Why Eye Contact Is Important for Web Events

Posted by Amit Rathee on Thu, Apr 11, 2013 @ 01:38 PM

web conferencing, webinars, webinar tips, web conferencing tips, live webinarsWeb events have become a large part of the way businesses reach out to clients, customers and even vendors. When you are able to hide between the camera during web conferencing and live webinars, you may forget some of the most important elements of speaking. This is why it is important to learn and make use of various web event tips, including the importance of making eye contact, even when you aren’t face-to-face with your audience in person.

When you first learned web conferencing tips, you probably learned you should keep an eye on the audience feed. While it is important to glance at this video feed occasionally to make sure the audience is still with you, it is more important to look straight into your webcam a majority of the time. This will create the effect of making eye contact, even when you aren’t in the same room. This makes live webinars and web conferences more personable.

Why Is Eye Contact a Concern?

Many web event tips skip over the importance of eye contact. So why is this so important? If your web conferencing and webinar goals are to elicit a feeling of trust, credibility and honesty with your viewers, eye contact is extremely important. Think about it, if you are talking to someone in person and they can’t look you in the eye, do you believe what they say? Likely not. Because live webinars and web meetings are becoming a common occurrence, it is important to make them as close to a personal interaction as possible for the greatest impact. Using these tips in your Onstream web conferences can really help you to connect with your taget audience.

Look at the Camera

Have you ever seen a picture or video where it is clear the person isn’t looking at the camera? If you don’t take the time to look into the camera, your audience is going to have a more difficult time trusting what you have to say. It is important to learn how to use your peripheral vision to view your slides and track your audience reactions. Record yourself and watch it to help you perfect this technique of making eye contact and tracking your progress.

So do you have to always look directly at the camera? In general, looking just above or just below the camera can be just as effective as looking directly at it. However, avoid looking to the right or left, especially in combination with below the camera.

The Challenge

Today, many live webinars and web conferences make use of slides as part of the presentation. Onstream Media offers these, and a variety of other useful presentation tools. The speakers video will remain on the screen in a corner, which means you need to learn how to keep track of where you are with the slides, as well as maintain eye contact with your audience.  Some may think the solution to this problem is to develop a basic script to follow to help you keep within time constraints and be able to keep the eye contact you need with your audience. However, this simply means you need to be able to keep your eyes on three things at once during your web conferencing. So how can you make this happen?

One of the ways to do this is to make use of a teleprompter. There are apps available that allow you to change your tablet or smartphone into a teleprompter. However, you must be careful not to allow your eyes to move back and forth too much because this will show up on the camera and make it obvious you are reading. Sometimes certain characters don’t work in these apps, which requires a better solution.

If you take your text file and reformat it into a PDF file, you will actually be able to create your own teleprompter. In Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can set your PDF files to automatically scroll by pressing “view” and “automatically scroll.” When you place your device just below the camera, you will be able to easily read the words without looking like you are reading. You can even speed up or slow down the speed to customize it just for your needs.

Eye contact during your live webinars and web conferencing events is extremely critical to make it a personable experience for everyone. When you follow these tips, you will be able to effectively make eye contact and gain the trust of your audience without physically being in the room.

Tags: live webinars, Webinars, webinar tips, Onstream Media, web conferencing, web conferencing tips

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