Whether you’re running a sales meeting, a product demo, or a training class, it can be hard to translate in-person presentation skills to an online event. But with travel budgets shrinking and the constant need for increased productivity, online meetings are a must for connecting with far-flung colleagues, customers, and partners in a cost-effective and efficient way.

We asked Christine Olivas, Marketing Communications Manager at iLinc, to share some tips on how to run a great web-based meeting and what you need to know to get started.

BuyerZone: People may be familiar with the basics of preparing for a face to face meeting – making sure the room is prepared, organizing slides or notes, etc. What’s the online equivalent? How should someone prepare to run a great web conference?

Christine Olivas: There are three main areas to focus on – and two of them are similar to what you’d do for an in-person event, translated to the virtual world.

The first is customizing the online room. It’s the equivalent of doing the technical set up in a physical room: what do you want the audio to sound like, and what do you need to make it work? What about video? What time do you need to reserve the room? How far in advance will you invite participants?

Of course, some customization options are more specific to the online world, like deciding what region of your desktop to share, or whether you will enable public chat. As you approach this piece of the planning, remember that it’s about leveraging the wide variety of available features to control the in-session experience of your attendees. The best difference? Unlike physical meetings, there’s nothing to rent – it’s all built in to the conferencing platform.

The second area is creating great content. This is another aspect that’s shared with traditional meetings – but obviously the delivery of the content will be different from an in-person event. Conferencing tools are there to help presenters adjust their presentation style and plans for audience engagement: for example, while it’s difficult to have everyone editing a document in a physical location, online it’s easier to have everyone participate.

Third, you need to take your voice and translate to the online realm. There are things we do in person that we don’t even realize we do: standing up, for example. Presenters who are very engaged, energetic speakers when standing may find that when sitting in front of screen, their voice loses engagement and enthusiasm. Just remember that practice makes perfect: any good web conferencing company will have training courses to help you make the transition.

BZ: How much practice or rehearsal is useful? How much is too much?

CO: Well, it depends on your previous experience. If you’re a pro, and you regularly lead seminars or sales demos and are experienced with in-person or phone presentations, you won’t need much, just some practice to ensure that you’re comfortable in the online environment.

But in this day and age, people who’ve never run an important meeting before are being asked to do it, as the low cost of online meetings makes it possible. In those cases, more practice is necessary: probably 2-3 run-throughs of the materials with an internal “practice audience,” and a couple of times in the conferencing room to get used to the controls. If other speakers are involved—say for a lead generation webinar—a formal rehearsal that runs through the actual script for the event in real-time is imperative.

Practice is key – and  in some ways, made easier in the web conferencing environment  because you can recreate the conference room environment exactly. For many face to face meetings, you’d be practicing in a board room, or your office, where the light, acoustics, computer, and other features are all different than the space where the actual presentation will take place.

When using web conferencing tools, however, you can practice exactly how it’s going to be – and then take advantage of the built-in archiving and review capabilities to evaluate your practice sessions. Watch your entire presentation and ask yourself: when did I stop being engaging? This gives you the ability to assess your own performance in a real-time, accurate way that you don’t usually get in person.

When it comes to online training, instructors generally have more experience in classroom, so the results are mainly dependent on a successful transition to the online environment. Often, traditional classroom instructors have many existing habits and specific ways of delivering content, so getting your instructors to leverage virtual tools to create a great learning experience is the key to success. Once they get over the hump of relying on their existing tool set and methodology, a whole new world opens up, allowing them to focus on the content, avoid distractions, and truly engage their audience of learners.

BZ: If someone’s comfortable presenting a PowerPoint deck in front of a small group, will those skills translate well to an online event? Or how should they adjust their style?

CO: For many presenters, one of the biggest changes is switching from hand gestures to online tools to make your points. For example, when doing an in-person demonstration in front of a group, people often point to or touch the screen – online, they just have to remember to use the mouse to highlight specific areas. You need to retrain old habits. The impulse to do everything with your hands is powerful – and you need powerful tools to make up for it.

There’s also the video component. People in virtual settings have to learn how to present themselves: because the web cam is focused on your upper body, you have to be more engaging and be aware of how your facial expressions communicate your message.

For example, if you’re sitting at the computer, clicking around, and not looking at the web camera, the visual image becomes one of you looking down constantly. You should also think about which colors will look good on camera. It’s not rocket science, but you have to think it through. It requires some investment but it pays off: once you get used to it, you can have some fun.

BZ: What about the slides themselves – are there any adjustments a presenter should make for online presentation?

CO: The biggest factor is that you can actually transition away from static slides. Obviously slides are still useful for emphasizing takeaways or bullet points, but the great thing about a conferencing tool is you can seamlessly switch back and forth to other applications, videos, or flash demos. It really lets you change up what you can do.

If you’re showing software, for example, you can give a guided tour instead of just screen shots. Anything that best highlights your topic.

So the transition to a virtual meeting setting is less about doing different things with a tool like PowerPoint, and more about being able to switch back and forth between different types of content. It also allows you to be spontaneous with your presentation if something isn’t working or the questions take you in a different direction than expected.

BZ: What about interactive features like polls and Q&A? How can you best use those types of tools to encourage participation?

CO: It boils down to really knowing your audience and what message you want to deliver. The best presenters use a variety of tools and deliveries, both planned and spontaneous. Planned interaction includes basic tactics like running a survey at the end of a demo to gauge attendees’ interest in follow-up calls.

Spontaneous interaction with the audience can be enabled by your tools. In iLinc, for example, there’s a participation meter that shows you how many people are paying attention. If attention is lagging, the presenter/instructor can recognize that fact, then spontaneously bring up interactive features such as polls to get people back in or ask for feedback.

In an educational setting, whiteboarding or annotating gets everyone involved at once, and iLinc’s tools even include breakout groups so you can subdivide a class for short sessions and more direct engagement.

BZ: What about tips for attending online meetings? How can you get the most out of an online presentation?

CO: Again, a few things that overlap with what you’d do for a physical meeting.

1. Prepare in advance – pretty much all conferencing tools include a link to test your system in your email confirmation. Do it! Test your system ahead of time. It’d be nice if you could join all web meetings instantly, but it’s sometimes necessary to upgrade certain core technologies or plug-ins before. Testing in advance will avoid any delays on the day of the meeting.
2. Leave plenty of time – if you were at an in-person conference, you wouldn’t wait until last minute to sprint to your next session. It takes some time to find a link, load it up, enter your info, and get started – so try to arrive a little early.
3. Be attentive to the audio/video options—if you want to participate in the video portion, have a web cam ready. For audio, make sure to have a phone if needed, or speakers or headphones for computer audio.

In general, don’t just be a static observer. Be aware of ways you can ask for help – a good presenter will tell you in advance. Our software has a feature called ‘hand raise’ that lets you request attention, and most services have some kind of public or private chat feature. Listen to the announcements at the beginning of the event so you know how to reach out and make sure your questions or concerns are addressed.