The most underutilized feature in a successful Zoom presentation is ...

• by Ted Janusz

Thirty million PowerPoint presentations are created each day.

Given our recent pandemic environment, many of them are now being delivered via Zoom!

But when giving a presentation using Zoom meetings, what is a critical feature that is often overlooked in the setup of a presentation?

Is it important to ...

Double your number of PowerPoint slides (with images, not text) from a live presentation, especially for visual learners, because participants no longer have you as the presenter using your entire body to help make the presentation more engaging and interesting?

Enable two monitors, so you can have separate windows on the screens for PowerPoint, Participants, and Chat?

Have a monitor appear behind you as the presenter, so that you can have a more attractive, television set-like appearance to your set?

Choose to display an uncluttered, professional background? [I once viewed a Zoom presentation where the presenter had gray hair. He chose a gray virtual background. I watched as his hair disappeared and reappeared as he moved his head. Needless to say, I didn't pay much attention to what he had to say!]

Have natural light or ring lights positioned in front of you, so that your face is illuminated properly?

Buy the latest webcam so that you deliver a crystal-clear image?

Upgrade your microphone from the one in your laptop or webcam, for a cleaner, richer sound?

Deliver your presentation from a standing position, for a more powerful presence, or position yourself on the screen so that you can fill most of the screen and appear more intimate with your audience? (Technology already separates you from your participants, so you don't want to look to be the size of a postage stamp in your setup.)

While all those considerations may be important, they may be more you-focused rather than participant-focused. The most underutilized feature for success of a Zoom meeting presentation is ... the Breakout Rooms.

It may be because Breakout Rooms do not appear with the standard setup of a Zoom meeting. Before your presentation, be sure to enable Breakout Rooms.

Why are Breakout Rooms so important?

It gets back to Presentation Skills 101 ...

The success of your Zoom presentation depends on how you make the event be about your participants and not about you.

While the content that you present is important, the most important factor in the success of any presentation is how you make a connection with your audience. Remember that unlike in a physical environment, your competition (email, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.) is now just a click away!

If your virtual presentation is not interesting and engaging, participants can always have it running in the background, while they check email or Instagram in the foreground. If you don't actively engage your participants, you may never know!

That is the beauty of the Breakout Rooms. When you as a presenter utilize Breakout Rooms in your virtual presentation, the participants never know when you might next call on them to join in with you on your presentation.

With one-way communication, and especially with a recorded webinar, they know that they can step away from their screens, possibly for an hour or even longer, and know that there will probably be no repercussions, as you drone on and on.

It may seem to be more efficient to use your presentation to simply dump content. But you are probably looking to be more effective; participants are more likely to retain information from a presentation that they feel they were a part of.

With Breakout Rooms, participants probably do not want to be embarrassed that everyone else will be talking, laughing, and joining in the fun, and they will be missing out. They will not want you to know that they were the only one to not accept your invitation to join a Breakout Room.

So strategically place Breakout Room sessions throughout your presentation. Have one early on in the session (resist the temptation to make your presentation be all about you). Keep your participants guessing as to when the next Breakout Room session will be!

For a three- or four-hour virtual presentation (which is about the maximum length that most participants can endure a virtual presentation), work in two Breakout Room sessions before the break, then one or two after the break.

You don't want to overdo use of this feature, either. Use it just enough to give your participants a mental break from you.

What participants crave and miss the most: human interaction

Since April 2020, I have delivered 100 three- and four-hour virtual presentations. And while I would like to think that I delivered stellar programs, the feature of those programs that gets the most rave reviews from participants is ... the Breakout Rooms.

"How do I get participants to turn on their video?"

Another challenge for virtual presenters is to get your audience to turn on their cameras. That is primarily what we presenters miss most about a virtual presentation: seeing the reactions of our participants.

Most of your audience will not want to let you into their lives if they feel disconnected from you. They will cherish that feeling of anonymity. But, if you have a Breakout Room session early on, they probably won't want to be the only participant in the room with their video off. Then they are more likely to leave the camera on for the rest of the presentation, especially if they anticipate another Breakout Room session coming up soon.

For the event at which I presented yesterday, the organizer told me afterward, "Because they didn't know each other, at the beginning of the presentation, the participants seemed quiet and shy, but once they came back from the first Breakout Room exercise, they were fired up and ready to go!"

Ted Janusz is a Certified Speaking Professional and a Certified Virtual Presenter. Through his on-site and virtual workshops and interactive keynote addresses, Ted has presented over 6,500 hours on relevant business topics in 49 of the 50 United States, across Canada from Halifax to Vancouver, and in Australia, Mexico and Puerto Rico. ted@januspresentations.com