When planning your presentation, break it into chunks.
Never go more than 10 minutes without some kind of break and change. Some authors recommend aiming for activity each five slides.
Check-in, questions, “howl at the moon” -- anything to break up the monotony
Plan for more slides rather than less: some authors recommend one per minute.
Design content for short bursts of information, or mix it up.
Aim to engage your audience the moment they join the event with an opening slide containing a relevant and interesting fact or anecdote. Or tell a story.
Leave out background information about where you work, your institution, its characteristics; the audience doesn’t care and can read your biography. Get right into the content.
Factor in time for the audience to process information.
Creating presentation materials
Understand your audience may not see or hear well or at all
Offer slides or handouts ahead of time. Use alternative text for images.
Use multiple communication styles (verbal, text, pictures, diagrams, etc.)
Have an overarching story line to the webinar
Summarize at the end of each “chapter” and tease the next one
Vary the content and form of each webinar segment
One Q/A, one interview, one rant, etc.
Connect the webinar to the news of the day
Offer something unexpected near the end of the webinar
Wrap up your presentation with best practices or actionable advice. Leave your audience knowing what to do next.
Provide contact information for all the speakers, as well as key contacts within your organization.
Technology
Have an assistant / moderator if possible
This person can keep track of time and help you stick to an agenda
They have to have verbal/stated permission to interrupt if necessary
Announce time points, e.g., “We’ve been going ten minutes and it’s time for a break; we’ll take questions for five minutes and then we have two more segments of 20 minutes each.”
This person can monitor the chat and keep track of questions
Advice from webinar experts: “Always be responding.” Respond to questions throughout a presentation.
This person can help with the technology
Plan to record the presentation, and make a transcript available
Content on this site is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.