Professionally Speaking...

Using Twitter to Enhance Audience Engagement

 

There's an intriguing article in this morning's New York Times about elementary and secondary school educators using Twitter or other "backchannels" in the classroom to increase student involvement and participation. And when you think about it, educators have much the same aim as we presenters: to keep the audience interested and to encourage involvement and engagement with the topic.

Yet most educators are as skeptical about using this tool as are business presenters. Both are concerned that the audience will be more distracted rather than more engaged. And if the truth be told, most presenters are just a bit uncomfortable that the focus may be shifted away from them to interaction over which they feel they have no control.

In fact what those brave enough to try this are finding is that being able to comment and interact virtually encourages more participation and engages audience members who might otherwise be too intimidated to speak out in a group. Clearly this benefits both the presenter, by allowing her to reach more of the audience, and the participants, who experience a richer dialogue. Instead of a distraction, the backchannel conversation supports and enhances the main discussion.

Why not tap into this new way of engaging an audience rather than bemoaning potential downsides?

Here are some ways of incorporating a backchannel during your presentation or training event:

• ask a question and have the audience respond on Twitter, enabling all to see each other's comments

• provide an exercise and have the audience post answers on Twitter, then have smaller groups analyze the responses

• invite the audience to post questions on Twitter and incorporate them into your Q&A section

What other ideas do you have for increasing your audience's engagement by using Twitter?

You might also be interested in:

Twitter in Presentations...Love It or Leave It?

5 Ways to Integrate Twtter into Your Presentations

Photo Credit:
flickr/Brianfit  C.C. 2.0

 

 

 

 

Presentation Resolutions: Embrace Technology

Although we only have three hundred and forty-four days left in 2010, I, for one, don't think it's too late to create some New Year's resolutions for the year. And for those of us who want to take our presentations to a new level, let's start out the new decade* by embracing some resolutions involving technology.

[* to be absolutely correct, 2010 is actually the final year of the last decade, but it sounds like a start rather than an end to me!]

[calendar from redstamp.com used under a Creative Commons License]

Here are a few ideas that can improve your presentations if they make their way onto your list of resolutions.

UPDATE YOUR POWERPOINT SLIDES

If you have some presentations that you deliver over and over, it's time to look at your slides with a fresh eye. Make a critical assessment of each slide and ask yourself..."Does this slide further my audience's understanding of my message?" Be honest. I'm betting you'll have to answer "no" for a number of slides, particularly if they're filled with bullet points.

So you now have the opportunity to either eliminate a slide or improve it. Think about what visual representation could enhance the audience's involvement with your content. Be creative. Think of images outside your subject matter field that could produce a good analogy or metaphor. Read Presentation Zen and Slide:ology for design principles and suggestions.

Check out SlideRocket which is presentation software that includes a full set of authoring tools, collaboration features that allow you to work on a presentation with colleagues, access to your presentations from anywhere and capability to measure presentation effectiveness. There are a variety of very reasonable price points, starting at free.

BUY OR BORROW A VIDEO CAMERA

There is no better way to evaluate how you come across to an audience than seeing yourself on video. Together with live audience feedback, this allows you to determine what aspects of your delivery work well and which ones may need to be updated or changed.

It's easy to tell yourself you don't have time for this or you feel awkward watching yourself on video. Get over it. If you're truly committed to improving your presentation effectiveness, the video camera will become one of your favorite tools.

LOOK FOR RESOURCES ON SOCIAL MEDIA

You don't have to know everything about presentations nor do you have to re-invent the wheel. There are a ton of resources available, just for the asking. Use Twitter and LinkedIn to request help, suggestions or resources. There are highly competent, even famous, presentation gurus in the social media world and they are extremely generous with their knowledge.

Pay it forward by sharing on social media what you're doing in your presentations -- techniques you've tried, good sources for stock images, how you've increased audience involvement.

EXPERIMENT USING TWITTER IN A PRESENTATION

A great deal has been written on the "backchannel", the practice of audience members maintaining an online, real-time conversation during a live presentation. There are some very vocal opponents but increasingly, presenters are realizing that a very engaged, involved audience is the potential reward. 

Tap into some resources to understand how the backchannel works and how to manage it. Cliff Atkinson's new book, The Backchannel: How Audiences are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever is a great place to start. And then give it a try if you have even a partially tech savvy audience.

What other geeky resolutions have you, or would you like to, put on your list to improve your presentations in 2010?

This post is part of the Blog Carnival: Public Speaking and the New Year. Check out other bloggers' perspectives on what will improve your presentations in 2010.

5 Ways To Integrate Twitter Into Your Presentations

In a previous post, I explored common concerns about Twitter usage in presentations and concluded that Twitter offers many benefits in terms of audience involvement and engagement. However, seeing the benefits of using Twitter and being able to incorporate it effectively into your presentation are two very different things.

So let's take a look at some best practices for integrating Twitter into a live presentation.

HASHTAGS

Set up a hashtag for the presentation. This is a keyword or phrase preceded by the # sign (e.g., #TwitTips) which then groups and archives all the tweets using that hashtag, so they can be accessed either as they are posted or at any time after. Even people not physically at the presentation can follow the tweeted comments. If you communicate the hashtag to attendees before the presentation, you can generate interest in your upcoming presentation by tweeting questions or recommended links and resources thereby facilitating a dialogue before you actually speak.

QUESTIONS

Use Twitter as a polling technique to gather attendees' opinions and answers. Let's say you are giving a presentation on the benefits of using social media and you want to know which sites attendees use on a regular basis. In the presentation, just ask them to tweet that information and then tally the responses. Now of course, you could also get this same information by simply asking for a show of hands. But that's not as engaging for participants, you'll likely get more detail in a tweet and the tweets will be archived, allowing you to refer back to them.

Use Twitter in a Q&A session to generate more involvement and give everyone an even playing field. Attendees may be more willing to tap or key in a question than they would be to raise their hand and verbalize it, particularly if the audience is large.

If you encourage attendees to tweet their questions, take frequent "Twitter breaks", (every 10-15 minutes), so you can process those questions and respond. You may also be pleasantly surprised when the peer-to-peer learning aspect of Twitter kicks in and other people in the audience answer the questions before you get to them.

MODERATOR

Co-opt a helper to moderate all the tweets (the tweetstream) for you to ensure that you don't miss any important comments or dialogue. You could even ask for a volunteer from the audience. The moderator should pass you questions or comments that are insightful or represent a majority view so you can reflect this dialogue, offer further explanations and respond to opinions. To be fully effective, talk with your moderator before the presentation and overview your key points. That way, she can be sure to capture tweets that would add richness to the conversation.

LIVE DISPLAY

Project the tweetstream (all the tweets being sent to the hashtag) on a screen at the front of the room. Use a tool like www.tweetchat.com to filter out non-hashtag tweets. This is perhaps the ultimate use of Twitter in a presentation as it allows everyone in the room to see all the tweets being sent in real time. There is the potential for the constantly running tweetstream to be distracting, for both the presenter and the audience, so I recommend showing it for short periods of time, when it adds value to the presentation, perhaps during the Q&A section. If you are projecting a live display, a moderator can be very helpful in organizing/summarizing the tweets and answering some of them directly.

FEEDBACK

Capture feedback during the presentation through Twitter. Rather than waiting until the end and asking attendees to fill in the evaluation forms, ask them to tweet feedback at appropriate points during the presentation. The feedback will be fresher (they won't have to think back to something you covered an hour ago), you may get a higher response rate and you may get more specifics than you do from a "scale of 1 to 5" type response.

Encouraging or proactively using Twitter in presentations is still somewhat uncharted territory. There is no doubt that you'll encounter a few twists and turns the first time you use it. But the enhanced audience participation, contribution and engagement are certainly worth enough to give it a try.

What experiences have you had using Twitter in one of your presentations?

OTHER RESOURCES

5 Ways to Use Twitter During a Presentation
Quote URL - A Twitter Tool to Quote, Save and Publish Tweets
Change the Context to Use Twitter Most Effectively

TWITTER IN PRESENTATIONS...LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT?

With the explosion in popularity of microblogging tools like Twitter, presenters are now faced with the possibility, or even likelihood, that some members of their audience will be tweeting (posting on Twitter) during the presentation. Initially, that idea is off-putting to many presenters. They sputter, "But that means the audience won't be paying attention to me." Or "It will be distracting for me to see everybody typing on their iPhones." Or "What if they say something negative about me or my presentation?"

Those concerns are all worth examining. Let's look at them one by one.

THE AUDIENCE WON'T PAY ATTENTION

Even without Twitter, you run the risk that your audience won't pay attention to you. Certainly to minimize that concern in any situation you must craft a presentation that is relevant to the audience, addresses their needs and employs the various presentation techniques designed to involve and engage the audience.

Interestingly, however, some research suggests that the audience may be even more engaged when there is a Twitter backchannel in a presentation. In the Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching(Volume 2, 2009), Dr. Martin Ebner, Head of the Social Learning Department at Graz University of Technology in Austria conducted research at the e-learning conference, Ed-Media 2008, to determine the behaviors of attendees using Twitter during a presentation. Throughout the keynote, the Twitter stream was projected on the screen along with the presenter's slides. During the 45 minute presentation, there were 54 tweets which Ebner categorized into 4 buckets:

• concerning the presentation content (22%)
• discussion between 2 or more Twitter users (2%)
• links to various resources (31%)
• comments, including reactions to the speaker's presentation, feelings, thoughts and opinions (43%)

As presenters, assuming we have created a relevant presentation, we need to ascribe the respect and integrity to our audiences that they will, in fact, be engaged in what we are saying and thus, will further the discussion through their tweets. Particularly when the Twitter stream is projected for all in the room to see, most attendees want their tweets to be intelligent and germain rather than silly or off-topic.

I'LL BE DISTRACTED

This may indeed be the case initially. But let's break this down. Audience members punching letters into their phone or typing on a keyboard is really no different than audience members taking notes. We need to ensure that we don't let our self-talk convince us that the audience is no longer listening to us simply because they are using an electronic device.

More challenging in terms of distraction is projecting the Twitter stream on the screen behind you and knowing that electronic dialogue is going on while you are talking. Here the speaker is competing with the constantly changing flow of information.

You could speak directly to the tweets. This requires ultimate flexibility, a thorough knowledge of your subject matter, a crystal clear understanding of what you want your presentation to accomplish and the ability to return to your presentation flow after responding to a tweet. If you can manage it, this is the pinnacle of real time, interactive exchange between presenter and audience, furthering and deepening the conversation.  

A complementary option is to have a moderator or partner who can help you manage the dialogue. The moderator can prioritize the tweets, answer or redirect some and pass questions and salient comments to the speaker.

Most definitely, rehearse these techniques several times before going live. This is a fast-paced exchange of ideas and information; being super prepared and comfortable with your subject matter and giving thought to the audience's point of view are the keys to success.

THE AUDIENCE MIGHT BE NEGATIVE

Yes, there could be a tweet that says something negative about you or your content. However, most audience members have the maturity and integrity not to post something inappropriate or cruel, particularly when all their fellow audience members can see it. More likely, someone might post a legitimate disagreement or difference of perspective. Handle this the same way you would any objection in a presentation...with grace, respect and facts.

SO, IS THIS TWITTER THING A GOOD IDEA?

Yes, I think it is. It's still a bit scary for most presenters. The dynamic is evolving and we will no doubt continue to refine how to integrate the Twitter backchannel into our presentations. Look for a subsequent post on best practices for how presenters can become comfortable with this tool.

But the benefits of using Twitter during a presentation are unmistakable:

• It gives the audience more ownership as they have a tangible role in shaping the discussion.
• The presenter can gain immediate feedback.
• It facilitates and encourages discussion among tweeters after the presentation.
• It creates a wider audience and more visibility for your message, since the presentation tweets will go out to everyone's followers and even be re-tweeted.
• It gives your presentation a longer life through archiving (the symbol # before any word or phrase creates a hashtag [#twitinpres] which then allows Twitterers to use that hashtag to group all relevant tweets).

The exciting thing about Twitter in presentations is that it removes the presenter/audience barrier that we all bemoan. The speaker is no longer delivering wisdom from on high. The audience becomes an active participant in the conversation, shaping it to meet their needs. And isn't that the ultimate example of audience focus?

What experiences, either as a presenter or an audience member, have you had using Twitter in presentations?