How Important Are Presentation Skills On Zoom?

The reality is that presentation skills on Zoom are even more valuable than in real life. Because we don’t have many of the tools we would usually and used to engage your audience, we need to make the best use possible of the tools at our disposal.  Anyone who has sat through a few meetings over Zoom can tell you it gets really boring, really fast. That doesn’t mean that what’s being said isn’t interesting or important, it just means that it’s more difficult to engage people when we’re not in the same room.

If you need to get your point across and you’re looking to engage and inspire your audience over Zoom you may need to give a little extra thought to your presentation. You may consider presentation skills training courses in the UK that can hone your presentation skills further, or you may wish to learn as you go.

We’ve got a few things you can do to improve your presentation skills on Zoom and help you reach the people you need to:

Don’t Go Solo – If you don’t speak professionally for a living we don’t recommend doing a presentation without any form of support. Use images, slides, diagrams, whatever you can’t help structure your presentation without the need for a script. A visual stimulus will help to get your point across better and is likely to keep your audience more engaged. Just make sure that your slides are short and to-the-point, they shouldn’t be too much to read, it should predominantly be images and bullet points

Learn Your Lines – to a more experienced speaker this can seem obvious but if this is one of your first presentations make sure you’re not just reading from notes.  It can be incredibly monotonous to listen to a speaker reading from their notes for any length of time. For the odd quote here or there reading may be perfectly fine,  but if you’re trying to make the majority of your presentation engaging do not read. Speaking freely and without script will mean you can focus on putting the emphasis where it is needed and we’ll make your speech more natural and easy to listen to

Let Others Speak – Whether it’s through question and answer or allowing time for the opinions of others, make sure you’re not the only one speaking during your presentation. Firstly, people will get bored of hearing the same voice over and over again, so letting someone else speak will help keep people engaged. Secondly, you’re almost forcing your audience to engage with you by allowing them time to share their opinions, feelings, thoughts and questions. Whatever you do, make sure that your presentation is not just an hour of you speaking

Do Engaging Activities – Have your audience engaged with something practical and meaningful during your presentation. This might be practicing a skill you’re talking about, playing some kind of word game, anything that gets the mind working in a different way. Engaging people in different ways can be incredibly valuable during a presentation. Just make sure that your activities are focused and worthwhile, your audience won’t want to feel like they’re wasting their time

Short and Sweet – Wherever possible, you should keep your presentations short and sweet. Don’t try to fill time trying to make your presentation seem more important. Say what you need to say clearly and quickly, allow time for questions and activities, and then move on to something more important. If you do need to give a long presentation, make sure that it is structured to allow time for your audience to digest the information they received. You might need to use breaks, group discussion time, breaks for questions or any number of different things. Just make sure that your presentation is well segmented