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E34 On Screen Behavior (And expectations!)

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Hey, I’m Grant: My clients call me The Webinar Guy.

Welcome to episode thirty-four of  “Zooming to Webinar Success!”

Today we’re going to talk about “On Screen Behavior in Webinars And Virtual Meetings. Oh yeah, and Expectations.”

Remember you can always catch up on all the episodes on TheWebinarGuy.com

I find it a fascinating thing how often in life, we forget where we are or what we’re truly doing. I’ll call it clueless. Yet that really doesn’t fit, because the virtual sessions I manage, moderate or host are with very bright and educated people. They are not clueless.

So to make my point, please forgive this next… Have you ever observed someone, say sitting on a park bench or at a food court, wherever. And Mindlessly, yeah we’ll go with mindlessly- they scratch this, or pick that, or well, ya know what I mean?

At first, we’re fascinated. Maybe grossed out, mostly surprised that someone would “do that” in public. I know that you and I have never done anything like that, but I digress.

In the last week, a speaker did a webinar on his phone. Not bad in and of itself, as it was on a holder. But during the session, he got a message, and we see this huge finger coming to the screen to clear it. Yeah. Twice.

Another phone user, a panelist that was walking around their office with their phone. When it was their turn, they stopped, said their piece. But then immediately started walking around again. Talk about distracting!

People in noisy places where you can barely hear them, or worse hear everything their co-worker is saying. Stupid things in backgrounds, and on and on.

But what to do?!

Let me step aside for a moment. I’m the webcast and podcast sponsor, TheWebinarGuy.com! (Yeah, that’s me). When you decide to plan your webinar and are looking for speaker training, or what I call stage craft training, we have many resources and would love to help you! Reach out to: WebinarPro@TheWebinarGuy.com, or visit our website (TheWebinarGuy.com) and use contact form! We’d love to work with you! Thanks for listening to my commercial!

So what to do?

First, I’m constantly amazed by people that seem to think its no big deal. I’m going to call it the Walmart generation. You know the people that just no longer care how they present themselves in public. The instances I just described aren’t that bad (yet?), but they point to a mindlessness of presentations.

Let’s talk about “Brand”. What IS a brand? Businesses spend billions each year defining, establishing, creating, marketing and protecting their brand. Then it comes to a webinar or other virtual event and, “meh, it’s no big deal.”

Your brand is everything, including the way you dress and present yourself. Including forgetting you are on camera and blowing your nose. Yeah, on camera. Unmuted. Honest.

The lady who sat sideways at her desk, but her top was caught on the desk and well, um.. let’s just say she was showing more than she intended. When I have to pause their video and interrupt, it’s embarrassing for all.

Maybe the word I was originally looking for was “unconscious”- not clueless.

I suppose the overarching point I’m trying to make is to approach your virtual summit or virtual event in a more conscious manner. Your role in the webinar or virtual meeting doesn’t matter. If you’ll be on camera, stop for a moment and think about how you are representing you and your brand.

This seems an obvious point. People still do get dressed up for going out, going to church, looking nice at a networking event, a date with a significant other; yet, the moment we get comfortable in front of a camera and no one else is in the room, we kinda forget ourselves.

So here’s a checklist for you to consider;

One: STOP and remember what you’re doing and say to yourself: I’m about to be on screen in front many people that will tell others about my webinar, or virtual meeting, or my role in it. Overall- how can I best prepare to be “present” in the webinar?

Two: What can I do with my background (or set) to best represent myself (and the brand). Are there dumb things in the background (Like that eighties hair-band poster with swimsuit models?). (That was last weeks winner.) And while we’re on this one, check your lighting to ensure its balanced! (Check webinar episodes seventeen, eighteen and nineteen for more on all these!)

Three: What wardrobe challenges might you have in that outfit? Take a moment to stand up, sit down, turn in your chair- whatever. Watch yourself in your camera to see what shows and might not work.

Four: Ambient Distractions. Really think about your space. Does your office face a windowed hallway where co-workers may wave as they pass and take your attention? (that one was last month). What if you’re facing outside and there’s construction next door, or the park, or… Please eliminate things that will take your eye focus off camera!

Five: On screen distractions. Whatever device you are using, do you have alerts of any kind turned on? An open browser window (even though hidden), that will ding, ping, or dong when you get a message or email? Any alarms that might go off while in session? Most likely your audience will be part of these interruptions.

Six: When we used to do in person seminars or conferences and we’re in a room of say two-hundred people. As the speaker you KNOW somebody always has their eyes on you. But some people are looking elsewhere. Well, in a screen presented zoom meeting or Demio presentation, remember that other than their own distractions, you are probably filling the screen. You are all they have to look at.

Seven: Silly things like, clean your glasses BEFORE you come on stage/screen. Make one last trip to mirror and make sure your buttons are buttoned (oh yeah and buttoned evenly). That your hair is behaving. Reminder here to turn your head to make sure that pesky cowlick is behaving. One last look behind you to hide thing that will show that you don’t want seen.

Eight: Mute your mic if you need to sneeze or cough? We all have it happen and I realize sometimes those sneezes come from nowhere. If REALLY sudden at least turn from the mic if you can. And if something is bugging you…

Rule Nine: Like you need to scratch your nose, or yell at your barking dog, excuse yourself for a second, turn off your camera and mic, adjust the blouse, blow your nose, whatever… take a moment to get composed and come back on with a smile and thank your audience for their grace in that moment.

Ten: be conscious. Stay conscious. Think like your Brand. Talk like your brand. Act like your brand. BE the brand.

Hopefully you enjoyed this food for thought.

—– —–

This series is for smaller organizations and solopreneurs that may not be tech savvy, don’t know all the steps, or don’t WANT to know all the steps.

Over the series, I’m going to lead you through the significant decisions and capabilities you’ll need to “Zoom to Webinar Success!” If you have a subject you’d like me to cover, please subscribe, then drop me a note or comment.

As always, if you need help now, don’t hesitate to reach out to WebinarPro@TheWebinarGuy.com

Thank you for watching! Would love to hear your questions and comments! Don’t forget to tell a friend or two!

And if you’re listening to the Podcast audio, thanks for listening!

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E26: Using Polls in your Webinar

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Welcome to episode twenty-six of “Zooming to Webinar Success!”

Hey, I’m Grant: My clients call me The Webinar Guy.

Today we’re going to talk about doing polls during your webinar or virtual presentation.

In the last two episodes I talked about how to best handle hecklers. In the last, episode twenty-five specifically “to mute or not to mute.” If you missed it, head to TheWebinarGuy.com and look for episode twenty-five.

It’s hard to believe I’m at episode twenty-six! Slowly, but surely, I’m working through TheWebinarGuy’s Webinar prep sheet. There are more than eighty considerations included! If you’d like a copy, hit my website and sign up for my newsletter list, or drop me an email on the address on the screen. We’ll make sure you get a copy!

Okay, the point here is that I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface on webinar or virtual meeting preparation.

On that prep sheet, (currently item #93 in the growing list) is the question of if you are including polls in your virtual presentation.

So let’s look at the question of WHY you’d do a poll.

But let’s take a step back from that.

What are you doing? Are planning a webinar, virtual presentation, virtual summit, meeting, etc.? What’s the goal of the session? I have a previous episode on that, by the way

Depending on the platform, or the type of session you’re planning, you may or may not be able to do a poll.

Let’s say we can do a poll to simplify things for this episode.

So WHY you’d do a poll covers two essential topics:

The first is getting audience engagement or interaction.

Second, get information that may/not be important to your presentation or business goals.

In my mind, the most attractive thing is to get audience engagement.

You’re a great speaker. You’ve got great content. But it’s also great to have more interaction, more engagement.

Adding a poll early can add interest to your presentation. There are literally no limits to polls, but a warning here. Use them judiciously. Going overboard will also wear out your audience. I’m not sure there is a “right number” to do, just use them for real purposes.

Tell your audience the purpose of your poll to help them engage. Say we’re doing a webinar on bitcoin or cryptocurrency. I do many of these for clients in foreign countries. And say we’re trying to determine the demographics of our audience.

So I’d tell the audience, “We’d like to know more about your crypto interest. We’re going do a simple poll to find out.”

That poll might include:

One client recently had nearly one-hundred attendees on their last webinar.

Most were invited to attend, so my client knew who they were for the most part-probably had their email.

So how could you use that data? I’d be immediately reaching out to the last two groups to get them on our platform. Then to those that have been investing, but have less than stellar results, and I’d leave the last group for later follow up.

Based on the results of that survey (during the webinar), the next part of my presentation might jump to a part of the script that concentrates on the goals of the client, in this case the newer users.

I could follow up that poll with one immediately after and ask, “For those of you who are considering investing…” and get more definition on prospects.

There are just so may ways to use polls. I hope you can see that when you get information, you also get engagement. You could poll for fun too. But keep the fun related to the subject. Just polling my cryptocurrency audience on who’s ever blown up a balloon would be both irrelevant and confusing to the audience. Yeah, I know that was a stretch, but you get the point!

Another way to do an informal poll is to just have people react in the chat box if you’ve set it to be available. Questions here can be, “Drop your location in the chat box!”, “If you’re brand new to cryptocurrency, type your name”, “Do you send emails to your partners?” and other ways to just get people involved. Again, back to subject matter and what you’re trying to accomplish.

I want to do a poll right now! Let’s use the comment box if you would. If you like these videos and podcasts, thank our podcast sponsor, TheWebinarGuy.com! Yeah, that’s me, drop in a comment!

Knowing how to setup polls and getting them right are really critical for professional webinar management. When you begin to plan an all-day event, a virtual summit, or your first webinar and want to get all the details right, hit me at WebinarPro@TheWebinarGuy.com, or visit our website (TheWebinarGuy.com) and use contact form! We’d be honored to work with you! Thanks!

I’ll be doing more on these and different subjects, so please subscribe and tell a friend or two! And if you have a subject you’d like me to cover, let me know!

—– —–

This series is for smaller organizations and solopreneurs that may not be tech savvy, don’t know all the steps, or don’t WANT to know all the steps.

Over the series, I’m going to lead you through the significant decisions and capabilities you’ll need to “Zoom to Webinar Success!”

As always, if you need help now, don’t hesitate to reach out at WebinarPro@TheWebinarGuy.com

Thank you for watching! Would love to hear your questions and comments! Don’t forget to tell a friend!

And if you’re listening to the Podcast audio, thanks for listening!

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E25: To Mute, or Not To Mute. That is the question!

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Welcome to episode twenty-five of “Zooming to Webinar Success!”

Hey, I’m Grant: My clients call me The Webinar Guy.

Today we’re going to talk about how to Muting your guests.

Last episode I talked about how to best handle hecklers, those people that think YOUR webinar or meeting is their place to grind an axe with you or your organization or are just plain rude. If you missed it, head to TheWebinarGuy.com and look for episode twenty-four.

In that episode, I mentioned muting your audience as one strategy to abate hecklers. In zoom, you can hold a webinar, an event, or a simpler meeting. In a webinar, your audience is not visible (no video), there is no way for them to talk, essentially, they can only listen to your presentation. And there are times you may need that option.

An event is a whole different animal, so we’ll ignore that as the vast majority of my clients are holding simple meetings.

So, we’ll talk about the Zoom platform meeting format. Other platforms have similar options, but we’ll stay with Zoom.

First log into Zoom in a browser and look at your SETTINGS menu.

Then look for: “Schedule a Meeting settings”. Then look for the setting,

Mute all participants when they join a meeting.

This allows you toAutomatically mute all participants when they join the meeting. The host controls whether participants can unmute themselves.

You can also set this when you schedule a meeting, in the meeting scheduler, under the “Options” section, you may select the box to, “Mute participants on entry”. But understand that this does not keep them from Un-Muting themselves!

Note that for some options you need to have the latest software version installed on your device.

Next, (back to the browser account) in the:

 “In Meeting (Advanced)” settings and look for:
Request permission to unmute

Zoom says: “Select this option in the scheduler to request permission to unmute meeting participants and webinar panelists. Permissions, once given, will apply in all meetings scheduled by the same person.”

Again, be sure to understand these settings and what they do- how they act. I mentioned last episode having a guy unmute and spew a verbal attack at my client a while back. This was because I’d allowed participants to unmute themselves. There are more scenarios here than I can explain but…

How about a quick commercial for our podcast sponsor, TheWebinarGuy.com! Yeah, that’s me! Knowing these settings and getting them right are really critical for professional webinar management. When you begin to plan an all-day event, a virtual summit, or your first webinar and want to get all the details right, hit me at WebinarPro@TheWebinarGuy.com, or visit our website (TheWebinarGuy.com) and use contact form! We’d be honored to work with you! Thanks!

So why mute your audience? Most of you listening have been on a virtual call, right? And the doorbell rings. Or somebody’s smoke alarm is chirping every sixty seconds! Would you please change your battery!?!? But they don’t even hear it anymore! The dog barks, the parakeet squawks, kids, clueless teens and more. MUTE them!!

Most of the sessions we run, we mute people on entry. We normally start sessions (Think start letting people in) five minutes ahead. Nearly every, single, session, SOMEBODY has to unmute to say hi! Ask if they can be heard and so on. Despite the fact that the slide being shown asks people to stay muted.

Some people’s kids abhor silence.

Once in a meeting, say -some or all of your audience has unmuted. At the bottom of the participants list is a “Mute All” button. When you click that, you have the choice for Zoom to mute all current and NEW participants. Here’s the thing to double check: There is another checkbox that says “Allow Participants to unmute themselves.”

If you leave that on, muting your audience can be irrelevant as they can unmute at any time.

If you click that off and your audience clicks their mic to unmute, they’ll get a message that the host isn’t allowing them to unmute.

Then, as the host, look for the three-dot ellipsis to the right of “Mute All.” There, you’ll note that “Allow Participants to unmute themselves” is NOT currently checked.

Re-check this box at any time and now participants can unmute themselves. Say you’re now ready for Q&A for example.

After the debacle above with Mr. Important acting like a donkey’s rear, I allow the audience to unmute and chat, and answer a question or two at the beginning of the meeting to get involvement going. Then I tell them I’m muting mics for all the reasons above.

So, while I’m talking, I’ll have no interruptions. Yes, That Guy could still honk off at the beginning of the session, but I’m more casual and able to mute quickly at that point then when I’m in the middle of my scripted presentation.

Again, there are many strategies for muting and not. The type of presentation you’re doing may require your audience to unmute to answer questions or be involved in a discussion.

However, I strongly advise that you have something on the screen that suggests people stay muted when not speaking for the reasons previously stated. You’d think people would know by now, but I can assure you from the hundreds of webinars I personally manage every year, that people forget to mute, and some are clueless.

As I mentioned last episode (twenty-four), having a moderator to manage your session also serves this greatly!

I hope this helps you consider your muting options for your virtual meetings or virtual summit. And as always, TheWebinarGuy.com is here to help!

—– —–

This series is for smaller organizations and solopreneurs that may not be tech savvy, don’t know all the steps, or don’t WANT to know all the steps.

Over the series, I’m going to lead you through the significant decisions and capabilities you’ll need to “Zoom to Webinar Success!”

As always, if you need help now, don’t hesitate to reach out at WebinarPro@TheWebinarGuy.com

Thank you for watching! Would love to hear your questions and comments! Don’t forget to tell a friend!

And if you’re listening to the Podcast audio, thanks for listening!