Section 07 / 08

Speaking Online

Online, the room is gone and a lens is your audience. The skills transfer, but the mechanics change more than most speakers realize.

1. 01

   The lens is the eye contact

   On camera, looking at the faces on your screen reads as looking away. Eye contact happens only when you look into the lens, so deliver your key moments straight to it, especially openings, closings, and direct asks. It feels unnatural to you and looks like connection to them.

2. 02

   Camera at eye level, notes next to the lens

   A camera below your eyeline has the audience looking up your nose while you appear to look down on them. Raise it to eye level or a touch above. Then drag your notes, slides, and participant video to the part of the screen nearest the lens, so your eyes barely travel when you glance at them.

3. 03

   Audio beats video, so invest accordingly

   Audiences forgive a soft image; they will not tolerate bad sound. A modest external or headset mic in a quiet, soft-furnished room beats an expensive camera with echoing laptop audio every time. If you upgrade one piece of equipment, upgrade the microphone.

4. 04

   Light your face from the front

   Sitting with a bright window behind you turns you into a silhouette. Face the window instead, or put a soft light behind your camera. Online, your face does the work your body language did in the room, so the audience has to be able to see it.

5. 05

   Turn the energy up a notch

   Cameras and compression flatten you: voices lose range, gestures shrink, and what felt expressive in the room arrives as monotone. Compensate deliberately with more vocal variety than feels natural and visible gestures inside the frame, and stand up if you can. Slightly too animated on camera reads as exactly right.

6. 06

   Re-engage every few minutes

   Online attention decays faster, and you can't read the room to feel it happening. Build interaction into the plan rather than hoping for it: a question in chat, a poll, a name-check, a pause for reactions every few minutes. Treat silence from a remote audience as a prompt to change gears, not as permission to keep going.