Conducting an important presentation from home doesn’t necessarily make you any less nervous about it.
Just like any public speaking event, it’s not without excitement or challenges.
While you’ll be in a comfortable environment, you may be concerned about being able to effectively engage your audience when you’re not addressing them in person, or you may be concerned about how you’ll come across speaking into your camera.
However, some careful planning can help you conquer any apprehension and take on your presentation with confidence and poise.
Start Planning in Advance
Preparing your presentation at the last minute is bound to make you more nervous about it.
When you give yourself ample time to work on your materials, you’ll feel calmer about the presentation and you’ll be better able to organize the content as clearly and eloquently as possible.
Your preparation will come through to your audience when you’re speaking.
Make Use of Helpful Visual Aids
When you prepare strong visual aids to help in conveying what you want to say, you can have better assurance that your audience will stay engaged and be able to absorb the content of your presentation.
Use visual aids that are easily understandable but visually striking.
Assess the Quality of Your Internet Connection
You should test your internet capability to ensure that it will be able to handle a zoom call with good video quality and won’t freeze up on you.
Bear in mind that if you’ll be using a part of your home that you don’t ordinarily use to communicate online, your signal strength may be different.
If necessary, consider contacting your internet provider to raise your bandwidth or installing a signal repeater to eliminate any dead spots in your home.
Use a Teleprompter
Using a teleprompter will ensure that you say everything that you want to say exactly as you rehearsed it.
You won’t have to worry about losing your place in your presentation or getting mixed up as you look down at your notes.
An affordable teleprompter that you can use directly next to the camera on your device will make it easy for you to maintain eye contact with your audience while reading text that moves as you speak.
Anticipate Questions
Consider what would be some of the most likely questions that people would ask you about your presentation so you can feel ready to field questions effectively and articulately.
Jot down a few questions that would come to your mind if you were hearing about what you’re presenting for the first time.
Next, consider what information would address your questions clearly.
Create a Professional Looking Background
You want your background to look plain, neat, and organized.
Avoid addressing an audience from an area that appears to be in disarray, and don’t pick an area that has distracting items around you.
Any wall art or personal items in your frame should be relatively low-key and shouldn’t cause people to stop looking at you to look at what’s in your home.
Your environment should appear well-organized and professional.
Ensure a Quiet Environment
You don’t want loud noises or distractions to throw you off while you’re presenting or cause you to appear unprofessional.
Choose a location that you know will be relatively quiet.
Put any other people who are in your household on notice that you’ll need quite at a certain time.
You can take on your presentation with confidence when you start planning early, make use of helpful technology, and do what you can to control your environment.
Visualize your presentation going exactly as you’d like and go into with the right attitude to make a positive impression on your audience.