Strategies For Successfully Going Virtual (Part 2 of 3)

Don’t be fooled into thinking the platform will magically create engagement in your virtual presentations – engagement is your responsibility.  The available tools can help.  But, they can also hurt when you are unfamiliar with them, unskilled at using them, or don’t leverage the advantages they provide. 
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This week, we look at Level Two: collaborating over a virtual platform but still using unidirectional audio.  

Keeping the first two actions in mind (from Part 1 of 3), you can take it up a notch in a Level Two scenario.  In such circumstances, add these two actions to your repertoire: ​

• Master the available interactive features.  Each platform has its own devices.  Familiarize yourself beforehand.  Know which tools you will use to annotate visuals, and where to access them.  Plan when interactive feedback will be solicited (tip: frequently!), as well as how you will request it, and your strategies for responding to group input.  If a chat feature will be active, establish protocols with the group to proactively prevent lengthy, possibly rambling, chats.
• Let the producer produce, while you maintain content responsibility.  Yes, there can be a lot going on within a collaborative platform, but when responsibility for bringing chat panel content into the presentation is relinquished to another, an opportunity for creating engagement is missed.  As mentioned in the first post of the series, your presentation should be so familiar to you that you are able to notice chatted questions or comments and integrate them.  Chatted material is part of the content, and the most polished virtual presenters weave their content into the discussion threads participants generate – not the other way around.  (Did you notice how “listeners” from the first post just became “participants”?) 

 
The final installment  in the series will address working in Level Three: a virtual collaboration platform capable of bi-directional audio and webcams. 
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It was trial by fire for Kimberly when she added virtual delivery options for programs. Take her advice in this series and achieve the same powerful results without suffering the headache she did!