Increase Web Meeting Payattentionability!
By now you’ve heard our 5 Tips on Hosting a Better Online Meetings (and then 5 more), but did you know that a few adjustments to your PowerPoint file can make it more online meeting friendly?
Let’s face it – any meeting can challenge even the most professional attention span, and when you host a meeting online, you lose the ability to dish out the stink eye if someone’s not giving you the affirmative “I’m with you” head nod. Hence, here are quatro tips for sprucing up your presentation to enrapture even the most scatterbrained attendee.
- Withhold each bullet point until you’re ready to talk about it. If you send out a PDF before a meeting, people are going to look at the whole thing and ask you about items on page 13 before you’re done with page 6. Hence, your decision to use web conferencing in the first place. Well, you can practice the same general idea in your virtual meeting as well. Keep their attention right where you want it by only serving up what you’re ready to talk about.
- Flash bright lights in their faces AKA use slide transitions. You know it’s true! Flashing lights in someone’s face is a good way to get them to look at you. Even the simplest transition option changes the light levels coming from the screen, and could be just the trick to pull wandering eyes back on your presentation.
- Change it up. As visually compelling as 38 slides of text in a uniform font size is, it’s not compelling at all. So change it up! Make titles bigger than the rest of the text or do some classy mixing of serif and sans serif. Throw in a color or use images (Note: be careful when using images and colors. Pink copy with a picture of a unicorn sitting on a rainbow will not inspire confidence.) Use graphs at any opportunity. It may seem unnecessary, but giving your attendees something different to look at throughout your meeting will keep their eyes on the screen.
- Snip Snip. If ever there was a time to keep that presentation slim and sexy….the time is NOW. I repeat. The. Time. Is. Now. I mean, you should be keeping them to about 10 slides anyway but really…if you can slim it down, your attendees will appreciate it.
Had enough yet? No? Here’s a link to a pretty well known post from back in aught five on keeping VC presos to 10 slides. For something to be relevant on the interwebs for a whopping 5 years means it must be pretty legit.
See you in a few.
Kristi, guessing you’re a designer or at least a fan of things that are nice looking? Thanks for the comment!
No kidding…some meetings can be B.O.R.I.N.G! Those are great tips. Thanks.
i am enraptured. in fact i am PASSIONATE about fuzemeeting. thanks kristen and thanks for the helpful graph!
Yes, yes, most presentations are far too long and have a boring uniform look of white text on a blue background. It is a good idea to keep it short, sweet and visually engaging!