Being Aware of Your Audience in Virtual Settings

It’s tough to ‘read your audience’ when you can’t fully see them. But even in virtual settings, you have an audience. In order to be successful in business, to drive sales and close accounts, you have to be aware of, and manage your audience’s experience.

So what can you do?

Defining your Audience

Just as we do in person, defining your audience is the first step to being aware of their experience.

A strength in virtual meetings, particularly video calls, is that you know everyone will be watching the same thing. In this sense, you can really ‘play to the audience’ from a specific focal perspective. 

Playing up your Virtual Presence by ensuring you have your lens set up properly with your face and upper body framed in the center. Lighting, distance from the screen, all of these technical cues will enhance your audience’s experience for the better.  You can learn all about these virtual presence cues and how to apply them in my virtual workshops on the subject!

A challenge in virtual meetings presents itself when you have some participants who are not on video, but instead are calling in. These individuals won’t have the benefit of seeing you, so you will have to make up for it by being more descriptive and intentional with your vocal delivery. Things like tone, volume, articulation and speed will need to be on point if you want to make sure everyone is coming away with a clear message.  

Preparing Your Audience

Once you know who your audience is, you can think about where their experience actually begins. Hint: it begins before the meeting itself starts.

Be sure you have sent along communications (usually an email) to properly prepare your audience for the meeting or presentation they will be a part of. Consider including information on who will be present, what the focus is and any goals desired. This will help your audience feel engaged and included.   

Engaging Your Audience

I wrote an article last week about engaging and motivating a remote team. To reiterate some of the main points here, because we have fewer in-person body language cues to pick up on, we have to be hyper-vigilant in virtual meetings.

This will mean setting norms of participation at the top of the call. Showing people how they can easily chime in. It also means checking in more often. Calling people by name is also crucial because of the 2D perspective that takes away some of the notions of space and order.

During a video meeting, you should also be aware of your audience’s overall demeanor. Is there a lot of shifting going on? Slouching, yawning? Can you tell some people are engaged but others aren’t?

If you notice nonverbal cues like this, use them to reach out and engage your audience more directly using the tools I mentioned above.

When you are talking, look directly into the lens - this will translate into you looking directly at each audience individually - this is a serious luxury because you can’t do this in person. Just remember to blink and look away every once in a while otherwise it is downright creepy.

In Sum

There is no getting around the added challenge of being aware of and managing your audience in virtual settings. But as with in person settings, the key lies in sitting in their shoes, thinking about their experience as a holistic picture and bringing them on a seamless journey from the very beginning onwards.

Being aware of your audience is a powerful tool when it comes to successful communication and thus, being successful in business – don’t let the barrier of a screen cause you to forget about your audience – in fact, your audience now may be larger than ever!