Most advice about virtual presentations is either obvious (“make eye contact!”) or impossible to act on mid-call. This is the practical version: twelve things that actually move the needle, roughly in the order you’d use them.
Before you present
1. Frame your camera at eye level. Raise your laptop or camera so the lens is at eye height. It’s the highest-impact change you can make to how confident you look.
2. Fix your lighting and audio first. Light on your face, not behind you. A real mic or headset, not the laptop’s. People forgive a soft picture; they tune out bad sound.
3. Open everything before you share. Deck, demo, links — all open and ready, so you’re never fumbling between windows on camera.
4. Silence every notification. Do-not-disturb on the OS and the phone. One Slack ping mid-share undoes a lot of polish.
How you deliver
5. Open with the stakes, not the agenda. Tell people why this matters to them in the first 20 seconds. The agenda slide can wait.
6. Slow down — then slow down more. Nerves speed you up, and video adds tiny delays. A deliberate pace sounds confident and gives remote audiences time to keep up.
7. Hold eye contact with the lens. Look into the camera for your key points. If reading pulls your eyes away, bring your notes closer to the lens (see #10).
8. Keep slides light. Slides support you; they aren’t your script. A few words and one clear visual per slide beats a wall of bullets you’ll read off.
Staying on track
9. Use a script, but write it for the ear. A word-for-word script keeps you on message — as long as it’s written to be spoken: short sentences, contractions, one idea at a time.
10. Read it without it showing. This is the one most people get wrong. Put your script beside your camera with a tool that’s hidden from your screen share, so you can read every word while appearing to look straight at your audience — and without your notes ever appearing on the shared screen.
Engagement and recovery
11. Build in interaction. Ask a question and actually pause. Use names. Watch the chat. A remote audience drifts the moment it becomes a monologue.
12. Have a recovery plan. A phone hotspot for Wi-Fi, a teammate who can take over, a PDF you can email if a share freezes. Calm recovery reads as competence.
The bottom line
Great virtual presenting is mostly small, repeatable habits: good light and sound, an eye-level camera, a spoken-style script you can read without it showing, a slower pace, and real interaction. None of them are hard — they just have to become routine.
ScriptAssist handles #7 and #10 for you: it turns your PowerPoint notes into a script beside your camera, hidden from your screen share. See how it works or start a free trial.