My 5 Best On Camera Speaking Tips

Over the years I’ve learned many tips and strategies for speaking on stages and today I’m sharing my absolute best tips for on-camera speaking.

I’ll share with you 5 tangible and tactical ways to be more engaging, effective and entertaining when you hit record.

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Episode Show Notes

5 Tangible and Tactical Ways to Show Up Best on Video

1. Preparation

Preparation means a lot of things to a lot of different people but what quality preparation is, it is essentially this idea of doing your homework and your research. It is actually more about getting relevant information to equip you to be in the moment so that you’ll be prepared to be able to have quality conversations.

Your version of preparation might look different from mine so you need to define what that looks like for you and know what’s your comfort zone. Be intentional with your planning and ask yourself, what background knowledge and or notes can you put together that gives you courage to continue to press that record button and do it anyways?

🔥 Prep Tips you can do to help you feel more prepared:

Do a little research on your topic. Have a couple statistics to pull from so it’s not just story based.
Write down your prompt for your opening hook in a few bullet points. Put it in a post-it note.
List the common mistakes your ideal customer makes so that you can make sure you don’t skip one.
If you’re doing a virtual summit, understand the other speakers who will be there so you can connect your topic with them.

2.Be yourself.

Most of the time we feel that we have to be polished when we show up online in videos or interviews. But when we watch other people on virtual stages or video, do we love the polish person we see or are we a little turned off by them? Most likely, it’s the latter. They tend to rub us the wrong way a little bit and we can’t put our finger on it.

The truth is we don’t trust perfection. There is an underlying level of mistrust because deep down we wonder, are they really that curated and perfectly polished? And we know that the answer to that question is a resounding no.

So what you want to do is focus on how you can completely be yourself and what does it translate for you. You need to shake off the difference between how you talk normally and how you might be trying to play a persona on camera.

🔥Things you can apply when speaking so you can be more authentic and real on camera

Use expressions in your voice like you tell stories to your friends.
Tell the stories about the weird quirky things.
Bring personality through your voice –check out Podcast Episode 35 with Bobby Klinck and Episode 106 with Zafira Rajan to help you infuse your personality to your brand.

3. Eye contact.

Imagine you’re in a Zoom meeting presenting to a bunch of people. Typically we want to look at the faces of the people we’re talking to because we want to see how our message is resonating with them, if their faces are lighting up or if they are confused. We want to know what they are thinking.

Sadly we don’t get that feedback when we’re speaking virtually. But if we want to maintain the engagement of our audience, we have to give them the eye contact. You need to stare directly at the camera lens when you’re speaking. You don’t get to look at your audience faces but understand that this means you sacrifice receiving that connection back from them.

🔥 Tips on maintaining eye contact with your audience

Look directly in your camera lens to help showcase confidence and boost trust.
Target to maintain eye contact about 70% of the time..

4. Movement

Remember that it’s not just about the words you’re saying on camera but it’s about the experience you create around those words. So start thinking about what natural movement looks like for you when you speak and go by the feel of your own body. Practice how you naturally move your head, back and shoulders.

🔥 Power tips you can do to improve your movement:

Start recording yourself and observe if you need more variability in how you move.
Be aware of your shoulders, your neck and your facial expressions.

5. Make yourself smile and or laugh.

This is my absolute favorite strategy to use. What typically happens when we present is we show up at a little lower energy level than we normally are when we reach our stride with speaking and we lose that momentum we can gain with our audience right out of the gate.

Know that there is power in first impressions and when you do not show up with your best energy right out of the gate, your audience tends to become a little bit more skeptical and really nitpick the content doubting if this is really applicable to them.

Here’s what happens when you laugh:

Your voice changes to a more dynamic tone and volume – There’s a warmth and a spark in your voice that sticks with you and elevates how you speak.
Your whole body language changes – Your face lights up, your eyes come alive and your shoulders show your confidence when you move.

🔥 Try these to elevate how you speak:

Make yourself laugh early in your presentations. Think of things that make you chuckle.
Say something to break the ice and make your audience laugh very quickly in your presentations. You can tackle this within two to three minutes of your presentation. It could be:
- a self deprecating humor
- something funny that happened
- making fun of the tech issues that we’re having or
- something to lighten and lift the spirits to make it all not so heavy or so serious