In a public speaking role, your goal is to deliver a specific message and make it stick with the audience. But in an effort to save on travel costs, more businesses are shunning in-person events for webinars — live presentations delivered over the Internet. So how do you catch and keep listeners’ attention? Patricia Fripp, an expert in creative advertising techniques and author of Get What You Want and Make It, So You Don’t Have to Fake It!, offers these tips:

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• Plan your structure. Outline your presentation on paper or a flip chart before you create the PowerPoint slides. Be sure you:

  • Introduce your objective.
  • Sell the benefits.
  • Explain the agenda and timing of your session.
  • Explain how the audience can interact with you.

• Be more visual. Tell stories and give examples as you go through your program, the same way you would in person. However, a webinar needs more visuals to help engage the audience. Also, don’t present a list of bullet points; build up to your key takeaways. Keep the presentation simple, keep it moving, and interact often.

• Grab the audience’s attention. Engage your audience immediately with a powerful, relevant opening. Never start by saying, “Good morning.” Instead, say something like, “Welcome, you are about to learn how to …” Keep listeners interested by selling them on how they are going to benefit. Remember, you can’t see participants, so it’s all too easy for them to answer their email or go get a cup of coffee.

• Introduce yourself. Once you have sold the session, you can introduce yourself. Do not do it first. Just as with an in-person session, start with something the listeners care about. Then they will care about who you are.

• Play to their emotions. Emotion comes from engaging listeners’ imaginations, involving them in your illustrative stories by frequent use of the word “you,” and answering their unspoken question, “What’s in it for me?” For example: “In the next 56 minutes, you will learn the six secrets of making a webinar work.”

• Build interaction. Be sure to stop and ask, “Based on what you have heard so far, are there any questions?”

• Use memorable stories. People rarely remember your exact words. Instead, they remember the mental images that your words inspire. Support your key points with vivid, relevant stories. Help listeners “make the movie” in their heads by using memorable characters, exciting situations, dialogue, and humor.

• Use effective pauses. Like good music, good communication contains changes of pace, pauses, and full rests. This is where your listeners think about what they have just heard. Whenever you say something that you want to stick, pause.

• Review what you’ve covered. As with an in-person presentation, always review your key ideas. Then say, “Before my closing remarks, do you have any questions?”

• Emphasize next steps. Be clear what listeners’ next logical steps should be. Send them off energized and focused.

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