6 Ways to Interact With Your Audience During a Virtual Presentation

When giving a virtual presentation, a presenter is often in the dark. Not only you can’t read the room, but you don’t even know if the participants or stakeholders are paying attention. Well, the truth is, virtual presentations are challenging since the traditional, in-person interactions with the audience are missing. 

On top of that, according to a report by Microsoft, the average human attention span is about eight seconds! Now, when a substantial number of people are working from home, how do you ensure slide engagement and get the message across the meeting room? In this post, we will talk about how you can introduce energetic elements into your presentations & multiply the engagement.

So, without further ado, let’s move ahead and understand how you can create captivating presentations, make the meeting interactive and a memorable experience for your audience:

1. Know Your Audience:

When it comes to fostering a memorable audience interaction in virtual meetings or webinars, presenters ought to know their audience. Rather than jumping straight to PowerPoint, presenters should step back and research the audience. You may consider delving deep into your audiences’ demographics, background, lifestyle, values, or interests. Once you have all the necessary intel, you must then progress towards creating a highly custom presentation. 

The saying “One size doesn’t fit all” is highly valid in the presentation arena too! If a virtual presentation is not interactive enough and doesn’t align with the audiences’ interest, taste or expectations, it may lead to the popular phenomenon “Death by PowerPoint”. Hence, presenters can conduct meaningful meetings and churn out the actual value of content only if it’s relevant to the audience.

2. Use Professional Templates:

Often presentation creators use everyday templates while preparing a deck for the virtual meeting or webinar. One should note that in a virtual setting where your audience only has the screen to look up to, a bunch of innovative & never-seen-before slide designs can go a long way. Presenters can get their hands on intuitive design, layouts and further boost audience interaction with the help of dynamic & professional-looking slides templates.

Ready-to-use PowerPoint templates allow you to bring game-changing customization into the presentation. A report by SmarterHQ has found that over 80% of patrons are more likely to consider a brand that provides a personalized experience. Presenters can 100% edit the deck and align the slides, striking the right balance between the business branding & audiences’ expectations. Moreover, you can also enjoy added flexibility, ease of use, design uniformity, and consistency.

3. Add Data-Driven Visuals:

Visuals such as charts, graphics & infographics make it easy for your audience to understand the data. Plus, visuals also trigger a lasting emotional response towards the presentation. Do you know the human brain can process an image in a mere 13 milliseconds? Well, you can communicate better with your audience in between the presentation if only it doesn’t overwhelm them.

Presenters can transform random, analytical text and numbers into data-driven dashboards. You can use graphs and charts and make the numbers more appealing and easy to comprehend. Presenters can ensure maximum engagement and interaction once the audience starts generating some inference from the slides. 

4. Invite an Expert Panel:

Presenters can boost audience interaction by inviting an expert guest panel to the virtual meeting. Inviting guests also provides a much-needed break to the audience from having to listen to the same speaker. However, you should make sure that the guest speakers are congruent to the presentation’s subject. The guests must possess in-depth knowledge of the topic at hand.

As the driver of the virtual presentation, you may interact with the audience on the move and ask them to prepare any questions for the experts. This will keep your audience motivated, engaged & interested throughout the presentation. Not just that, having a distinguished speaker can boost the overall integrity of your event as well.

5. Re-Engage Your Audience:

For any virtual presentation, re-engagement is as important as the presentation’s design or content. Presenters should try to engage with the audience throughout the presentation at multiple touchpoints. You can consider asking for polls, Q&As, quizzes, ratings, or feedback in between your slides. Re-engaging the audience prevents them from drifting off the meetings and encourages them to participate and have a say in the presentation.

Presenters can interact with the audience by initiating polls such as asking the audience to review certain products or services on a scale of 1 to 10. You may consider quizzing the audience about the subject matter or previously displayed slides. Presenters must recognize that re-engaging the audience gets them involved in the presentation almost immediately. Stimulate your audiences’ thought process today!

6. Compelling Calls-To-Action:

Whether you’re presenting to executives, conducting a business unit meeting, or remotely reaching out to potential clients, your presentation is incomplete if it lacks a call to action (CTA). With CTA, presenters can encourage and persuade the stakeholders to make a decision matching your presentation’s goal. Strategic calls-to-action can help you reiterate the presentation’s crux. 

Moreover, presenters can seamlessly draw the audiences’ attention to significant, value-creating points, and directly influence the conversion rates. Use purposeful animations, movements and highlight critical texts and visuals. Therefore, we can say that the CTAs are one of the best ways to interact with your audience & help them understand what to do with the information that you’ve just shared with them.

Wrapping It Up:

Keeping your audience fully involved during your virtual meeting is a task! The above tips can help you build captivating slides, foster a memorable presentation experience and ensure high conversion, respectively. Make it easy for your audience to participate in the process, don’t miss out on polls, feedback and surveys.

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