult than finding what you will include. While this may be quick and routine, your presentation isn’t yet ready to go.

When you start to edit your online presentation, you need to do it from the mindset of your online audience. Start by playing the presentation, imagining you are seeing it for the first time, and from the mindset of someone that isn’t an expert on the subject matter. Be careful not to use unfamiliar jargon and references that won’t be apparent to everyone, or at least most of the people who will be viewing the presentation.

If you can find someone to listen to your presentation (who again, isn’t the expert you are on the subject), get their feedback and make edits accordingly. If you are speaking over the heads of your audience, they will quickly lose interest, and if you speak below them, they might be offended or feel that you’re not providing them with anything they don’t already know.

The level of success and the efficacy of message penetration will largely depend on how comfortable and familiar you are with your own material. Practice makes perfect. Go through your online presentation multiple times to make sure you are clear on every issue you bring up, and be ready for any questions you may be asked. You will quickly lose the confidence and attention of your audience if you seem unfamiliar, or unsure about the material your are presenting.

While you may be confidence and well-versed in using the Microsoft PowerPoint application, all bets are off when you are presenting online through a web conferencing provider. Most web conference companies convert your PowerPoint presentation into a format compatible with their technology. The interface for presenting is usually a bit, if not very different than navigating through the original PowerPoint presentation. Practicing with your online presentation through your web conferencing service provider is a necessity. Make sure you are familiar with how to upload the presentation, navigate through your slides (both forward, backward, and skipping ahead or forward to a specific slide), and how to use the video and audio systems so that you can make adjustments as necessary. Make sure you have a phone number to contact your web conferencing company immediately if you run into any problems, or have any questions prior to your event.

Practicing can only help so much. Even the most well-practiced and prepared presentation can go awry. Having a contingency plan, particularly if you are presenting to important clients or partners can be useful when presenting online. If your web conferencing service fails during your presentation and you are unable to get your service provider to rectify the problem, you may want to have the phone numbers and email addresses of your audience so that you can then email them the PowerPoint presentation, and get them on an audio-only conference call to continue the presentation and let them move through the slides themselves.

A key element in producing an influential online PowerPoint presentation is tailoring it to your audience and effectively presenting the material. Content is what drives your online PowerPoint presentation. It’s easy to get lost in the fancy multimedia features that PowerPoint offers, however fancy graphics and animations are no substitute for quality content. Without it, you’ll quickly lose your audience.

A good online PowerPoint presentation should follow this structure:

• Attention-getting opener
• Brief overview of the topic
• Describe what your audience needs, that is, the problem
• Explain how your solution meets that need
• Tell how your audience can implement your solution - that is, action steps
• Brief summary and conclusion

By organizing an online presentation into this six-step structure, you can ensure a logical flow that everyone can easily follow even when you’re not physically there to deliver the presentation and make eye contact with your audience. The material in each step must be simple and organized. Create a separate outline to use as notes, so you’re not reading directly from the online presentation. By concentrating on your text in outline form, you can easily write down your ideas, see the flow of the entire presentation at once, and move ideas from one place to another so they flow more logically.

Openings are the toughest part for most presenters. Like most impressions, you have less than 15 seconds to make a good first one. Many presenters have different styles for starting their online meetings. Some open with a joke or anecdote to calm there own nerves and some start talking immediately to cover up their anxiety or to project confidence.

In an online PowerPoint presentation, you usually can not directly see your audience, so the non-verbal cues that you would find in a standard meeting don’t apply. Open with a personal story that reflects your humanness. Your opening line is the most critical line which should connect with the audience.

Again, since you can not make eye-contact with your audience, you need to speak naturally and in a friendly manner. Reading directly from your notes or slides will quickly lose the attention of your audience. Speak as if you are merely having a conversation with individuals, who happen to be in a group. Speak in short, concise sentences, pausing frequently to really connect with individuals. Open the online meeting to questions at the end of each topic, or when presenting material that may be difficult to understand.

Use humor based on your own experiences and limitations as a human being. In this era of political correctness, jokes can easily offend or get you in trouble. Personal stories are limited to you and are often endearing. If the audience feels that they can connect with you on a personal level, they are much more likely to feel they can relate to the information you are presenting.

The phrase “in conclusion” is used too frequently and often without actually being at the very end of a presentation. “In conclusion” is a signal to your audience to start paying attention again and make sure that they receive the key take-away messages that they might have missed while checking their email or paying their bills while only half paying attention to your online PowerPoint presentation.

Too many presenters falsely signal the end of their presentation with this phrase and the problem is they rarely actually conclude with a concise trailing statement. I’ve been in webinars and seen online presentations where the speaker has said “in conclusion” nine times during his presentation. If you really want to annoy and lose the attention of your audience, say “in conclusion,” and then keep on going for another ten or twenty minutes.

The best thing to do is simply avoid the phrase “in conclusion” altogether.  If you have a well organized online PowerPoint presentation that focuses and repeats your key messages, your audience will have absorbed that information by the time your presentation ends. Leave your audience with something more thought-provoking, or if the online meeting was more light-hearted, use something appropriately humorous. You want to leave your audience looking forward to your next presentation, not dreading it.