My Tricks for Online Presenting and Preaching (without boring people to death)

With all of our activities moved online, we’ve gone from presenting, preaching, teaching and leading meetings in-person to doing it exclusively online. And what does well in-person DOES NOT translate well virtually. It’s like telling a joke in another country: 99.9% of the time you have to explain it and if you have to explain it the funny is lost. In the same way, presenting and preaching online just like we do in-person misses the mark 99.9% of the time (and encourages people to give in to all the distractions just a click away).

Unless you are a trained motivational speaker or have multiple cameras to switch up camera angles throughout your presentation, you will need to adjust how you present online (even professional speakers do).

So, if you are teaching, preaching, presenting, or talking about anything for more than 2 minutes and you want your content to impact people in one way or another (and if you don’t, I’m not sure why you’re sharing anything to begin with) then you need to modify how you are sharing your content.

There are some tricks to online teaching, leading meetings, presenting, preaching, etc. that will not only keep your audience awake, but actually engaged and ultimately impact their decision and behaviors! Here are 5 things you can implement today that will make your online presentation much more effective.

You Must Use Slides

You guys, I know we all learned how to create PowerPoint presentations (Keynote and Canva and Google didn’t exist back when we were learning how to create presentations) in school. Well my friend, it’s time to dust off your skills and (finally) put them to use. In person, you can talk at people for 25-30 minutes without too many added visuals and the energy in a live setting is enough to keep (most) people engaged. But, if you do that online for more than 2 minutes, people’s minds start to wander and suddenly their email, chats, games, or anything else is more interesting than watching you give your talk without visuals. So, unless you have props right next to you that you interact with frequently throughout your presentation, you MUST use a slide deck.

Only 5% of the population learn the best from a lecture type presentation. So, when you talk at people without visuals, reading material, or movement of some kind it only lands with 5% of your audience.  Not only do slides give people something to read (now you’re starting to reach more of your audience) but it also creates movement in your presentation that you can’t create unless you are a trained motivational speaker or have multiple cameras and camera angles to use throughout your presentation.

Less is More With Slides

When it comes to your slides, simple slides with 5 words on them are way better than no slides at all. And truthfully, you don’t need to put more than 10 words a slide. What?! Yes, you could put a paragraph worth of text on a slide (I’ve seen plenty of people do that). But here’s the truth: no one can read it (even if you are sharing your screen with them). Either the font is too small for them because they’re using their tablets or phones, or there’s so much content that they’re trying to read it all and they stopped listening to you. If you NEED to share an entire paragraph with them, then spread it out over a number of slides. When you only have 10-ish words on a slide the font is big enough for people no matter the device they’re watching on and they can quickly read it without tuning you out.

Speak with More Energy

One of the keys to keeping people engaged online is talking with more energy than you do in real life. Yes, I know this requires a bit more of you. But if what you are sharing has any value and you hope that it informs people’s decisions and behaviors in some way then it’s worth taking a few extra breaths before you start and speaking with a little more energy than you would if you were doing the same thing in real life. You do not need to speak with the excitement level of a motivational speaker (that’s what your slides are for), but you do need a little more energy than you would in person.

Stand Up if you Need to

With so many of us presenting or teaching from our home offices (even if that’s the basement bar in my husband’s case), most of us are sitting when we’re presenting or teaching online. This might work just fine when you are in the same room with people. But because we need to present with more energy online than we do in real life, you might need to stand up while you’re presenting or teaching. Unsure if this would help you? Record a 60 second clip of you presenting your content sitting and then repeat the same part of your presentation while you’re standing and record that. Watch the two videos. Notice a difference? Most of us are more animated and engaging when we stand and talk. Feel silly standing when no one else in your audience is standing? That’s okay! They’re not presenting or teaching at the moment. They’re not trying to make a lasting impact with the people listening, you are. 9 out of 10 times you will give a more dynamic online presentation when you are standing than when you are sitting.

Respect People’s Content Consumption

When possible, condense your content. Less is definitely more when you are presenting or teaching online. People cannot consume the same amount of content online as they can in person, at least not in the same way. The reality is, if you are going to present 30 minutes worth of information, the best way to do that is by breaking it into 7-10-minute chunks of information spread out over a period of time. Most of us don’t have that opportunity though. But I mention it because it would be ideal. And because you likely don’t have an ideal situation to present or teach online, keep this practice in mind. People can only consume so much information at a time. So, prune out what you might leave in if you were presenting in person, or in several presentations spread out over time, and everyone will thank you for it.

And a bonus tip because honestly there are so many tricks you can use to increase the effectiveness of your online presentations. Even simply implementing one of them will make your presentation or teaching more engaging for your audience and increase the likelihood that they’ll do something with what you’ve shared.

Add Stories or Examples

You know that stories get a point across more than logic or statistics do any day because they connect with our emotions much more so. And at the end of the day, we all make our decisions based on how they make us feel (even the logical ones of us). So, if you are trying to get a point across because you want it to impact the decisions or behaviors that people make, then add stories or examples, especially when presenting online. We all connect with stories more than with information and this is especially true when listening to someone online. And for your presentation style, telling a story or sharing a personal example make you much more relaxed and relatable.

Your content deserves to be heard! If you implement even one of these tricks when you present or preach online this week, you will drastically increase the impact you have on those listening! You can find more tips and tricks to increase your online effectiveness in my free downloadable Online Presenting and Preaching Checklist.