Tips and Guidelines for an Effective Video Presentation

By Anna Brown, ConnectYourHome Cable TV and Internet

With technology becoming more cost effective and reliable, you may find yourself in the position of making remote video presentations more often. Travel costs are high, and as a presenter it often makes sense to do a remote presentation to save time and money for both you and your client.

Anytime you give a presentation, there are general guidelines you want to follow to make it interesting and relevant to your audience. Giving a remote presentation adds a layer of complexity because of the technology involved. In addition, if you are not in the room it is not possible to see the audience’s body language and adjust. Special considerations need to be made for remote presentations to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Have a Good Presentation

The fact that you are presenting from a remote location can cause you to get so caught up in the technology arrangements that you forget to prepare your presentation thoroughly. The first key to an effective video presentation is to simply prepare an effective presentation. Here are four steps that can help.

• Create your content with your audience in mind. Rather than starting off with a self-introduction, start off with something that will capture your audience’s attention. Tell a story or give an interesting fact. Follow up with an explanation of the problem, solution, and an action step they can take.

• Stay Focused on the Topic. Make sure both your script and your visuals relate to the topic at hand. You don’t want your audience wondering when you will get to the point – especially if you are doing a remote presentation, where an audience member is more likely to multi-task or slip out of the room.

• Maintain Good Body Language and Tone. Make sure your body language is good – posture, smile, and use of your hands while speaking. Don’t pace or have other distracting movements. Also, make sure your tone is the right volume and pace. You want your audience to hear you and be able to understand what you are saying, especially when dealing with video conferencing technology.

• Finish Early. Saying more is not always better. In an era of short attention spans, it’s a good idea to finish early. Not only does this leave more time for questions, it also helps you stay focused and efficient.

Prepare the Remote Technology

This is the part of a video conference that makes everyone the most nervous. What if there isn’t enough bandwidth to handle the video? What if the sound stops working? There are many video conference horror stories, and you want to make sure your presentation isn’t one of them. Here are four steps you can take.

• Have Someone Watching the Software. During your presentation, have someone assigned to keep an eye on the conferencing software. Make sure this person reads up on troubleshooting tips before the event and thoroughly understands how the software works. This can be your go-to person if something fails while you are live.

• Do Two Practices. Most people know that it’s a good idea to do a run-through before the event just to make sure everything is working smoothly. Unfortunately, this practice generally happens about 20 minutes prior to the live presentation. It’s actually a good idea to do two practices. The first one can be a technology check, making sure that the video is clear and audio is working. The second one will be for feedback – do a portion of your presentation and let your on-site coordinator tell you if your tone or pace is off, or if your visuals are hard to see. Making these adjustments is key to a successful presentation.

• Arrange for Audience Feedback. This can be done through chat channels if there are enough computers, but another great solution is to have your on-site coordinator give you behind the scenes feedback. I’ve heard of a system where the coordinator would text different letters to the presenter to let her know if the audience was engaged, bored, or had questions. This can help you overcome the distance and adjust your presentation to your audience needs.

• Relax. Perhaps something will go wrong. If you are relaxed and go with the flow, your audience will have a much better impression than if you panic. Have a print-out of your presentation available to be handed out on-site if everything goes wrong. Other than that, just relax and take things as they come. Both you and your audience will have a better experience.

Doing a remote video conference can save a lot of time and money for both the speaker and the client. By following the above eight simple steps, you can make sure that you are prepared to deliver a great presentation with as few technical issues as possible. Good luck!

THIS IS A SPECIAL GUEST POST BY ONE OF OUR ANYMEETING USERS. WANT TO WRITE FOR THE ANYMEETING BLOG? GET THE DETAILS

Free Webinar: 26 Minutes. A Cup of Coffee and Empowering Your Business with the Cloud

If you’re a small business owner, you might be wondering, what’s all the fuss about the Cloud? What are the options and is one right for your business?

In this 26 minute webinar, you’ll get answers to the eight essential Cloud questions that every 15+ employee business needs answered and learn how moving your business to the Cloud will drive business improvement.

And just to make it a more pleasant experience, AdarIT will mail you a mug of Starbucks VIA coffee and Twining Earl Grey tea to sip while you learn. No big time commitment. No pressure. Just add hot water. It’s the easiest way to empower your business and get your head into the Clouds.

Two Sessions!
September 11th: Register Now – it’s free! and September 13th: Register Now – it’s free!

AnyMeeting Brings Free Web Conferencing to the 20th USANA International Convention

AnyMeeting recently traveled to Salt Lake City, UT where it was invited to exhibit at the USANA International Convention 2012. Celebrating USANA’s 20th year, over 8,000 excited USANA Associates attended the event, including celebrity guest speakers Dr. Oz and Larry King, and a keynote address from USANA founder Dr. Myron Wentz. Pictured above, Dr. Wentz was quite popular at the event, signing autographs and greeting Associates (you can see the AnyMeeting logo in the background).

An internationally recognized microbiologist, immunologist and pioneer in the development of human cell culture technology and infectious disease diagnosis, Dr. Wentz started USANA Health Sciences in 1992. Today USANA has over 222,000 associates, and AnyMeeting is helping to bring the power of web meetings to all of them.

USANA utilizes AnyMeeting’s “Quick Start” program for large network marketing firms. The program provides leading firms such as USANA, with a free, company-branded web conferencing tool, which is made available to all of their distributors at no cost.

With its full-function web conferencing product, AnyMeeting meets all of the online meeting needs of network marketing distributors. The service provides distributors with six-way video conferencing, conference calling, screen sharing, recorded meetings, integration with Facebook and Twitter, YouTube video integration, and much more. The Quick Start program can be rolled out in only a few days, and with no IT resources from the partner. AnyMeeting is also able to integrate with a company’s own back-office systems for distributors, supporting single sign-on, contact sharing, calendar synching and more.

Tap the power of online meetings, video conferencing and webinars to grow your business today.

AnyMeeting Achieves Milestone With Strong Growth in Small Business Community

Online Meeting Service Brings Innovative Resources, Including YouTube, to Over 200,000 Users

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif., August 16, 2012 – AnyMeeting, the free web conference and online meeting solution, today announced that it has achieved a milestone in the small business community.  Over 200,000 registered users are using AnyMeeting’s service to help grow their small business.  Breaking down the barriers to entry for small businesses, AnyMeeting is able to offer a solid, full-featured web conferencing and webinar service that is completely free to a market segment that is steadily growing.

“Spending on web conferencing solutions by small businesses is on the rise and is expected to grow 26 percent annually through 2016,” said Monik Seth, research analyst for AMI-Partners, an industry leading global research firm, specializing in IT, Telecom and Internet related sectors, with a focus on SMBs.  “Solutions that are friendly to the small business community, like AnyMeeting, are wise to focus on within this market.”

AnyMeeting is full-featured to address the complete range of small business needs, from one-to-one video conferencing to 200 person webinars, and includes advanced features such as 6-way video conferencing, screen sharing, application sharing, recording, registration and survey forms, and more.  Other AnyMeeting features that are uniquely important to small businesses include persistent personalized meeting URLs, social media integration, profile pages and webinar ticketing.

Always looking to innovate and add value, AnyMeeting has also introduced a new feature that will greatly enhance the in-meeting experience.  Users can now share any YouTube video in their meeting by simply copying and pasting the URL of any YouTube video.  The new feature offers synchronized controls, so that presenters can pause and skip ahead in a video, all while keeping their audience in perfect sync.

“By focusing on the needs of our existing small business customers, we’re building a service that meets the online meeting needs of the 30 million small businesses in the US, a hugely underserved market in our industry,” said Costin Tuculescu, president and CEO of AnyMeeting.  “The addition of YouTube integration provides yet another tool to help our users make the most out of every meeting they hold.”

See the complete press release on MarketWire.

Share Your Favorite YouTube Video in AnyMeeting

Over 4 billion videos on YouTube are viewed every day, and the site gets over 800 million unique visitors per month. It’s one of the most popular ways for people and small businesses to upload and view video content. Most likely, you already have videos on YouTube that you have posted or find value in.

Now, you can share YouTube videos with your attendees in meetings and webinars by simply copying and pasting the URL of any YouTube video. The new feature offers synchronized controls, so that presenters can pause and skip ahead in a video, all while keeping their audience in perfect sync.

Start a meeting and share your favorite YouTube video today. For more information on how the new feature works, visit our support site.

Bring Videos Into Your AnyMeeting With YouTube

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to share an informative or entertaining video with your attendees in a meeting?  Well, now you can.  With AnyMeeting’s new YouTube feature, you can share any YouTube video of your choice with your attendees.  Share a video from one of the millions of videos already on YouTube, or you can share a video that you have uploaded personally.

It’s easy to use, just open a meeting, select “share” and the YouTube icon.  Then, paste the link to the YouTube video you would like to share and click “Load Video.”  Your YouTube video will then be loaded and started.  Once finished just close the video and you can switch to screen sharing or close the sharing application.

YouTube provides a great way to share any video content in AnyMeeting.  For more information on how to use YouTube and uploading videos, visit our support site.

Post-Webinar Email Funnel

Post-Webinar Email

By Jay Moore, AWeber Email Marketing

Your webinar is all wrapped up, attendees are leaving, and you’re breathing a sigh of relief, knowing that you did a great job.  But what do you do now?

Delivering valuable content doesn’t have to end on the final slide — you can still reach out to your attendees through post-webinar email funnels.

What’s a post-webinar email funnel?

Simply put, this is a series of emails that are sent out to attendees after the webinar that contain information to further educate them on the webinar topic.  Content of these emails can include, but is not limited to:

• A recording of the webinar
• A copy of the slideshow (if applicable)
• Links to additional educational resources
• Call-to-action to sign up for your service/buy your product
• Link to a schedule of upcoming webinars

The main objective of these post-webinar emails is to deliver a recording of the presentation to attendees, so they can watch it again at their leisure and really absorb the points covered. However, these emails also give us the chance to:

• Promote related webinars that our attendees should register for. This increases webinar attendance and creates more opportunities to deliver value to customers and prospects.

• Generate sales. While some attendees are already customers, many are not, and attended the webinar just to see what you have to offer. Your post-webinar emails should encourage prospects to start a trial of your product or service. These emails and calls to action can consistently generate new orders that likely would have slipped through the cracks without proper follow up.

Webinars + Email = Results

So what’s next?  Well, first make sure (if you haven’t already) to record your webinars.  The best case scenario would be to record them before the actual webinar takes place, that way attendees have a minimal wait to get that recording.

Then you’ll want to set up a series, maybe 2-3 emails, that include not only that recording but also any other content that would help your attendees better understand the material that was presented and make that decision to buy your product or sign up to your service.

Finally, it’s a good idea to track some of these actions.  Set up a simple spreadsheet to track the number of attendees, along with the number of sales that you record through those post-webinar emails.  Using these stats will help you identify what works, what doesn’t and where tweaks can be made in those post-webinar emails to make sure you’re providing the best content possible to your attendees.

 

THIS IS A SPECIAL GUEST POST BY ONE OF OUR ANYMEETING USERS. WANT TO WRITE FOR THE ANYMEETING BLOG? GET THE DETAILS.

 

Contest: Share Your Online Meeting Success Story

Nexus 7 Tablet

Have a great meeting or webinar that you recorded in AnyMeeting and want to share?

This is your chance to showcase your business, your experience, and a recent “meeting success story” with the AnyMeeting community.

Do you have a compelling presentation, case study, business tips, or something else you feel others can learn from, or be entertained by?

We want to hear from you. Contest details: Your “Meeting Success Story” may be entered throughout the month of August. Top story submissions will be featured on Facebook and on our blog. A winner will be selected and receive the grand prize of a new Google Nexus7 Tablet. Cool…

How do you enter? It’s easy. Simply send an email with a link to your AnyMeeting recorded meeting (or record a new one) to press@anymeeting.com (subject line: AnyMeeting Success Story Submission).

Be sure your “story” will help others learn (or laugh). Feel free to get creative. Include any details of the meeting or webinar results (e.g. how it helped your business). What was unique or interesting about your presentation, the meeting format, how you got people to attend your meeting and the results of your efforts?

This is a terrific opportunity to showcase your skills, highlight your business and win the new Google Android tablet! Start a New Meeting Now.

5 Tips For a Gold Medal Online Meeting Performance

Gold Medal Performance

We all get inspired and motivated from watching the Olympics.  Watching athletes give their best to earn a gold medal inspires us to give our best performance as business professionals.  A large part of the business world involves meetings, and a growing number of those meetings are online and involve web conferencing.

With this in mind, here are five tips that will help you give a gold medal worthy performance at your next online meeting.

1. Test your equipment – Make sure that the computer you will be using meets the requirements needed to properly host a meeting.  The AnyMeeting System Test is a great way to run a test on your computer and make sure you are good to go.
2. Avoid distractions – It’s important to be mindful of your location before you enter an online meeting and what distractions in the room (or on your person) may draw attention away from your presentation.  Make sure any distracting elements are not able to be seen or heard before you begin.  “When preparing for a Web meeting, imagine that your office is on stage and that the “audience” is in the room,” Chris Christopher, Microsoft Business.
3. Are you prepared? – Even if you are not the host of the meeting, you may still have to give a presentation.  Be sure to practice before the meeting to ensure a flawless performance.  You will also want to be mindful of your audience (the others in the meeting) and what questions or input they might have. “Make sure you have everything prepared before the meeting. Video conferencing will tend to magnify any lack of preparation on your part,” Mark Shead, Productivity 501.
4. Who speaks when? – Most online meetings have more than one person presenting.  If you are the host, make sure everyone knows when it is their turn to speak and/or present.  This will help ensure the flow of the meeting, and that everyone is ready when it’s time for their presentation.  “At the beginning of the virtual meeting, set ground rules for passing control and speaking,” Patrick Moran, Mashable Business.
5. Keep them engaged – Meetings, online or in person can be boring and tedious.  So, be sure to keep everyone engaged.  Have your audience answer questions, ask for input and/or questions from your audience, or even tell a joke or two (keep it clean though).  This will help keep your audience in the game and paying attention.  “Inject fun into the event. Need fun stuff sprinkled throughout,” Tony Karrer, eLearning Technology.

As business professionals, meetings have become a large part of our everyday lives at the office.  Be it with clients or colleagues, if your meeting is online, following these tips will help you give a gold medal presentation.