A 12-step guide to advanced virtual speaking skills
It is one thing to get your audience to tune in, but another to keep their attention AND to keep them coming back for more.
In a physical event venue, your audience can easily be immersed in the experience, the sensations and atmosphere of the conference hall while leaving most distractions outside the door. Your attendees’ eyes are attentively and dynamically following the speaker moving around and presenting on stage.
This luxury is gone in the virtual space.
The remote attendees are locked in a fixed eye gaze. They have the whole event experience delivered through their computer screen only. With all of their surroundings being potential distractions.
With all eyes on your speaker(s), the event moderator or yourself as the event host – you need to prepare for another reality – which is why you should aim to strengthen your virtual speaking skills.
You need to prepare for public speaking that captivates a virtual audience, fosters engagement, and creates real human connection through the screen.
Here’s a 12-step guide on how you can elevate your virtual speaking skills and make them shine in the virtual space (for a crisp overview, scroll down to the bottom of the article).
Of course, some of the tips will be equally relevant for speaking on camera and on stage but it is important to be aware of the subtle nuances that come with the virtual format.
Shift your mindset and calm your nerves
1. Change perspective and shift your energy outward
Yes, being live on camera can be an intimidating thought.
But try to focus your attention fully on the connection to your audience and not so much on yourself and how others may perceive you.
Shift your energy outward – towards what your attendees need and feel.
What is on their mind at this very moment? Focus on how your ideas can help overcome their challenges.
When you cannot see them, it is easy to forget that they are present.
So keep in mind at all times that there is an actual audience listening to you. Actively reach out to them on a regular basis.
You don’t want to talk at them but to them and spark a real and meaningful conversation.
This does not only facilitate active engagement with your audience, but it also helps you to meaningfully shift your perspective and to not get consumed by worrying about how people may perceive you.
In this context, situational awareness is a key skill that you should acquire.
In a virtual setting it is more difficult to receive and interpret (nonverbal) cues from the audience during your presentation due to the fact that you don’t see them face-to-face.
Are they actively listening and are they engaged? Or are they tired and need a break? Are they ready to move on to the next point on the agenda or are they confused and need a Q&A for clarifying questions?
How on earth can you tell when you don’t see your attendees at all?
Actually, it’s fairly simple: You have to ask.
Check in with your attendees consistently, encourage them to use the chat or any other virtual response (for example, send a “raised hand” emoji) throughout your sessions. This is how you practice situational awareness.
You will be in the know about how your audience is doing and what they need at any given time – and if necessary you can adapt your sessions to better cater to your attendees’ situation.
On a side note: successful public speaking is believed to occur when speakers show up with a giving attitude rather than with a taking mentality – so focus on what you can give to your audience.
How can you inspire them, support and help them grow?
2. Calm your nerves
Change “I am nervous” into “I am excited”. Reframe your mindset.
It is absolutely normal that our nerves react when we are about to speak publicly in front of a big crowd of people (even if they are not physically present).
Many speakers are nervous when they begin their speech but this sense of nervousness usually dissolves quite fast when they feel the direct connection to their audience.
In the virtual space it seems to be a bit trickier. Without a physically present audience, your nervousness may linger for longer than you would like it to. So, what can you do?
Reframe your mindset. By doing so, you can change this uneasy feeling of nervousness into excitement of what’s about to happen.
And this tremendously helps in enhancing your performance and transmitting your high energy levels to your remote audience. Thereby, keeping them captivated and engaged.
Prepare, practice, record, repeat
3. Harness the power of preparation and storytelling
Carefully prepare your content and know your material in and out. This is how you ensure to be confident with your key points and give an authentic and free speech.
Consider starting out with a story. Our brains operate in pictures and storytelling is an ideal tool for making your audience experience and feel something real.
The more real you are, the more real the experience will be. Audacity informs and inspires people.
Figure out before your event: what burning questions are your attendees asking themselves? Pre-event audience engagement is absolutely crucial for event success.
Then, make sure to build your narrative around their priorities, not your own.
For the Q&A following your presentation, try to anticipate potential questions and map out some thoughts and ideas to inspire your answers.
Practice, record, repeat. Being and talking on camera can be overwhelming and it’s a process to get comfortable with this.
The ultimate way to become better and more confident in front of the camera is to practice, learn, and repeat. Practice as much as you can. And ideally, practice out loud, record yourself, and carefully review the playback.
This lets you monitor, adapt, and optimize your
- pace
- posture
- facial expressions and gestures
Taking it a step further: ask someone you trust for additional feedback on how you come across on camera and what you can work on.
Make yourself aware of some detrimental habits, for example the usage of filler words. Sometimes we are not able to recognize such habits ourselves, so it can be valuable to have an informal audience watching your virtual speech recording.
Minimizing the use of filler words helps you to be perceived as more professional, confident, and credible.
First, pinpoint your hotspots for using filler words. These are usually when you start or end a sentence, transition to your next thought or begin to answer a question. Then, practice to pause with purpose. Instead of letting filler words creep into your speech, take a breath – pause, think, and reply.
4. Simplicity and consistency are key
Make sure to stick with simplicity and use visual cues only to undermine what you are saying so that they don’t become a source of distraction.
Simplicity also goes for the language you use. Your jargon should always be easy to understand for all of your attendees.
Consistency cultivates trust. And this is very important for virtual events because contrary to the personal touch of offline events, a digital experience struggles more in establishing trust among people.
It is much harder to read people’s cues virtually.
So whatever your own vibe is – be it humor, edge, warmth, etc. – make sure to keep it consistent throughout the entire event journey (which includes the before, during, and after of your event).
By presenting your audience a consistent picture of yourself and your business, they will perceive you as authentic and trustworthy.
5. Be familiar with the platform you are working with
Many event organizers are still getting used to going virtual, so it is important to take enough time to familiarize yourself with all the features of the platform that you choose to run your event on.
Knowing the setup of the platform, the right buttons to click, and how to manage the different audience engagement features will help you focus on other, more important things during the session and it will make you look professional and confident.
6. Own all the unscripted moments
No matter how well you prepare, things can go sideways at any time.
Virtual events especially are strongly dependent on a smoothly working technical setup and it is a bit more difficult to just wing it (compared to an in-person event) when your tech lets you down or other unpredictable things happen.
But don’t panic. Take a breath and relax.
Nobody is expecting perfection from you. If something doesn’t go according to plan, stay confident, own those unscripted moments and tackle them professionally.
It humanizes the whole experience and creates an authentic human connection to your audience.
Get comfortable with the virtual event character
7. Look directly into the camera
Not at yourself and not at your audience (in case they have their video turned on).
To avoid the feeling of looking into a mirror for the entire time and to forget about the fact that you are live on camera, consider turning off the self view.
Keeping eye contact with your camera is normal in this format. It ensures that you’re directly facing the people you are talking to and it will feel more like an engaging 1:1 conversation – for you and your attendees.
This creates an intimacy that amplifies your energy, gestures, and emotions so that people can feel them through the screen.
So, don’t forget to give them a genuine smile every now and then, it humanizes the experience and you appear open and approachable.
8. Tune in early and engage your audience
Pre-event audience engagement sets your event out for success. This goes for in-person and virtual events. In the online context, this means that you should arrive early in the virtual space.
Help your attendees check in, welcome and connect with them. Show that you care and refer to them with their name if possible. This engagement creates human connection and intimacy early on.
9. Bring life and presence into your delivery
While being live on camera, it can happen that we stiffen up. But this is not very helpful when we want to deliver an engaging experience with effortless ease.
Spice things up and bring a little life into your delivery. For this, you can use anything that adds some real elements to the scene. Interact with props, use a flipchart or cue cards. This creates more visual appeal and helps establish a connection to your audience through the screen.
10. Switch your speaking modes
Keeping your presentation dynamic is crucial both on stage and on camera. But attention spans are much shorter in a virtual setting which is why you have to work harder to keep your audience focused and engaged. Virtual events should be kept simple, short and snappy.
You can foster this by switching up your speaking modes. For example, give a 7-10 minutes talk, then break it up by having a poll or having people answer questions in the chat, then continue with your talk.
Or maybe you want to consider the technique for adaptive learning: think, pair, share. Give your audience some food for thought followed by a task or question to reflect on, have them discuss in virtual breakout rooms, and let them report back and share their results when they return back to the main room of the virtual event.
Anything that makes your presentation more dynamic and lets you break free from holding a stale and boring monologue is welcome here! Let your attendees co-create the experience.
11. Embrace the silence
Don’t expect immediate feedback after making a point in your virtual speech. It’s normal in this format. Embrace the silence and let your virtual audience digest the information they have just received.
The bystander effect may be even more prevalent during virtual events. It is a psychological phenomenon and it means that people are less likely to take action when they are in a large group of strangers (even if they can’t see them).
To trigger some thoughts and ideas and encourage people to answer, make sure to have a few back up questions to ask if your virtual audience stays silent.
Maybe you have good relationships with some of your attendees? Call them by name to initiate a conversation.
12. Become the broadcaster
Always describe what is happening and what you are doing. An important part of improving your virtual speaking skills is to explain what is happening around you – It might seem quite weird to do at an in-person event but crucial at virtual events:
For example, if you are looking down to share your screen or to read incoming questions – point it out clearly. Otherwise, your audience won’t know what’s going on and it could seem as if you lost your train of thought or as if you got (very unprofessionally) distracted by something else.
Describing your actions helps you to establish intent and purpose. And if you address questions, then always also recognize the people who asked them. Who are they? Where are they from? Answer with enthusiasm and appreciation.
That’s the theory! Now put these steps into practice and let them do their magic at your next virtual event.
Summary
Here’s how you can enhance your virtual speaking skills – in brief:
- Shift your perspective and energy outward towards your audience. Focus fully on their needs, interests, and priorities and on how you can bring value to them.
- Practice situational awareness. Regularly check in with your remote attendees to learn about their current state of mind (engaged, tired, confused, in need of a break or Q&A) and to adapt your sessions accordingly in real-time.
- Practice, record, and repeat. Confidence comes with practice. Record yourself to monitor how you come across on camera and to assess how you can improve for example your pace, posture, facial expression, or gestures.
- Simplicity and consistency are key. Keeping it simple let’s your attendees focus exclusively on your message and consistency helps them establish trust towards you (despite the screen that separates you from each other).
- Be familiar with your technical setup and event platform. If you want to show up professionally and be able to focus on the delivery of a unique experience and not the operational side of things, invest some time to fully familiarize yourself with the platform and features you are planning to use for your virtual event.
- Own all the unscripted moments and embrace unpredictability. You can not plan and anticipate everything and sometimes things go differently than expected. Approach this with a calm and solution-oriented mind. Nobody expects perfection from you and little mistakes only nurture your authenticity.
- Get comfortable with the virtual event character.
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- Always look directly into the camera to keep “eye contact” with your remote attendees.
- Tune in early and engage your audience just like you would when welcoming them to a physical space.
- Bring life and presence into your delivery. Use props, flipcharts or other real elements to spice up the scene. It creates more visual appeal and fosters human connection.
- Switch your speaking modes. Attention spans are extremely short in virtual events, so you want to break up your presentation and include your audience in the conversation as much as possible to avoid holding a boring, disengaging monologue.
- Embrace the silence and forget about immediate feedback from your attendees, it is normal in the virtual format to have completely silent breaks after you have finished your point or just posed a question.
- Become the broadcaster and always describe your actions to make it easier for your audience to follow along
With this guide we hope to have given you some pointers on how you can improve your virtual speaking skills.
But remember, the virtual space is a always changing, so always stay up to date with the best practices.
Read more
Still having trouble connecting with your audience virtually?
Check out this article from psychologytoday.com that helps you connect in a meaningful way with their 10 guidelines
