Engagement is key in the virtual world.


You, like me, must have seen hundreds of virtual presentations in the last few months. My god so many of them are boring.

Really dreadfully, catastrophically boring.

One of the reasons is that presenters insist on broadcasting rather than interacting. This can be fatal as our attention span is about 5 minutes nowadays.

So – how do you engage your audience? Well I have a whole video devoted to this in my Design and Deliver video presentation course. Available at all good websites. Well manly mine – jeremycassellcoaching.com.

Here are 4 quick ideas to improve the engagement with your audiences:

1. Use interactive software

My preference is Mentimeter. It’s so easy to use and gets the audience involved quickly and effortlessly. Can be used for polls, open questions, chat and much much more. And it’s getting better all the time…

engage virtual audience interactive software mentimeter

2. Avoid telling everyone to mute

This is now a habit for many presenters. Yes of course with very large crowds it’s vital but with small groups – ensure everyone is unmuted and gets involved early doors.

engage virtual audience unmute zoom

3. Tell a Story

Tell a story about you personally, a client experience or something that is happening in your market. And bring it to life.

A good narrative will tap into the emotions of your audience, immerse them and allow them to relate and empathize with the message you’re trying to convey much more than facts and figures alone.

engage virtual audience storytelling

4. Get people talking

If you are running a training or working with your team and let’s say you want to encourage sharing of experiences or to brainstorm. What do you do? Get the group into pairs and then speak to each other on their mobiles – facetime ideally. Works a treat.

engage virtual audience breakout groupSo there you have it: 4 simple and practical ideas.

Please – avoid broadcasting all the time as a virtual presenter. Rather – engage engage engage.

You’ve got the message.