Public Speaking in Virtual Presentations and Webinars
Liam Sandford
Liam Sandford is a Head of Marketing, public speaking expert, and 2x Best Selling Author including the book Effortless Public Speaking. He helps ambitious professionals and entrepreneurs communicate with impact to get noticed, grow their career, and build their business.
You are alone in a room, talking to a grid of muted squares and a handful of switched off cameras, with no real sense of whether anyone is still there. That is the strange reality of a virtual presentation. And the ability to land one anyway, when you cannot see a single face nodding back, has quietly become one of the most valuable skills a professional can own.
Here is the short answer before we go deep: a virtual presentation is not a thinner version of the real thing, and it is not a performance either. It is a conversation you happen to be having through a lens. Treat it that way, master the platform so it stops stealing your attention, ask for what you want in the middle rather than the end, and switch between your slides and your face to keep people awake. Do those things and you will outperform most people on the call, including the ones with more experience than you.
I want to show you why by starting with a number that surprised me.
The Middle of a Webinar Is Worth More Than the End
I once ran a webinar to around 250 people. Standard setup, software product, the usual plan to save the sales ask for the closing slide. Instead I did something different. Right in the middle, while the energy was at its highest, I dropped in a single poll asking who wanted a demo.
Sixty people said yes. Sixty demo requests, there and then, from one prompt placed at the peak of the session rather than tacked on at the end.
That is not a follow up email number. Those 60 requests came in live, during the poll, in the middle of the room. Had I waited for the final slide, the way almost every webinar does, most of those people would have already drifted, closed the tab, or half listened while answering an email. I would have asked a thinner, more distracted audience for the biggest thing I wanted from them.
This is the single most important idea in this guide, so I will state it plainly: ask for what you want in the middle of your presentation, not at the end. Attention is the most valuable currency you have, and online it drains faster than in any physical room. The middle is where you are richest. Spend it.
Everything else here supports that principle. If you hold attention, and you ask while you still have it, a virtual presentation becomes the most efficient speaking format there is.
Why Virtual Presenting Feels Just as Nerve Racking as a Stage
Even experienced speakers underestimate presenting online. A virtual presentation triggers many of the same responses as an in person one. Your heart races, your mouth goes dry, your mind sprints ahead to the mistake you have not made yet. Online, those reactions can feel worse, because the audience gives you almost nothing back. No nods, no smiles, no leaning in. You are performing into a void and your brain fills that void with worry.
Those physical reactions are your body's fight or flight response doing its job. A racing heart and butterflies are not signs you are underprepared. They are signs your body is gearing up to help you deliver. Nerves are fuel. Read them as normal and you approach the camera with control rather than panic.
So do not fight the energy. Channel it. That charge makes your delivery dynamic. It lets you lean on a key point and vary your tone instead of droning. A little preparation and a little reframing turn the anxiety into focus. Understanding why you feel it is the first step to using it.
Treat It as a Conversation, Not a Performance
The most common mistake in a virtual presentation is overthinking the performance. It is easy to imagine criticism that is not there and to chase a flawless delivery instead of connecting with the audience.
Public speaking is just a conversation without the pressure environment. That is as true through a webcam as it is on a stage. Your audience is not there to grade your gestures. They want to understand what you can do for them. Shift your own framing from performance to conversation and the pressure drops, because you stop trying to be impressive and start trying to be useful.
Speak to the call as if you were speaking to one person over coffee, even when there are hundreds on the line. That framing keeps you warm and relatable instead of stiff and remote.
And build in the moments a conversation naturally has. A pause after a key point gives people a beat to take it in. A question, a request for a chat reply, a poll, all of it turns passive watching into something closer to dialogue. Aim for connection, not perfection, and your real personality does the rest.
Master the Platform Before You Present
Technical familiarity is quiet confidence. When you know your webinar tool cold, you stop spending mental effort on it, and the attention that frees up goes straight into your message. Fumbling for the screen share button in front of 200 people is a self inflicted wound.
Learn the Features That Earn Engagement
Every platform has its own kit. Go and find the screen share, the polls, the breakout rooms and the chat before the day, not during it. The poll matters most, because a poll placed well is how you cash in on the principle above, asking in the middle. Know exactly how to launch one without breaking stride.
Test the Whole Chain
Before you go live, check your camera angle, your lighting and your audio. Make sure the camera frames you cleanly and your voice comes through without distortion. Then run the transitions, slide to poll to video and back, so nothing snags in front of the audience. A tested setup earns trust before you have said a word, and it means a stray technical glitch cannot knock you off your rhythm.
When the tools are second nature, your cognitive load drops and you can give the audience all of you instead of half of you.
Let Your Personality Do the Work
Your personality is your greatest asset on a virtual call. Online audiences respond to a real human with energy, and when yours comes through the session stops feeling like a broadcast and starts feeling like a conversation worth staying in.
Your voice, your face, your pacing, your gestures all carry that energy. Smile. Move naturally. Vary your tone. It is contagious even through a screen, and it creates presence when you have no room to command you. As Carl Buehner put it, people do not remember what you say so much as how you made them feel. That is doubly true online, where the words are competing with a dozen open tabs.
Slides Support You, They Do Not Replace You
Slides are a visual aid for your story, not a script to read off. On a webcam the speaker is often a small square, which means a busy slide can swallow the whole screen and push you out of the picture entirely.
Design each slide for the audience, not as a prompt for yourself. An image, a single keyword, a chart, one clear graphic. Something that reinforces the point rather than reciting it. Keep to nine words a slide at most and one message per slide. A clean slide keeps attention on your message and keeps you central. PowerPoint is not your prompt, it is your support act. You should be able to survive a dead projector and still deliver the whole thing.
Stop Sharing Your Screen
Here is a tactic almost nobody uses, and almost everybody should. When you share your screen the whole time, your face shrinks into a corner and the session goes flat, because a static slide is mostly a still image. The moment you stop sharing and your face fills the frame, the change itself pulls eyes back. Movement catches attention in a room, and a switch of view does the same thing online.
Toggle it deliberately. Share to show something specific, then come off share to make a point straight down the lens. It resets a drifting audience and brings back anyone who wandered. It is not how webinars are usually run, but it should be. It matters even more if you plan to repurpose the recording for YouTube or social, because you hold far more attention talking to camera than narrating the same slide for five minutes.
Use Notes Without Reading a Script
Notes are support, never a substitute for preparation or natural delivery. Reading from a script drains the life out of the room and makes you sound like a robot. Do not script it out word for word. Instead, run on a structure.
Use the Nano Speech: open with a hook, deliver your main point in one sentence, back it with a story or some data, then close with a clear next step. Never open with an agenda, because an agenda gives the audience permission to think about something else. For a longer webinar, stack nano speeches with short transitions between them. The structure keeps you on track and keeps the thing moving without a script to hide behind.
Keep any notes concise and place them close to the lens, so a glance prompts a key point without your eyes wandering off the camera. They should trigger a thought, not spell out a sentence. Practise speaking freely against them until the delivery feels like a conversation, not a recital.
Start Small and Build Up
Confidence is success remembered. It is built rep by rep, and the most recent reps are the ones your brain recalls most easily. So do not throw yourself in the deep end with a high stakes external webinar as your first outing.
Begin With Low Stakes Rooms
Start where the pressure is low. A team meeting, a check in, a small internal workshop. These are safe places to practise the core skills without a large or critical audience watching. Use them to experiment: make eye contact with the lens, vary your vocal tone, use your hands naturally, read the chat and the few visible faces and adjust in the moment.
Small sessions are also where you can trial the interactive bits, the polls and the chat prompts, without much on the line. You get immediate feedback and you get to see what really works for you. Each small win reinforces your competence and makes the next, bigger session feel less like a leap.
Then Increase Size and Complexity
Once the small rooms feel comfortable, scale up. Move to a slightly larger meeting to practise projecting energy and holding camera eye contact with more people watching. Add richer content, a visual aid, a Q&A, a poll. Each successful presentation stacks on the last and shrinks the anxiety for the next. Comfortable, then confident, then competent, in that order. By the time you reach a formal external webinar, you are not gambling. You are drawing on a bank of reps.
Techniques to Engage an Online Audience
Engaging a virtual audience takes deliberate planning. In a physical room your presence and energy can carry attention on their own. Online they cannot. Without intentional engagement people slide into passive viewing, start multitasking, and quietly leave the tab open while their mind checks out. So you plan the engagement in, layer by layer.
Look at the Lens, Not Your Own Face
The simplest move with the most impact online is to look into the camera rather than at your own video feed. That creates the illusion of direct eye contact and makes each person feel personally addressed. Even brief moments looking straight at the lens, especially on your key points, lift the sense of connection noticeably.
To make it stick, put a small reminder next to the camera, and turn off your own self view once you are running so you stop monitoring your face. Practise it in low stakes calls until looking at the lens feels natural rather than forced.
Vary Your Voice and Use Silence
A monotone is the fastest way to lose an online audience. Vary your pitch, your pace and your volume. Slow down to introduce something important, lift your voice a touch to mark a key idea. And use silence on purpose. A pause after a big point gives people time to absorb it, and a pause before one builds anticipation. Momentum is not about speed, it is about progress, and a well placed pause is part of that.
Build In Interaction, and Time It Well
Polls, chat questions and short exercises turn watching into participating. A quick poll checks understanding or gathers opinion. An open question pulls people out of passive mode. Breakout rooms create real discussion in a large group. Interaction at regular intervals stops the fatigue that kills long webinars.
And remember where your most valuable interaction goes. The poll that pulled 60 demos worked because it sat at the peak of the session, not at the end. When you plan your interactive moments, do not save the most important ask for last. Put it in the middle, where attention is richest.
Practise to Build Camera Presence, But Do Not Rewatch Yourself
Consistent practice is the foundation of confident virtual presenting. Being comfortable on camera does not happen overnight. Every video call, however small, is a chance to rehearse. Treat a team meeting or a client check in as a mini practice session and focus on speaking clearly, projecting energy and holding a steady presence on camera.
Repetition works because it makes the unfamiliar familiar. The first time you present virtually you feel self conscious. After a handful of reps the camera stops feeling like a spotlight and starts feeling like a conversation.
Now, a warning that runs against the usual advice. You will often be told to record your practice sessions and rewatch them. I do not recommend that while you are still building confidence, and I say this from watching it backfire again and again. Recording yourself and studying the playback tends to trigger what I call the Circle of Doom: you spot every flaw, you replay the imperfect moment, the fear grows, the tension makes the next attempt worse, and round it goes. If you would not give a colleague the harsh feedback you give yourself on a rewatch, do not give it to yourself either.
Build your reps live instead. Real calls, real audiences, however small. Reflect on what went well and what you would tweak next time, then move on. That is the Circle of Success working in your favour: success, reflection, confidence, progress. Compare yourself to your past self, not to a polished speaker on YouTube. Once you are a genuinely confident, competent speaker, targeted review has its place. While you are climbing, the camera should be pointed at your audience, not at your own doubts. For more on polishing delivery, work through the Ultimate Guide to Public Speaking.
Optimise Your Virtual Environment
What you present from shapes how people read you. Online, with no stage to lend you gravity, your audience judges you heavily on your visual and audio cues. A cluttered space pulls attention off your message. A clean, well lit one quietly says you are a professional worth listening to.
Light, Sound and Background
Keep the backdrop clean and neutral, free of clutter or anything busy behind you. A plain wall, a simple bit of decoration, or a tidy branded background all work. Light your face from the front, ideally with natural light or a soft lamp, and avoid a bright window behind you that throws your face into shadow. On sound, use a quiet room, close the windows, and get a decent microphone, because poor audio loses an audience faster than poor video ever will.
My Actual Home Setup
To make this concrete, here is the exact kit I record and present with from home, through a UK winter where daylight is scarce. A Logitech Brio 4K webcam for a sharp image. A Blue Yeti microphone on a Maono boom arm, so the mic sits close and out of shot and my desk stays clear. A Qhot lavalier as a backup for when I move around. And a 10-inch ring light to fill in the front lighting the winter sky refuses to provide.
You do not need all of that to start, and I would not want you to think you do. A laptop camera near a window with a cheap clip on mic will get you a long way. But if you present online often, upgrading the microphone first and the lighting second is where your money buys the biggest jump in how credible you look and sound. The camera matters least of the three.
Notes Near the Lens
Place minimal notes around your camera so you can glance at them without breaking eye contact. Keep them concise and aligned to your Nano Speech structure so they act as a safety net, not a script. A prompt should remind you of a transition, an example, or the poll you are about to launch, not hand you a full sentence to read. That keeps your flow natural and your personality front and centre through a longer session.
Frequently Asked Questions About Virtual Presentations
How long should a virtual presentation really be?
Shorter than you think, and shorter than the in person equivalent. Attention decays faster on a screen, so a webinar that would run 60 minutes in a room often lands better trimmed hard and broken up with interaction. Do not fill time for the sake of it. If you can make the point in five words, do not use 10. Plan your one core message, stack a couple of nano speeches around it, put your key ask in the middle, and stop when you are done rather than when the clock says you can.
Should I present standing up or sitting down?
Standing, if your setup allows it. Standing opens your chest, steadies your breathing and gives your voice more energy and range, all of which the camera picks up. It also stops the slumped, static look that a chair tends to produce over a long session. If you must sit, sit forward, keep your hands free to gesture, and make sure the camera is at eye level rather than pointing up at you. Either way, do not hide, and give yourself room to move.
How do I handle a technical failure in the middle of a presentation?
Calmly and out loud. If your slides freeze or your share drops, say so plainly and keep talking, because you were never relying on the slides anyway. This is exactly why PowerPoint is your support act and not your prompt: if you can deliver the whole thing with a dead projector, a glitch is a shrug rather than a disaster. Have the platform basics tested in advance, keep a phone hotspot ready as a backup connection, and remember the audience forgives a technical hiccup far faster than they forgive a speaker who visibly falls apart.
What is the ideal setup for a professional webinar?
Three things carry most of the impression: light, sound and background. Light your face from the front, use a decent microphone in a quiet room, and keep the background clean and neutral. Prioritise the microphone first if you are spending money, because audio quality does more for credibility than resolution does. Place concise notes near the lens so your eyes stay on the camera, and test the entire chain, camera, mic, slides and polls, before you go live so nothing surprises you in front of the audience.
TL;DR: How to Master Virtual Presentations
A strong virtual presentation comes down to holding attention, asking for what you want while you still have it, and setting the room up so nothing distracts from your message.
Put your most important ask, the poll or the request, in the middle of the session where attention is highest, not at the end. A poll dropped into the middle of a webinar to 250 people once earned me 60 demo requests live.
Treat it as a conversation, not a performance, and channel the nerves into energy rather than fighting them.
Master the platform in advance so the tools stop stealing your focus, especially the poll.
Switch between screen sharing and your camera to reset a drifting audience, and keep slides to nine words at most.
Run on the Nano Speech structure with concise notes near the lens, never a word for word script.
Build reps on real, low stakes calls, but do not rewatch recordings of yourself while you are still building confidence, because that feeds the Circle of Doom.
Get the light, sound and background right, and spend on the microphone before the camera.
More From Liam Sandford
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