Online Media Interviews & Presentations with Doug Weller

Date: 21 August 2024

Format: Online Webinar

Presenter: Doug Weller

LinkedIn Registered Guests: https://www.linkedin.com/events/onlinemediainterviews-presentat7216592790942535680

Video Recording on YouTube: Online Media Interviews & Presentations with Doug Weller from Corporate Media Services (and below)

PowerPoint Slides: Online Media Interviews & Presentations with Doug Weller from Corporate Media Services (and below)

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Webinar Transcript

Online Media Interviews & Presentations Webinar with Doug Weller

Welcome to our webinar today – Online Media Interviews and Presentations.

My name is Doug Weller, and before we kick off, I will share the screen and do a welcome to country.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging.

So around about 20 minutes today, team talking about online media interviews and presentations.

I hope you find value in the next 20 minutes.

I’ll just share the screen again. All right.

A little bit about your host today, me, your facilitator:

I’ve been involved in the media industry for around about 40 years, more than 40 years in Australia and overseas.

Spent a lot of time at the ABC, lectured for a time at RMIT University in Melbourne in TV journalism and then more than 20 years ago started up this company, Corporate Media Services.

So let’s just give you an idea of what we offer in terms of our services before we get stuck into it.

So our training courses, media spokesperson training – training people how to maximise their positive situation in media, deal with difficult situations, executive media training.

So that’s obviously mainly for senior managers taking that a step further, putting them under the pump if that’s the brief from the client.

Crisis media communications training – getting a lot of call at the moment for these courses because of the threat of cyber attacks.

But how to actually deal with a crisis when it hits, when you really don’t know much about what’s going on, there’s not much to say.

And the final one, presentation and public speaking skills training.

Very similar to what we’re doing here today, showing people how they can actually present and get better value out of their presentations or their public speaking situations.

We offer them on site or online, face-to-face or online and they’re pretty good.

I think they’re the best in the country, but I would say that, wouldn’t I?

All righty, let’s let’s have a look at some housekeeping before we kick off, folks.

Could you please make sure that your microphones are off?

I’ve got Brett in another office and he will turn your mic off if you don’t.

Obviously we need to do that because we don’t want to have that distraction.

Questions as we move along, that’s fine.

You can leave them till the end or you can ask questions as we move along and I’ll try to get to those questions as we go through the process.

I’m not going full screen today as you will see and the reason I’m not going full screen when I did the run through, I found that the PowerPoint process would jam and I’ve found this before on this computer.

Don’t know why it’s a new computer, but it can actually just jam and I don’t want that to happen today and so not going full screen, but you’ll be able to see I think well enough the way it is there.

Brings me to my first point before you do a presentation online, a media interview online, anything online, just check the equipment because.

As we know, technology has a way of causing a little bit of grief, so just make sure that you check the technology and check your equipment.

All right, obviously sharing the screen again.

OK, benefits for online presentations, TV interviews, anything online.

We know what the benefits are.  It’s instant, flexible, economical.

Why fly people all over the country when you can actually do it online?

Saves time, wider reach, all of those things and more.

But this is fascinating research from Duarte, the US communications organisation.

Presenters can bridge connections with technology, but they risk a connection gap.

Obviously you don’t want a connection gap. That’s the reason we do presentations, media interviews, or any sort of communication process. We want to connect, get our messages out there.

Even though virtual presentations provide many opportunities and advantages, people are still largely unsatisfied with their quality.  So I’ve had clients say to me in our media training sessions, presentation skills, training sessions on site and online over the last couple of years, they find the convenience of online terrific, but people aren’t very happy with it.

I did some work with the CEO, I think it was last year. He did an online presentation, very important presentation, wasn’t happy with it at all. It was recorded, sent me a clip and basically all of the things we’re going to be talking about today he needed to work on very easy fixes.

But there was a lot that was wrong with this presentation and the feedback he got was not happy with it. He wasn’t happy with it. So that’s why it sort of spurred me on to do this, course today, this webinar today, to just cover off on those situations.

Pretty easy fixes, but we need to think about it before we go into these online situations.

All right, just share the screen again and we’ll kick off.

Make sure we don’t have that connection gap. The last thing we want.

All right, your background. Now, isn’t that just lovely?

Wouldn’t you love being there with a cup of tea or a glass of wine or a beer, twiddling your toes in that that sand and looking at that view? Fantastic.

And if you’re a travel company or you’re trying to sell units on the beach, that might be an appropriate background. But for you, is it going to be an appropriate background?

People say to me, should it be virtual? Should it be real? It’s entirely up to you.

You decide.

The trouble with the virtual situation, as you know, is we have the disappearing head routine and I want to go further into the webinar and talk about the need to be animated.

So when you start moving your head, it can disappear. That can be quite distracting.

I prefer a real background. So I’m in my Home Office today and what have I got here?

I’ve got a desk over there with a plant.

On it, I like to have a bit of greenery in the background, some frames in the background there, making sure that those frames are absolutely spot on because if they’re a little bit out, they’ll look a lot out.

And some office equipment over there, some books on media, a bit of branding that works for me.

When I conduct media training, presentation skills training online from my Home Office, what’s going to work for you?

Sometimes it’s hard to pick those backgrounds.

So connect with a colleague, a friend and say, hey, this is the process I’m going through online, TV, interview, online presentation, whatever the case may be.

Is this going to work for me? Is this sending the right message?

You just want to send the right message.

So everybody’s different, but just deciding what’s going to be appropriate for you.

So both can work virtual or real.

Branding is good.

Some people that I’ve worked with and you may have come up against this, have a virtual background with branding. Yeah, I think that looks great.

Needs to be appropriate, needs to be tidy and professional.

The media training session with a person last year and they had so much paperwork in the background. It just went up to the ceiling and it was the messiest background I’ve ever seen.

And I tried to subtly say maybe think about a different background and the person looked at me confused and leaned over and grabbed a bit of paperwork, tossed it on the ground and said is that any better?

Well, of course it wasn’t didn’t make any difference at all.

So that person couldn’t see that that was a messy background. That’s why I say it’s good

Fresh eyes are always really good in terms of what’s going to be appropriate.

Everybody’s different, just decide what’s going to be appropriate for you.

Appropriate attire. Look, this is the advice we offer for a TV, face-to-face interviews.

It’s the same as online presentations, whatever.

You don’t want anything taking away from the message you’re delivering.

So a fairly plain top. As you can see today,

What shouldn’t you be doing? Bright scarves.

Something really, you know, that stands out because you don’t want people saying, Gee, that’s a nice top. Well, that’s a nice scarf. Gee, I really liked that.

And uh, all of a sudden you’re not You’re not actually, uh,

So just a plain top, nothing busy.

It’s going to be a head and shoulders shot similar to what we have in a a face-to-face or on-site TV, interview situation.

OK, this is one of the big problems that is being, repeated and that is the lighting situation.

Now you can get Youtubers and Tiktokkers get very excited with lighting.

They have huge lighting rigs and a TV studio quality lighting.

I don’t think you need to go that far to gain the professional look that you need, but certainly we need to make sure that we’re not having what we have here.

What’s happening there is that lamp over in the corner.

It’s not a huge lamp, but it is dragging all of the light away from that person.

You’ll see from this next one. Window at the back and this is the CI dealt with had this same issue.

There was a window on the corner that was, didn’t have a blind down across it and it took all the light away from his uh his uh face.

So you can see the light in the background.

Big no no once that light is gone we’ve got a good situation over on the on the other side.

So for my situation in my home office I’ve got a window there.

I’ve got a window there.

This side’s a bit dark, so I just light that side with a bed lamp up onto the to the wall.

So just play around with it again.

It’s all about making sure that you are, as we say in the media industry, front lit or frontal lighting.

But it’s very important because this is one of the big mistakes that’s been made in online presentations.

Very easy fix, but make sure that that you are either facing a window or you’ve got a light at the front there.

Subtle overhead lighting, especially if you are slightly follicle impaired like me, you don’t want to make a big deal about it.

So making sure that you’ve got subtle lighting overhead.

But the big one, no bright rear lights, especially a window because it’ll completely wash you out. All right, we don’t want that. We’ve seen plenty of that. We’re over that.

So again, very easy fix. So that’s obviously a much more professional look.

So making sure that your position is right.

And so obviously the gentleman that we just saw there, absolutely fine.

Seated or standing, make sure that you are in the centre of the screen.

Try to fill the screen as we can see there.

And the gentleman beforehand, a small gap at the top of your head looking directly at the camera.

And if I’ll just go to a media example here, oops.

Let’s go back. No, my media example comes up a little bit later.

OK, so just make sure that you are, um, looking directly at the camera and your eyes are in line with that camera.

Some people, um, do their presentations seated, probably most people.

I prefer to be standing because it allows me to inject more energy into the process, and I’ll come to the energy part of the situation a little bit later.

Let’s have a look at this example. This is the UN Ambassador to the United Nations.

I just want to play this and make some comments about it.

First Lady Jill Biden, as I mentioned, just made an unannounced trip to Ukraine.

You can see her now.

We’re going to show the video of her greeting and hugging the Ukrainian First Lady during this humanitarian trip to the region.

Will we see? President Biden in Ukraine sometime soon.

‘Well, I can’t preview what the president’s travel is going to be, but I can say that the first lady’s visit has to have given so much support and encouragement to the Ukrainian women and children.

And for her to go there on Mother’s Day to meet with the Ukrainian first lady, I think sends a very strong, a very positive message.

I met with Ukrainian mothers on the border when I traveled to Romania and Moldova a few weeks ago. I see the strength that these women have.

So having the first lady there, encouraging them, supporting them, actually in Ukraine, I think sends a strong message of support and commitment that the U.S. Government has to supporting Ukrainians moving forward’.

OK, so I really like that.

What you have there with the ambassador, she’s looking probably in a small booth in the UN somewhere in New York, looking straight at the camera, bit of animation using her hands slightly. The attire is is good. It’s not going to distract pearls around the neck.

I would have got rid of those, but it’s not a a huge distraction.

Hair off her face, subtle earrings. This is what we suggest for TV media interviews on site or in studio. Also relevant for these online situations.

So the important thing here is the ambassador is looking straight at that camera and that’s an important thing that I’m going to come up to shortly, slightly animated and very much on message.

As you can see, she just bridged.

Don’t know what’s going on with the president’s story, but what I can tell you is what I want to tell you and that’s why I came on to the CNN program today.

So obviously very experienced operator, but the big thing there looking straight at the camera, slightly animated.

And the lighting, the background is organized by CNN.

So obviously if you’re not doing a studio situation, you have to think about that.

And that’s why I’m touching on those points today.

So sound and vision.

So check your camera again with a colleague or a friend to make sure most computer laptop cameras are fine.

I’m pretty happy with the the camera with this computer.

The feedback I get is that it’s absolutely fine.

But there has been feedback that my mic isn’t great on this computer.

So off to JB Hi-fi. No, I don’t have shares in JB Hi-fi off to JB Hi-fi right about $100 to get a a mic that’s going to work.

So again check that your as I say the the camera sync.

Be on OK on most computers, my experience most laptops, but sometimes the mic isn’t very easy fix. Just go off and grab a mic to make sure that your sound is OK.

So check your camera, check your microphone beforehand.

Consider purchasing an additional camera and or microphone.

OK, energy.

In my experience, the people I’ve spoken to, this is one of the big issues as far as I think the connection gap is concerned.

The reason people are not connecting is because there’s not enough energy.

So we get more energy if we have an on-site situation where we can get some interaction happening and we can see the audience.

One of the hardest things to do before we started doing online presentations and media interviews is people looking straight down the barrel of a camera in a TV, live TV situation.

Now we are asking people with no media experience and no training to actually look at the top of their computer, laptop and inject energy.

What it does, it just pulls our energy down and we need to be conscious of that because what’s happening is that people’s energy is low, they’re seated.

They do death by PowerPoint. They don’t inject themselves into the presentation.

And I think this is why people are finding it hard to connect.

So the energy situation is really, really important.

And that’s why I do all of my training webinars, whatever the case may be, standing, because I feel as like I can inject more energy into the situation and connect more.

As I said earlier, it’s all about connecting.

So let’s have a look.

Come alive, as I say there, be animated, but be yourself.

You don’t have to be over the top, but inject some energy into it because it is the most difficult thing to ask somebody without any media experience or any training to look directly at the camera and be animated.

Just remember it will drain your energy and you just might need to leave lift your energy levels around about 10%, but you don’t want to be anybody else but yourself.

Present standing, and I made that point.

That’s my preference, but it may not work for you.

Adjust your desk so you just get one of those.

They’re called descalators, believe it or not, standing desks or whatever the case may be.

You can pick them up at a lot of places.

They’re not very expensive, and that’s exactly what I’ve done.

I do all of my presentations, as I said earlier, standing. So consider having a think about that.

It allows you to inject more energy, but again, it may not work for you.

Certainly works for me and inject yourself into the presentation.

So you’ll notice that I’m diving in and out of this presentation.

I do it automatically, but I did have some feedback a couple of months ago from a training session that I was delivering to people in the United States.

And at the end, one of the people said, I really like the way you keep injecting yourself into the process.

It makes the whole process a lot more interesting.

I was doing it anyway, but I thought that was really interesting feedback from this person.

They felt that it was more engaging having me dive in back to the back to the slides, video, whatever the case may be.

So consider injecting yourself into the presentation rather than just connecting slides and you’re just in the background.

Because you know, if you’re presenting, we want to see the presenter.

OK, alrighty. Where to look?

Talk to the camera and make sure that your eye line is in line with the camera at the top of your laptop or your computer.

The camera is the audience.

I did training with a person once where I said look.

You didn’t look at the camera once, you didn’t, you didn’t look at the audience once and the person said, well, there was no audience, the audience wasn’t there.

I said no, the audience is the camera.

So just make sure that you realise you need to keep coming back to the camera.

Quite often we go off and have a look at people on the screen and that’s absolutely fine, but try to maintain eye contact with the camera at the top.

Some people say I find it very hard to look at the camera.

Get my messages out there, be animated, which is completely understandable because it’s really quite a bizarre thing to do.

So just in the general area, just if you can just look in that general area, that’s absolutely fine.

If you feel as though you can’t actually look at that that camera, if you look away, just refocus, focus.

And because it’s such a hard thing to do, go through a bit of a practice session beforehand because it is unusual.

So in Australia it is probably the most unusual thing we would ask a human being to do.

Look at a little plastic camera at the top of the computer.

Oh, and by the way, can you stay on message?

Look professional, be animated. It’s tough.

So go through a bit of a run-through, record it on Teams or Zoom or whatever the case may be and have a look at it.

Then you can check your background, check your lighting.

So practicing bit of a rehearsal, really important. I did a rehearsal before this session today.

Did rehearsal this week.

Wanted to see how the slides looked and I wanted to make sure that we had the timing sorted.

All right, I mentioned the ABC person earlier and there she is.

So if you’re ever thinking, I can’t remember what Doug said to do, just have a look at a TV news reader, a TV presenter and they’re generally all doing the same thing.

Head and shoulders shot, nothing to distract in terms of the attire, looking at the camera, lighting background sorted by the by the organisation.

So obviously if you’re not in a TV studio, you’re going to have to sort the background of the lighting.

Yourself, but quite easy to do, as I said earlier.

All righty distractions we all know about.

I’ll start at the bottom first.

We all know about the kids and the pets.

So if you feel it’s appropriate to introduce your puppy to the world, go right ahead.

But it might be quite distracting. But everybody’s different.

And if you think it works, that’s fine. Watches, Apple watches, smart watches.

If you’re doing a TV, not so much presentation, but if you’re doing a TV interview, the first thing that will happen when people see you pop up is they will ring you to say I can see you on the telly and your phone will go off and that will be very distracting.

So try and leave the smart watch outside.

People are nervous when they’re doing the presentation, which is fair enough.

They tend to click, click the pen.

Don’t click the pen, put the pen, put the pen with the phone outside, make sure that you’re you don’t click the pen.

And also I notice a lot of people tap, they tap some nervous tap, tap, tap.

You don’t realise it, but it’s zooming through to the people who are either watching you on TV or watching your presentation and not a great, not a great situation.

Alrighty, I think we’ve just about covered most of it.

All right, so the checklist. These are all easy fixes, as I said earlier.

So just check your equipment beforehand. Do a rehearsal.

See how that works for you. I always do a rehearsal before I do a webinar.

Not so much online media training or presentation skills training because I do so much of it, but certainly before a webinar.

Professional background. See what works for you, virtual or real attire. Nice plain attire.

Correct lighting, making sure that you are front lit, good sound and vision.

Just check that.Do you need to get another camera?

Do you need to get another microphone? Inject energy.

Going back to that connection gap earlier. Really important.

Inject energy because this is, I think when it comes to the connection gap, the people I’ve spoken to, the work I’ve done, this is where it really falls down, where people are.

Monotone in their delivery and not injecting energy.

And all we see is the slides and we don’t see them.

So we really want to bring these online situations, these virtual situations alive.

And so try to inject energy, but you know, always come across in your own natural style, be yourself and avoid those distractions.

So there we are.

Bit of a plug once again and questions, folks.

Does anybody have any questions before we wrap it up?

No, that’s good. Means I’ve answered everybody’s questions.

OK, so that’s our final webinar for this year.

I’m planning another webinar in the new year, February, March.

I want to call it Media Spokesperson Training.

What your media trainer should be telling you.

So I hope you, I hope you are able to join us for that and we’ll try to do that around February or March.

Hope you found value out of the situation today.

Thank you to those people who are saying well done and congratulations.

Hope you found value today.

But really important that we are on top of these situations because we want to get value out of our online presentations and media interviews.

We don’t want a connection gap, we want to connect.

Enjoy the rest of the day, folks, and thank you everybody for your kind comments.

All the best.