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Communication skills for online success

July 31, 2020 by Ellen Finkelstein Leave a Comment

This is a guest post by Steve Kosch, a former ABC and CNN anchor (that’s him on the left), and a globally recognized expert communication skills trainer. For 10 more awesome tips to help you “Nail It” in your next presentation, go to mediatrainingnetwork.com

If you’re looking to lead a cause or movement, spread your influence or do any kind of marketing online, you need to sharpen your communication skills and your presentation skills. These are similar but uniquely different.

In today’s online world, once people have heard of you, they turn to Google and instantly read about you or watch your videos. The materials you produce (your media) broadcast who you are.

What you say on podcasts, blog posts, and webinars are all media that reflect your presence, your brand. Some call it executive presence or charisma. This vibe quickly lets people experience your brand and decide if they like you. Everything you post must display your authenticity; because people can tell if you are faking it.

Communication skills become more important

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Presenting remotely: Avoid the 8 deadly sins of webinars

March 30, 2020 by Ellen Finkelstein 9 Comments

Note: I originally wrote this in 2013 but I’m updating this during the Coronavirus pandemic because more people are presenting online now.

Webinars are a powerful way to communicate from afar. They have opened up many possibilities for marketing, meetings, and training. But only if you do webinars right.

If you simply show slides with the text that you’re reading, this is what happens:

Your audience scans the text quickly
They then turn their attention to you speaking, but you’re saying the same thing they’ve just read (because people can read the slide much faster than you can speak it out)
So they start multi-tasking — checking their email, checking out other web pages, doing other work, etc.

Well, isn’t that what you do when you watch a webinar like that?

But you can do better. Here are the 8 deadly sins that kill the effectiveness of your webinars and how to avoid them. [Read more…]

9 tips to design presentations for webinars

July 25, 2016 by Ellen Finkelstein 8 Comments

I recently gave a presentation on this topic at the Presenters Network meeting in Manhattan and thought I’d share with you my points for designing presentations for webinars.

By the word “design,” I mean both the visual design of the slides and the design of the content.

Webinars have many advantages over live presentations:

No travel (time or cost)
Greater reach (all over the world)
Easier follow-up
Availability of a recording

They also have some disadvantages:

Difficulty of keeping people from multitasking
Lack of engagement between the presenter and the audience

The points below address these disadvantages.

1. Use and design for the webcam

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Make your webinars super interactive

September 20, 2014 by Ellen Finkelstein 3 Comments

This is a guest post from Brenda Bence, who is a corporate branding and personal branding expert. She wrote this as a tip for Speaker Net News subscribers and gave me permission to reprint it. You can read more about her at www.BrendaBence.com.

Brenda does live keynotes but then often follows up with “virtual keynotes” for members of an organization who are located elsewhere. These are small groups of 12 – 15 team members who are usually in Singapore, Hong Kong, Mumbai and/or Shanghai/Beijing. Here are 8 techniques that she uses to make her webinars super interactive. Note that she uses WebEx webinar software.

Sign in: Get attendees to “sign in” when they first call in. I have a slide with all participants’ names on it, and they have to “sign in” (using WebEx Center technology). They also have to write a one-word description of how they are feeling about attending this program. This starts team members engaging and reflecting and helps me get a sense of the “energy in the room,” just as I would want if I were presenting live.
Ground rules: Make a game out of generating attendees’ own “ground rules” for participation. Then, once the list is created, they have to raise their hand in the sidebar to show they will abide by those rules. Inevitably, someone will offer up ideas along the lines of “focus,” “put away cell phones,” “close up other computer windows,” etc. This avoids my or anybody else’s having to suggest that people pay attention — the audience has set their own rules and are more likely to abide by them.
Notification: I let them know within the first five minutes that this will be a very interactive two hours and that I will call on them randomly throughout the program to answer questions. This keeps people on the alert.
Executive presence: I always suggest to the client to have a senior-level executive participate during each session, too, and ask him/her to (a) introduce me at the start, and (b) comment a few times throughout the program. Knowing that a senior exec is participating keeps people paying attention and wanting to speak up. [Read more…]

Public speaking and training via webinars

December 3, 2013 by Ellen Finkelstein 3 Comments

Are you a public speaker or trainer? Right now, you might speak or train in front of a live audience. While that scenario isn’t going away, other options have been available for a while and are changing rapidly. You should know about the latest trends.

In this post, I’ll explain webinars, why you might want to use them, and how they’re changing.

What is a webinar?

Most professionals have attended at least 1 webinar — maybe many! But I find that speakers and trainers are a little scared of the technology when it comes to giving a webinar themselves.

A webinar is a way to speak to people via your Internet connection. Your audience watches on their computer. They can be anywhere in the world. Sometimes, teams gather together to watch a webinar in a conference room, but most people are sitting at their own computer.

Usually, people listen on their computer, too (this is sometimes called VOIP), but some webinar services let them make a phone call to listen. Usually, the phone call is not free, although some services let you pay to provide a toll-free number.

How do webinar services work?

They don’t all work the same way. In fact, there are different models: [Read more…]