Hands

Almost everyone who gives a speech in public gets scared or nervous to some extent. Even professionals who do this for a living feel that way, but they have learned how to combat those nerves through experience and practice. When we get scared or nervous, our bodies emit adrenaline into our systems so we can deal with whatever problem is causing us to feel that way. Unfortunately, you will need to be standing relatively still for the next 5-7 minutes, so that burst of adrenaline is going to try to work its way out of your body and manifest itself somehow. One of the main ways is through your hands.

It may sound funny, but we have seen more than one student unknowingly incorporate “jazz hands” (shaking your hands at your sides with fingers opened wide) at various points in their speech. While certainly an extreme example, this and behaviors like it can easily becoming distracting. At the other end of the scale, people who don’t know what to do with their hands or use them “too little” sometimes hold their arms stiffly at their sides, behind their backs, or in their pockets, all of which can also look unnatural and distracting.

The key for knowing what to do with your hands is to use them naturally as you would in normal conversation. If you were standing around talking to your friends and wanted to list three reasons why you should all take a road trip this weekend, you would probably hold up your fingers as you counted off the reasons (“First, we hardly ever get this opportunity. Second, we can…”). Try to pay attention to what you do with your hands in regular conversations and incorporate that into your delivery.

However, with all that said, if you have nothing else to do with your hands, such as meaningful gestures, the default position for them is to be resting gently on the sides of the lectern. You don’t want to grip the lectern tightly, but resting them on the edges keeps them in position to move your notes on if you need to or use them to gesture. As stated above, you want to practice this way beforehand so you are used to speaking this way when you come to class.

Feet

Just like your hands, a lot of nervous energy is going to try to work its way out of your body through your feet. On the “too much” end, this is most common when people start “dancing” behind the lectern Another variation is twisting feet around each other or the lower leg. On the other end are those who put their feet together, lock their knees, and never move from that position. Both of these options look unnatural, and therefore will prove to be distracting to your audience. Locking your knees can also lead to loss of oxygen in your brain, not a good state to be in, because it can cause you to faint.

The default position for your feet, then, is to have them shoulder-width apart with your knees slightly bent. Again, you want to look and feel natural, so it is fine to adjust your weight or move out from behind the lectern, but constant motion (or perpetual stillness) will not lead to good overall delivery.

These two sections on hands and feet mention “energy.” Public speakers need to look energetic—not hyperactive, but engaged and upbeat about communicating their message. Slumping, low and unvarying pitch and rate, and lack of gestures telegraph “I don’t care” to an audience.

Objects

There is a very simple rule when it comes to what you should bring with you to the lectern when you give your speech: Only bring to the lectern what you absolutely need to give the speech. Anything else you have with you will only serve as a distraction for both you and the audience. For the purposes of this class, the only objects you should need to give your speech are whatever materials you are speaking from, and possibly a visual aid if you are using one. Beyond that, don’t bring pens, laptops, phones, lucky charms, or notebooks with you to the lectern. These extra items can ultimately become a distraction themselves when they fall off the lectern or get in your way. Some students like to bring their electronic tablet, laptop computer, or cell phone with them, but there are some obvious disadvantages to these items, especially if you don’t turn the ringer on your cell phone off. Cell phones are not usually large enough to serve as presentation notes; we’ve seen students squint and hold the phone up to their faces.

• Jewelry that ‘jingles’ when you move, such as heavy bracelets;
• Uncomfortable shoes or shoes that you are not used to;
• Anything with fringe, zippers, or things hanging off it. They might become irresistible to play with while speaking;
• For those with longer hair, remember that you will be looking down at your notes and then looking back up. Don’t be forced to “fix” your hair or tuck it behind your ear every time you look up. Use a hairband, clip, or some other method to keep your hair totally out of your face so that the audience can see your eyes and you won’t have to adjust your hair constantly. It can be very distracting to an audience to watch a speaker pull hair from his face after every sentence.

The Lectern and Posture

We have already discussed the lectern, but it is worth mentioning again briefly here. The lectern is a tool for you to use that should ultimately make your speech easier to give, and you need to use it that way. On the “too much” end, some people want to trick their audience into thinking they are not nervous by leaning on the podium in a relaxed manner, sometime going so far as to actually begin tipping the podium forward. Your lectern is NOT part of your skeletal system, to prop you up, so don’t do this. On the “too little” end are those who are afraid to touch it, worried that they will use it incorrectly or somehow knock it over (you won’t!).

As always, you want the “Goldilocks” middle ground. As stated above, rest your notes and hands on it, but don’t lean on the lectern or “hug” it. Practicing with a lectern (or something similar to a lectern) will eliminate most of your fears about using it.

The lectern use is related to posture. Most of us let gravity pull us down. One of the muscle memory tricks of public speaking is to roll your shoulders back. Along with making your shoulder muscles feel better, doing so with feet apart and knees bent, rolling your shoulders back will lead to a more credible physical presence—you’ll look taller and more energetic. You’ll also feel better, and you’ll have larger lung capacity for breathing to support your tone and volume.

Eye Contact

As we’ve said consistently throughout this book, your audience is the single biggest factor that influences every aspect of your speech. And since eye contact is how you establish and maintain a rapport with your audience during your speech, it is an extremely important element of your delivery. Your professor may or may not indicate a standard for how much eye contact you need during the speech, such as 50%, but he or she will absolutely want to see you making an effort to engage your audience through looking directly at them.

What is important to note here is that you want to establish genuine eye contact with your audience, and not “fake” eye contact. There have been a lot of techniques generated for “faking” eye contact, and none of them look natural. For example, these are not good ideas:

• Three points on the back wall – You may have heard that instead of making eye contact, you can just pick three points on the back wall and look at those. What ends up happening, though, is you look like you are staring off into space and your audience will spend the majority of your speech trying to figure out what you are looking at. To avoid this, look around the entire room, including the front, back, left, and right sides of the space.
• The swimming method – This happens when someone is reading his or her speech and looks up quickly and briefly to try to make it seem like they are making eye contact, not unlike a swimmer who pops his head out of the water for a breath before going back under. Eye contact is more than just physically moving your head; it is about looking at your audience and establishing a connection. In general, your eye contact should last at least five seconds at a time and should be with individuals throughout the room.
• The stare down – Since you will, to some degree, be graded on your eye contact, some students think (either consciously or not), that the best way to ensure they get credit for establishing eye contact is to always and exclusively look directly at their professor. While we certainly appreciate the attention, we want to see that you are establishing eye contact with your entire audience, not just one person. Also, this behavior is uncomfortable for the instructor.

Vocal Considerations

Volume

Volume refers to the relative softness or loudness of your voice. Like most of the other issues we’ve discussed in this section, the proper volume for a given speaking engagement usually falls on a scale like the one above. If you speak too softly (“too little” volume), your audience will struggle to hear and understand you and may give up trying to listen. If you speak with “too much” volume, your audience may feel that you are yelling at them, or at least feel uncomfortable with you shouting. The volume you use should fit the size of the audience and the room.

Fortunately, for the purposes of this class, your normal speaking voice will probably work just fine since you are in a relatively small space with around twenty people. However, if you know that you are naturally a soft-spoken person, you will need to work on breathing to get more air into your lungs, and on projecting your voice to the people in the last row, not just those in t he front. Of course, if you are naturally a very loud talker, you may want to make other adjustments when giving your speech. Obviously this will all change if you are asked to speak in a larger venue or given a microphone to use.

Public speaking relies on the voice for interest, credibility, audibility, and clarity. The British Prime Minister of the 19th century was quoted saying, “There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.” While that seems exaggerated today, a public speaker at any level cannot ignore the energy, loudness, and clarity in their voice. There are four steps to voice production: breathing (produced by the lungs, which are largely responsible for the vocal characteristic of volume); phonation (the production of the sound in the vocal folds, which close and vibrate to produce sound for speaking as the air is exhaled over them; phonation creates pitch); resonation (a type of amplification of the sound in the larynx, oral cavity, and nasal cavity, which creates the characteristic of quality); and articulation, which produces the sounds of language others can understand and is responsible for rate and for being understood.

Your instructor may give you more directions on maximizing the power of your voice to achieve more variety and power. We have all listened to a low-energy, monotone, monorate speaker and know how hard it is, so you should pay attention to your recording, perhaps by closing your eyes and just listening, to see if your voice is flat and lifeless.

Pitch

Pitch is the relative highness or lowness of your voice, and like everything, you can have too much or too little (with regard to variation of it). Too much pitch variation occurs when people “sing” their speeches, and their voices oscillate between very high pitched and very low pitched. While uncommon, this is sometimes attributed to nerves. More common is too little variation in pitch, which is known as being monotone.

Delivering a speech in a monotone manner is usually caused by reading too much; generally the speaker’s focus is on saying the words correctly (because they have not practiced). They forget to speak normally to show their interest in the topic, as we would in everyday conversation. For most people, pitch isn’t a major issue, but if you think it might be for you, ask the people in your practice audience what they think. Generally, if we are interested in and passionate about communicating our thoughts, we are not likely to be monotone. We are rarely monotone when talking to friends and family about matters of importance to us, so pick topics you care about.

Rate

How quickly or slowly you say the words of your speech is the rate. Too little rate (i.e. speaking too slowly) will make it sound like you may not fully know your speech or what you are talking about, and will ultimately cost you some credibility with your audience. It may also result in the audience being bored and lose focus on what you are saying. Rate is one reason you should try to record yourself, even if just audio on your phone, beforehand and be mindful of time when you practice. Your voice’s rate will affect the time it takes to give the speech.

By contrast, too much rate (i.e. speaking too fast) can be overly taxing on an audience’s ability to keep up with and digest what you are saying. It sometimes helps to imagine that your speech is a jog or run that you and your friends (the audience) are taking together. You (as the speaker) are setting the pace based on how quickly you speak. If you start sprinting, it may be too difficult for your audience to keep up and they may give up halfway through. If you know you speak quickly, especially when nervous, be sure to practice slowing down and writing yourself delivery cues in your notes to maintain a more comfortable rate. As always, recording and timing your speech during practice helps.

You especially will want to maintain a good, deliberate rate at the beginning of your speech because your audience will be getting used to your voice. We have all called a business where the person answering the phone mumbles the name of the business in a rushed way. We aren’t sure if we called the right number. Since the introduction is designed to get the audience’s attention and interest in your speech, you will want to focus on clear delivery there. Regulating rate is another reason why video-recording yourself can be so helpful because we often to not realize how fast we speak.

Pauses

The common misconception for public speaking students is that pausing during your speech is bad, but that isn’t necessarily true. You pause in normal conversations, so you shouldn’t be afraid of pausing while speaking. This is especially true if you are making a particularly important point or want for a statement to have a more powerful impact: you will want to give the audience a moment to digest what you have said.

For example, consider the following statement: “Because of issues like pollution and overpopulation, in 50 years the earth’s natural resources will be so depleted that it will become difficult for most people to obtain enough food to survive.” Following a statement like this, you want to give your audience just a brief moment to fully consider what you are saying. Hopefully they will think something along the lines of What if I’m still alive then? or What will my children do? and become more interested in hearing what you have to say.

Of course, there is such a thing as pausing too much, both in terms of frequency and length. Someone who pauses too often (after each sentence) may come off seeming like they don’t know their speech very well. Someone who pauses too long (more than a few seconds), runs the risk of the audience feeling uncomfortable or, even worse becoming distracted or letting their attention wander. We are capable of processing words more quickly than anyone can speak clearly, which is one of the reasons listening is difficult. Pauses should be controlled to maintain attention of the audience.

Vocalized pauses

At various points during your speech, you may find yourself in need of a brief moment to collect your thoughts or prepare for the next section of your speech. At those moments, you will be pausing, but we don’t always like to let people know that we’re pausing. So what many of us do in an attempt to “trick” the audience is fill in those pauses with sounds so that it appears that we haven’t actually paused. These are known as vocalized pauses, or sometimes “fillers.” Another term for them is “nonfluencies.”

Everyone uses vocalized pauses to some degree, but not everyone’s are problematic. This obviously becomes an issue when the vocalized pauses become distracting due to their overuse. We have little doubt that you can remember a time when you were speaking to someone who said the word “like” after every three words and you became focused on it. One of your authors remembers attending a wedding and (inadvertently) began counting the number of times the best man said “like” during his toast (22 was the final count). The most common vocalized pause is “uh,” but then there are others. Can you think of any?

The bad news here is that there is no quick fix for getting rid of your vocalized pauses. They are so ingrained into all of our speech patterns that getting rid of them is a challenge. However, there is a two-step process you can employ to begin eliminating them. First, you need to identify what your particular vocalized pause is. Do you say “um,” “well,” or “now” before each sentence? Do you finish each thought with, “you know?” Do you use “like” before every adjective (as in “he was like so unhappy”)?

After figuring out what your vocalized pause is, the second step is to carefully and meticulously try to catch yourself when you say it. If you hear yourself saying “uh,” remind yourself, I need to try to not say that. Catching yourself and being aware of how often you use vocalized pauses will help you begin the process of reducing your dependence on them and hopefully get rid of them completely.

One of the authors uses a game in her class that she adopted from a couple of disc jockeys she used to hear. It is called the “uh game.” The callers had to name six things in a named category (items in a refrigerator, pro-football teams, makes of cars, etc.) in twenty seconds without saying a vocalized pause word or phrase. It sounds easy, but it isn’t, especially on the spot with a radio audience. It is a good way to practice focusing on the content and not saying a vocalized pause.

The ten items listed above represent the major delivery issues you will want to be aware of when giving a speech, but it is by no means an exhaustive list. There is however, one final piece of delivery advice we would like to offer. We know that no matter how hard you practice and how diligent you are in preparing for your speech, you are most likely going to mess up some aspect of your speech when you give it in class, at least a little. That’s normal. Everyone does it. The key is to not make a big deal about it or let the audience know you messed up. Odds are that they will never even realize your mistake if you don’t tell them there was a mistake. Saying something like “I can’t believe I messed that up” or “Can I start over?” just telegraphs to the audience your mistake. In fact, you have most likely never heard a perfect speech delivered in your life. It is likely that you just didn’t realize that the speaker missed a line or briefly forgot what they wanted to say.

Practice your speech beforehand, at home or elsewhere, the way you will give it in class.

Since you know you are likely going to make some sort of mistake in class, use your practice time at home to work on how you will deal with those mistakes. If you say a word incorrectly or start reading the wrong sentence, don’t go back and begin that section anew. That’s not what you would do in class, so just correct yourself and move on. If you practice dealing with your mistakes at home, you will be better prepared for the inevitable errors that will find their way into your speech in class.

A final thought on practice. We have all heard, “Practice makes perfect.” That is not always true. Practice makes permanent; the actions become habitual. If you practice incorrectly, your performance will be incorrect. Be sure your practice is correct.

4.6 Public Speaking Online

Traditionally, public speaking has been understood as a face-to-face exchange between a designated speaker and an audience. In fact, when you imagine a public speaker, you likely picture a person standing on a stage with a podium and speaking in front of a live audience.

However, new media and digital technologies have begun expanding both our access to public speakers and our platforms to speak and reach new audiences. YouTube—a global video sharing service—has more than 2.7 billion monthly users (Global Media Insight, 2024), and these are just people who log in! If you’re like us, you’ve likely watched hours of content published on YouTube, from instructional videos to political commentary. You have probably also accessed hundreds of videos on Instagram, Facebook, or other media sites. With access to these platforms, speakers are now able to broadcast their insights and advocacies to a global audience.

Businesses, too, have begun using online public speaking. Webinars, video conferences, and digital speakers have permeated professional industries, and it’s becoming increasingly important to consider best practices for creating speeches and being in the audience for online public speeches.

With this growth in popularity, we have a growth in the number of problems and common behaviors (or misbehaviors) in web conferencing and, thus, online public speaking. Much of the advice on web conference public speaking comes as antidotes to the worst practices that have developed in them:

1. the audience’s multitasking (and thus not fully attending to the webinar)
2. the audience’s being bored to death and tuning out (or even falling asleep)

Both of these conditions come from the fact that the communication is mediated and that, in many cases, the speaker and audience don’t see each other. Even when the participants use their web cameras (which doesn’t always happen), the screen is often covered with a slide and the speaker is invisible. Therefore, the speaker has to depend on something else to address the temptation to multitask or nod off.

Like any approach toward public speaking, online public speaking offers a variety of opportunities and constraints. Below, we outline what digital public speaking is and how to prepare to speak online.

Online public speaking—also known as digital oratory—is a “thesis-driven, vocal, embodied public address that is housed within (online) new media platforms” (Lind, 2012, p. 164). Like all public speeches, an online speech should be well-prepared, organized, well-reasoned, and well-rehearsed. Purpose, synchronicity, and the audience all play key roles in online public speaking.

Purpose

Online speaking opportunities are not created equally, and each speech will have a different general purpose—informing, persuading, or entertaining. Remember that just like other forms of public speaking, digital oratory requires a thesis statement, and the purpose of your speech will dictate how you craft the information that you’re going to present. With ready access to video technology that can be transmitted through our phones, it can be tempting to log in and let our followers into our lives through a stream-of-consciousness vlog, but that’s not the type of digital oratory that constitutes prepared public speaking. Instead, prepare by considering your purpose for speaking and your thesis, then organize your speech around the answer.

For example, you might be participating in—or leading—a live webinar via Zoom or recording an instructional video that explains how to use a new piece of technology and which you might upload to YouTube. Each speech will have a different purpose and, in turn, different expectations on what you should include. Once you’ve identified the goal, use later chapters in this text to begin crafting content.

Pro-tip: Know your purpose for speaking.

Synchronicity

Synchronicity describes whether your digital oratory will be delivered live or recorded for people to use later; if you’re presenting a speech live, you’re speaking synchronously, meaning your audience is experiencing it in real-time. Some online public speeches occur synchronously. For example, if you’re speaking to a non-profit organization about a local food pantry project through Zoom and the members of the organization are tuning in live to watch and hear your presentation, the speech is synchronous. In synchronous online speaking, many of the same face-to-face speaking principles apply. Live presentations are ephemeral, meaning they happen once. In synchronous online speaking—unless it’s being recorded—you have one chance to create a clear message, so it’s imperative that your content and information are crafted for clear understanding.

Alternatively, you may speak asynchronously, meaning that the speech may be recorded and watched at a different time. YouTube, for example, houses many asynchronous videos, allowing audiences to tune in and watch when their schedule allows it. With an asynchronous video, speakers may have additional time to record, watch, and re-do if necessary. Similarly, audiences also have the ability to re-watch your presentation or pause the speech, if needed.

Each option provides different opportunities and constraints.

In synchronous speaking, you may be more comfortable adopting and applying face-to-face public speaking strategies, including integrating live audience feedback. It’s common in synchronous online speaking for audiences to post questions or provide live feedback, allowing you to adjust your content and fill in gaps. If there is a technological mishap, however, you can’t correct it later. The mishap also happens in real time, and those barriers can influence your credibility as a speaker.

In asynchronous speaking, you can control the content more easily because you can re-record the material to fix any technological errors. However, in asynchronous speaking, you cannot get live feedback from your audience, so you may be unaware if there’s a key question or issue they need answered.

The Audience

New media has expanded the audience pool for public speaking. In traditional public speaking, the audience is often limited to those individuals who show up for the event—the audience is explicit (the people who are physically present in the audience) or discrete (or targeted audience). In online speaking, you may have a discrete or dispersed audience (an audience whose members hear the speech in different times and locations). These different audience types, along with synchronicity, alter how audience engagement can occur.

Consider our earlier example about presenting to a non-profit organization through Zoom. In this example, it’s likely that you’re aware of who the audience is, so you’re able to link your content to the discrete (or defined) audience. However, in other instances, your audience may be dispersed and more difficult to determine. If you become passionate about a local policy, for example, and decide to post a speech on YouTube, the audience is dispersed because it’s unclear who will click the link. With a dispersed audience, it can be difficult to make specific references or calls to action because geographic locations may alter what individuals are able to do.

With a dispersed audience, there’s also an increased risk that audience members won’t view your digital speech. Digital communication has led to information overload – we’ve all experienced it. If you’re like us, you might scan through Instagram stories, clicking past images or videos that don’t catch your attention. If you’re posting a digital speech with a less-defined audience, the first few lines—the attention-getter—become crucial to hook them into watching. Spend a little extra time crafting and rehearsing your attention-getter.

Being a Member of the Audience: You’ll likely be an audience member for many online public speeches—synchronous and asynchronous. Remember to take your position as an audience member seriously and avoid negative comments or trolling behavior. Even if you don’t know the speaker, how you contribute to the dialogue online (or how you communicate) still functions constitutively, so make sure the world-making that you’re participating in is ethical.

As you can see, there are quite a few variations that define the context of a digital speech: an informative, asynchronous speech with a discrete audience; a persuasive synchronous speech with a dispersed audience. The more information you have about these variations, the more you can be prepared to digitally speak with confidence and clarity.

Rehearsing to Speak Online

Rehearsing to speak online can feel a bit odd, especially when video software enters the mix. You’ll be more effective in rehearsal if you’re aware of the speaking context, including the categories mentioned in the previous section: purpose, synchronicity, and audience. Knowing the context will and should inform how you rehearse for a digital speech because you should always rehearse under the conditions that you’ll speak.

Pro-Tip: Rehearse under the conditions that you’ll speak.

Integrate the presentation strategies for an online speech as you would for other speeches—including the purposeful development of verbal, nonverbal delivery, and presentation aids. There are a few additional variables for delivering a speech digitally that we’ll track below.

Verbal Delivery

Verbal delivery is key in a digital speech—particularly webinars or web conferencing where your vocals overlay a slideshow and your body isn’t visible to an audience. Verbal enunciation, punctuation, rate, and pauses become key to maintaining your audiences’ attention. If monotone and monorate speaking is horrible for face-to-face speaking, it is truly the “kiss of death” for web speaking. The key word is “energy”; an energetic voice has tonal variation and emphasis, variation in pace and meter, planned pauses, and sometimes word play (which can be subtle or overt, but shouldn’t be overdone—this isn’t Dr. Seuss).

Audio-recording yourself during rehearsal on your smartphone or other device is a good first step, followed by thinking critically and honestly about whether your voice is listless, flat, or lacks energy. Since we tend to have a lower energy level when we sit, some experts suggest that web conference speakers stand to approximate the real speaking experience. As we have mentioned repeatedly throughout this book, preparing means practicing your speech orally and physically, many times.

Sound and projection are two variables that can affect your verbal delivery in digital contexts. It’s important to rehearse with any technology—including a microphone—that will be present and in the physical context that you’ll record the formal speech. If you have a microphone, you will need to alter your projection level. If you don’t have a microphone, be aware of how the recording device will pick up sound—including your voice and other noise around you.

Be sensitive about what can be heard on camera if you aren’t careful like interruptions by barking dogs, passing traffic outside, the voices of others who are not on camera, papers near the speakers, or the sounds of toilets flushing or lawn crews working next door.

Remember that extra noise is distracting: it can influence your credibility and the likelihood that an audience will continue listening.

Pro-tip: Many rounds of rehearsal are necessary for improving your online presentation.

Nonverbal Delivery

When rehearsing your nonverbal delivery, ask, “What’s visible in the video?”

If your body is visible, you should rehearse with that in mind. As you rehearse, be conscious of where the camera will be. Will there be just one? Will there be multiple cameras? How far away is the camera? In some instances, audiences may have the ability to view your speech from multiple vantage points. Being aware of where those cameras are—one or multiple—is key to rehearsing your eye contact and facial expressions. Eye contact is still a key part of a digital speech. While you can avoid staring directly into the camera for an extended period of time, audiences still want some form of engagement, and eye contact allows you to make that connection. If you are recording the speech with or without a live audience, view the camera as your “audience substitute.”

Background and Lighting

Your background is also part of your video’s nonverbal aesthetics. Make sure that you consider how the background might translate to your audience. Is it messy? Distracting? Is it a white background? If so, you should avoid wearing white and disappearing into the walls. Are there windows behind you with bright light streaming through, making you almost invisible? If so, can you close the blinds or curtains or move? Can you set up a ring light to offset the light coming through outside sources and enhance your appearance?  Do you have a ceiling fan whirring above your head? If so, turn it off while you record. Does your video conferencing software have filters that blur out imperfections that might otherwise be heightened by visual photography?

Pro-tip: Make sure you have adequate lighting.

1. Never be in front of a window where you are backlit.
2. Always have adequate lighting on your face.
3. Use a lamp or lighting system to light your face and adjust it properly.
4. If you use a ring light, try bouncing it off the ceiling so you do not get light rings in your pupils.
5. Avoid using an overhead light because it casts shadows under your eyes.

Camera Positioning

Because your facial expressions and body language are also visible in a digital speech, you will want to pay some attention to how the camera(s) is positioned. Don’t position the camera so closely that your head fills the frame, or so far away that you are a tiny object in the frame. To look your best, position the camera so that you are viewed from above from between 15° to 30° from eye level. Filming yourself at eye-level might make your facial features appear flat, while filming yourself from below eye level gives the impression that you are towering over your audience. If your camera is in your laptop computer, try balancing it on a small stack of books to achieve an optimal level.

https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=7ppTAA-1tm0

Pro-tip: Frame the shot. Depending on the type of speech, you want to frame your head or do a 3/4 shot.  It is best to frame the shot so the audience can see your gestures.

https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=KYNO7cAzuYQ
Pro-tip: Talk directly into the camera to connect with your audience.

https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=sTFWC1PiLVE&t=3s

Wardrobe, Hair, and Makeup

Wear appropriate clothing on all parts of your body. By now, everyone has heard at least one story of someone in a Zoom meeting who stood up to reveal that he was wearing pajamas or sweatpants below more formal clothing on top, or worse. Dress as if the audience might see your entire body to avoid such embarrassment. Also, make sure that your clothing looks good on camera in terms of color and lighting in your setting. Avoid noisy jewelry such as earrings or bangles that jingle if you move. Style your hair the way you would if you were meeting with this audience in person. Also, if you normally wear cosmetics when you meet with this type of audience in person, wear them on camera as well. Your goal is to look just as you would in the same setting if you were meeting face to face.

For more detailed information, check out “Six Tips for Looking Great in a Zoom Meeting,” Jefferson Graham (2020).

Dress Rehearsal

Rehearse under these conditions and record your facial expressions to see how they are translating to others. Is your body language clear? Do some gestures or facial expressions look exaggerated? Can you adjust the camera position or lighting? Are your clothing and accessories distracting or do they make you fade into the background? Do you look professional? A videoed rehearsal will provide you with answers to these questions.

Remember that effective rehearsal occurs under the conditions that you’ll speak. Your goal is to create an aesthetic experience that honors the purpose of your speech, so being accountable to all nonverbal factors will increase your ethos.

Additional Pro-Preparation Tips:

• Stand up (if possible) so that you have more breath support during your presentation.

• Make sure you will not be interrupted during the web conference.

• Have notes and anything else you need at hand. While you can use a computer to display them, be conscious of your audience’s ability to see you reading.

• If you can be seen, be seen—use the technology to your advantage so that you are not an entirely disembodied voice talking over slides.

• Watch your practice video to make sure there are no issues for the listeners. Make sure the ending isn’t cut off.

• Edit the video if necessary.

Presentation Aids

In some cases, an online speech will include presentation aids. It’s important to determine a) if the presentation aid is necessary and b) if you’re able to provide that presentation aid in a different form.

First, are you certain you need a presentation aid? It can be tempting to use a presentation aid for a digital speech to avoid being visible to the audience. After all, it’s common for digital presentation software to display either a visual aid or your body. Don’t use a visual aid to avoid being seen because the audience will be much more interested in your embodied presentation. Second, do you know how to share your visual aid via the digital platform you will be speaking through? As with all other aspects of online public speaking, you need to practice beforehand so that you know what your audience will see as well as how to quickly switch from your screen to the visual aid and back again. Demonstrating technical competence

If you deem that a presentation aid is absolutely necessary (or required) also, ask: do I need to provide it live or in the recording? If you’re presenting to a discrete audience and want to provide a graph or some data, send the information in a report ahead of time. This will allow your audience to feel acquainted with the information and can spare you from having an additional technological component. You want to avoid information overload as you speak and presentation aids can often cause more of a distraction than serve as an aid. Therefore, keep your visuals simple. One rule business speakers like to use is the “10-20-30: rule: No more than 10 slides, no more than 20 words on the slides, and no font smaller than 30 point.” Using 30 point font will definitely minimize the amount of text. Inserting short videos and planning interactivity (such as polls, which the software supports) are also helpful.

Like any public speech, when speaking online, you are responsible for crafting an effective advocacy that is composed of well-reasoned arguments that are delivered with purposeful aesthetic choices. Rehearse under the conditions that you’ll speak. Be confident that you’re aware of

• the technology you will need,
• where it will be placed,
• which technology that you are responsible for running, and
• how your embodiment of information translates.

Pro-tip: If you can be seen, be seen; use the technology to your advantage so that you are not an entirely disembodied voice talking over slides.

Sharing Audiovisual Recordings

If you are recording an asynchronous presentation to share with others, post it to a cloud first (such as Canvas’s Studio, SoundCloud or YouTube) and post a link and/or embed it on the corresponding project discussion board on Canvas. Audiovisual recording files are too large to be emailed easily. Other participants will not want to download a large file to view your presentation, so embedding or providing a link will make it easier on everyone.  Remember to change the privacy settings so that your link is viewable to everyone.