I have a bad habit of not looking up from my cell phone when someone is talking to me. I am listening, yes, but I am not giving that impression. When I keep my attention on my phone, I’m sending the non-verbal message that I am not listening.

In communication studies the person talking is called the “sender” and the person listening is called “the receiver”. When the receiver has their head down, looking at their phone, or doing something else, they are not as engaged in the conversation as the sender might like. I need to teach myself how to put down the phone and become a better receiver. Here are three keys to becoming an effective receiver.

1. Take a moment to digest the sender’s body language. When a message is being delivered, a lot of it is going to be inferred through the non-verbal messages displayed by the speaker. Your job as the receiver is to make inferences to what is being said and how it is being displayed by the presenter. Your sender’s body language is going to tell you a lot of things that are "unsaid" in the presentation and it’s important to watch for those signals, and not just listen to the words with your head down in your laptop or your smartphone.
2. Resist the urge to finish the sender’s thoughts or sentences. When listening, there is a temptation to try and think about how you are going to respond. The problem with this is that you develop preconceived notions of the message that is being sent and it’s not always an easy task to dismiss the assumptions you’ve made when you “think ahead” of the speaker. You don’t want to miss the message because you’re trying to figure it out. Bonus: One way to practice this is to wait 5 seconds after someone talks before you respond. We don’t recommend this as a permanent fix because it will feel awkward and you might look crazy.
3. Give the sender some feedback. No, you don’t need to interrupt the sender to give them feedback. Much like how you will be watching their nonverbal movements to make sure you are also sending non-verbal signals. Make eye contact or nod along with your speaker to show you’re actively engaged.

In order to be an effective receiver, you need to focus on your active listening skills. Beyond these tips there are plenty more things you can do to be an active listener.

What other keys necessary to be an effective receiver?

Last month, we rolled out our completely revamped web conferencing software. If you read our blog post about the announcement, you know we’re very excited about it. If not, you should, it’s a great introduction to the web conference system.

Since more of our new and current customers are calling us to ask about the program, I’ve noticed that we all have different ways of explaining things. I put together a useful tool to help you understand the terms that we’re using as they apply to our web conference system.

Webinar - Lots of people use this term differently, but to us a webinar is simply where you’re having a conference with a visual element.

Application Sharing – From the list of opened programs on your computer you can select any one of those programs to share with your participants. It limits the exposure of your computer screen and any notifications you get while sharing.

Audio Over the Web – Participants can now choose the option to listen to the audio streaming over the web. If they choose this option, they will not be able to participate in the audio portion of the conference, like raising their hand for questions.

Moderators – A moderator is a person who will control the aspects of the conference call. This includes the audio portions and sharing information.

Speaker - A speaker is different from a moderator in the sense that they can only share their programs and applications. They cannot remove participants or control the audio portions of the conference call. It’s a great way to invite different people to your conference line without having to give out your moderator code.

Conference Controls – There are two different sets of controls on web conferencing. One set of controls is for your sharing of information, like your desktop or video. The other will help you control and moderate your audio portions of your web conference.

Desktop Sharing – Different from application sharing, this option will share your entire display. It’s an easy choice when you have a lot of different things that you need to show. There is some risk with desktop sharing because anything that is on your computer will be shown to participants – including instant messages, email alerts, or web browsing.

Those are just some of the terms that you might hear one of our operators going over with you. If you want to know more about our web conferencing options give us a call and we can answer any of your questions about these options and more.

Participants have a lot of distractions in front of them when they try to sit down and attend a meeting or web conference. As a speaker, you’re suddenly up against unseen foes of Facebook, Twitter, and email. Most participants will tune in completely to your webinar for the first couple of minutes, but after that, if you do not hold their attention, they will start to drift.

If you don’t want to lose your participants to the weeds of the Internet and other distractions, there are a couple of things you can do during your call to make sure you’re doing what you can to keep their attention.

Pace Yourself.

When you're speaking and presenting on a webinar, you are up against the clock. When presenters are up against the clock one of two things usually happens – they either go through the information entirely too fast, or they get lost in the minutia of their information. Practicing before the event in your allotted time will help you get the right pacing down and make any last minute changes.

Interact with Participants.

During the call, use polls and visuals to keep them engaged. Offer a prize for the best question to the speaker or set up a Twitter hash tag for participants to submit comments and questions about your presentation. If you decide to use Twitter during the conference make sure you have someone manning the account that can respond promptly. You can always go back later and personally respond to your messages, but don’t try to do that while you’re presenting.

Remember the Golden Rule.

Never read directly from your slides or handouts. I’m honestly surprised at how so many speakers continue to make this single mistake when it comes to trying to keep their audience involved in their conferences. Reading word for word from slides is the most direct way to get participants to "check out" of your conference. Why would they need to listen to you when they can just refer back to the copy of the slides? They should be used as a guide and not serve as a script.

Web conferencing technology is here to stay and will no doubt become even more prevalent in your day to day business operations. It’s a good idea to start making these changes to your presentation techniques now so that you’re not behind the curve later.

How do you connect with participants on webinars?

We have some exciting additions to our web conferencing platform.

Video Conferencing

Share your video as part of the web conference so participants feel like they are in the same room.

Desktop and Application Sharing

Our program allows moderators to share their screens with a simple download. Participants observe as you navigate through websites or share your programs directly from your PC.

YouTube Video Sharing

Share your video directly with participants using the URL from youtube.com. Pause and play the video as needed.

Added Timed Polls

Put a time limit on responses from participants.

No Download for Participants

Participants will continue to access all of these new features through the web.

Stay tuned for audio streaming over the web for participants.

Call today 800.989.9239 for a one on one demo.

This week, I read this awesome post over on Copyblogger called How to Use Webinars to Create Great Relationships with Prospects and Customers. The blog is highly indepth about how you can reach out to customers and make sales connections by inviting them to Q&A sessions or with coaching programs. I have personally written about using Q&A session with customers in a webinar format before and how it can offer great benefit to your company by knowing what your customers want to know more about.

These are great ideas and I fully support them, but there are some things you have to keep in mind when approaching using a webinar for any part of your business.

Pay Attention to Your Time Constraints

Understand exactly how long it is going to take you to present the information to your customers, clients, or co-workers. Give yourself a little extra time on either side of the webinar for any last minute hold ups or if you happen to run a little long in a Q&A session. Most webinars are scheduled for an hour and have anywhere from 30 - 45 minutes of presentation time and then the rest is Q&A from the audience.

Don't Host a Webinar Just to Do It

Ever been a participant on a webinar where you've heard it all before? Instead of presenting buzz words and tired information, have something new and interesting to present. You can invite speakers to your webinars so that they can give a fresh perspective on the topic. You can invite a blogger in your niche to come on the line and have an open discussion with participants or debate over how to do something. You can also present new research on how your kinds of products are being used in businesses, so that your potential customers can see how the products will benefit them in the short and long run. If participants feel like they scheduled an hour to hear something you've already heard before means they are less likely to sign up for your businesses webinar event again, and it means you will stick in the minds of your participants for all of the wrong reasons.

Always Have Q&A Options

No matter how well you present a topic or how much you know about a subject - there will always be questions. It's not a bad thing, in fact, it's great because sometimes your audience can lead you to an idea you might have never thought of yourself. You have to give them a way to ask these questions and sometimes the idea of having to speak the question can be a bit of a hold up for participants. Use a webinar service that is going to provide both audio and some other form of question forum (like chat) to help give everyone a way to feel comfortable asking those questions. Provide an email address for the ones that you can't get to in the alloted time.

Using a webinar is a great tool for reaching out to current customers, clients, and even a public who might never have been exposed to your brand. If you're going to take on the importance of webinars in business, you have to be ready to make them useful and informative.

What kinds of thing are you doing to make your webinars stand out from a crowd? How are you engaging with participants during the presentation to make sure they are really getting what they came for?

I recently attended a conference and noticed something that was very disturbing. There was a plague sweeping all of the wonderful speakers that I had been looking forward to hear share their thoughts and ideas. It wasn’t the Black Death, nor was it some horrible unspeakable disease that was going to ravish us all – there were a number of really smart people who were reading word for word from their slides.

1. Ad Lib. Don’t be afraid to throw in a story that might not have been planned. It’s okay to mention things you didn’t have written down in your notes; you just don’t want to travel off too far on a tangent.
2. Give more visual ques. Instead of trying to cram a lot of text on your slides, use some carefully chosen graphics to let your audience know what’s in store, as well as keeping track of your place during your presentation.
3. Invite Participants to Give Feedback. This is a great idea, especially if it is your first time making a presentation in front of a crowd. Your participants can really help you figure out where you did great and where you could use improvement. Don’t be afraid to ask.

There is a level of concern that crops up when we realize that we must do two things at once, like speaking and advancing slides, and things become a little easier when we realize that it’s possible to combine the two things together and just put all of the things we want to say on the presentations slides. Doing that does break rule number one about giving presentations and it won’t help you to get over any nerves or anxiety you fear. Have you ever been guilty of this? How did you get over this?

I want to introduce you to someone, but I suspect you know this person already. I’ve deemed this person to be Idea McStealerson, and he or she likes getting all the credit for ideas that were a team effort. You know this person– when it comes time to present group ideas, they walk away looking like the hero while the rest of you end up looking like you didn’t contribute at all. Idea McStealerson is a jerk.

Sure, it may seem like a great idea to commit collaboration crimes – why wouldn’t you take credit for a great idea in front of the boss and look like the smartest person in the room? Well, there’s one very simple answer for that – your boss knows it was a collaborative effort. While you might feel like you look like the smartest person in the room, you just look like a jerk.

The temptation to further your own career is great – I get it. Everyone wants to look like the superstar. It’s important to remember that when you’re working in a group everyone knows that you didn’t come up with all the ideas. Even if it’s not you’re intention to take credit for the group project, you can still end up looking like that’s what you’re trying to do, unless you’re using the right words. Here are some tips to keep from looking like a jerk in the eyes of your boss, and in the eyes of your co-collaborators.

Words like me, my, and I are possessive and indicate sole ownership. Instead, you should try using phrases like our team and other words to establish shared ownership for an idea. If everyone came up with it, it’s not your idea and you shouldn’t use the possessive.

When it comes time to present all of your awesome ideas, don’t give the responsibility for presentation over to one person in the group. There will probably be a couple of different categories or sections that you will need to cover. Let everyone have something to present so that you are letting everyone on the team take a turn in the spotlight.

Use names! If you’ve been charged with presenting one of the categories, but it wasn’t your supreme brain power that spawned where these fantastic ideas came from, don’t be afraid to tell the story of how you got to this point. Say something about how Stephanie made a joke that we should do XYZ and it spawned the entire idea. How a simple joke lead the group to these ideas.

Collaboration works best when everyone feels like they get credit for the ideas that they helped to create. Plus, your boss knows when something was a group effort and they have been in the game long enough to have expectations when it comes to group collaboration, and they expect everyone to share in the development of a great idea. You might think you’re being sly, but your boss knows better.

Last year when my friend got married, I wrote about broadcasting your wedding through a video conference. It wasn’t such a crazy idea – we use video conference services now all the time. Just like FaceTime, video conferencing is being used to connect families who are millions of miles away, and we’re fine with that.

Now imagine your feelings that if you’re going through the process of planning a service for a departed loved one, and a funeral employee asks you if you would be interested in the streaming package. Curiously, you inquire to know more and the director tells you that if you have family scattered about the country, instead of missing the opportunity to say their goodbyes – now, they can be conferenced in with the rest of the family and view the services from their home. Live streaming of the funeral services could include something like this:

• Video stream of the entire procession, invocation, and eulogies.
• Interaction with family members through chat.
• Invitation only or password protected services.
• Order a CD of the services when it’s over to keep or to send to family members who were unable to attend.

Now, I know you may seem a little creeped out. I was at first when the idea was brought to me. It seemed inappropriate, morbid, and just inconsiderate. But then I thought about it in a different way.

Do you remember when Ronald Reagan died? For days on end, we were glued to our television screens to watch the procession through the Capitol rotunda, and then to the television to watch the motorcade escort the former President to his final resting location. Most of us can remember the faces that two somber little boys wore as they escorted their mother, Princess Diana, to her funeral. In fact, Princess Diana’s funeral is the highest rated funeral of all time, followed by Michael Jackson and Ronald Reagan. 31 million people tuned in to watch Diana get laid to rest.

Since 1997, there’s a new technology that makes watching news coverage of events easy – live streaming. (PDF) MSNBC reports that their streaming of Michael Jackson’s funeral service was greater than that of the day President Barack Obama was inaugurated. So what does this say about how likely we might be to accept the streaming of funeral services?

We have no problem tuning in on our televisions or at our desks to watch an idol that we admire be laid to rest. Clearly, the numbers prove that. So why then does the thought of streaming a funeral of someone we truly knew and care about seem tasteless or wrong? Last year, my dear grandmother in South Carolina passed away very suddenly, and there was no way I was going to be able to afford to fly out with that short of notice. (Don’t let bereavement discounts fool you, folks, it’s not that much). Sadly, I had to miss her funeral and the opportunity to say goodbye, or see my family.

What if there would have been a way for me to join the services virtually? Would I have taken the opportunity? I’m not sure if I would have or not – despite the fact that I have watched the coverage of a number of funeral services of famous people, I’m still hesitant on if I would want to see that with someone who was personally near and dear to me. That’s probably just because it’s such a new idea and something that I don’t think we see a lot of. If we were to take part in the live stream of a video conference of a funeral once or twice, we might feel differently about the perceived inappropriateness.

Considering we watch funerals on mainstream media for people we don’t know, what drawbacks do you have to joining a funeral for a friend or loved one in a virtual set up, if you have any? Does this seem like a strange or outlandish idea to you? Let me know in the comments below – maybe we can figure out some situations in which this would work and some that it wouldn’t.

Thanks to Troy Claus for getting me thinking about this. I was a little surprised when he first mentioned it, but once I started to think about, I wondered what the difference between watching the funeral of a stranger on TV is between watching a friend or relatives services on your laptop.

When it comes to creating our slide presentations, concerns are usually focused on making the slides entertaining and informative. Basically, our main goal is to not cause death by PowerPoint. When we start putting our slides together we start to think of ways that we can make it more interesting and entertaining to our audience. We have all been guilty of breaking the rules and over animating or putting far too many graphics on our slides. The temptation is there to make your slides bright and colorful, but you could be doing more harm than good.

The first thing you have to know when it comes to coloring your slide presentations is to know what colors are complimentary. Just like in fashion, you want your slides to be appealing to the eyes of your audience and you don’t want your colors to clash. If you wouldn’t wear bright yellow pants and a lime green shirt (which, please do not do this – ever) why would you want to make people look at it on a slideshow? Use a color wheel if you want to double check yourself to make sure that your colors complement each other. On a color wheel complimentary colors are across from each other – for example, in the link above, you can see that red and green complement each other.

Once you know what colors complement each other, you can start adding it into your presentations. Remember to use dark text with light back grounds or vice versa. Trying to stick yellow text on pink backgrounds will only give your audience a headache. Your goal with a slide show is to make them look at your slides. The last thing you want is for them to go running from the room screaming, “My eyes are bleeding!”

Extra Tip: Pick one combination of colors and stick with it throughout the whole presentation.

There is an entire psychology about color and how the colors that we see can evoke certain emotions in our brains. Red is associated with energy and power, whereas yellow is associated with joy and happiness. Knowing how the colors might affect your audience will help you know which colors might be the best combinations to use.

You can spice up your presentations in a number of ways, but be careful when you start throwing colors and graphics into your slides. Slides should make your audience pay attention, not make them think that you are completely nuts. How are you using color in your slide presentations? Are you playing it safe with all black and white? If you are using color – how do you decide what colors to use?