3 Tips To Be More Confident Online

In my last blog post I went over the essential software and equipment that you need to start running your online business club.

Now, I want to give you 3 top tips for becoming more confident when speaking and teaching online so that you can start overcoming those barriers that I spoke about in a previous blog post.

1 – Know that you’re set up properly

In my last blog post, I told you the essential software and equipment you needed to get started. Knowing that you have the right equipment, you know how to use it, and it’s all set up correctly is the first step towards being a confident communicator online.

You need to make sure your lighting and camera are good so your audience can see you properly; your audio is good so they can hear you; and you have the right software set up to host your online meetings.

Now, occasionally stuff does go wrong, and that’s okay!

A few months ago, I was delivering a live session and we had people round doing some work on the house at the same time. Suddenly the power went out halfway through my live session on Zoom, so I had to go and find out what had happened, get it back running, and jump back online.

Sometimes stuff like that happens, it’s live so it’s unavoidable. But you’ll find that your audience will be very forgiving and supportive because that’s just how the live experience works!

But knowing that you have everything set up correctly and thinking about what you’ll do on the off chance something does go wrong will give you much more confidence to actually go live to your audience.

2 – Know that you can communicate powerfully

Communication is arguably the most powerful skill that you need to have in business and in life. We are more confident when we know we can deliver content and communicate in a powerful way.

In the last couple of years, the world has changed, so we have to develop new skills.

We know how to communicate in face-to-face meetings because it’s natural and it’s what we’ve always done, and when we talk face-to-face, we can see each others’ body language, we can tell when people are bored, or when they're attentive, and we can adapt our communication style to suit the situation.

But now we've been thrust into a new world. Now we have to communicate in a different way, by talking to a webcam. And that means we've got to raise our game because people can’t leave if you’re boring them in a face-to-face meeting, but if they’re on the other side of a webcam and they’re bored, they can check their emails, check their Facebook, or just leave!

So, we have to up our game, because it's more difficult to communicate in a virtual world than it is in the face-to-face world.

So how do we communicate effectively?

One of the things we need to do is bring energy to keep our audience engaged. If you come across as passionate about what you’re teaching, then your audience will be excited about it too!

We also have to make sure that we keep our voice interesting. That means changing the pitch and pace when we speak. We need to bring melody to what we’re saying because people love listening to music for a reason! You need to make sure you’re not being monotonous but are speaking with variation and passion to engage your audience.

 Make sure you don’t speak too fast because you’ll lose your audience. Your content is valuable, make sure you take pauses and slow down so that you can articulate better, and so everyone can take it onboard. Talking too fast also makes you more likely to stumble over your words. And pausing also helps you to reduce filler words such as “Um”, “Like” and “Err”.

3 – Know that you have great content

The third thing to being more confident when communicating online is to know that you have great content to share with your clients.

A lot of people say to me, “Mark, what would I even talk to my clients about in my business club?”

The fact is, we’re in the knowledge profession, we know so much and have so much content to teach others. You have more valuable stuff in your head than you realise!

But, if you’re still stumped for content, In my next blog post I’m going to go through how to come up with lots and lots of great content FAST, so look out for that!

Watch the full video on building an online business club here: How to Build a Business Advisory Online Club

The world has changed. We have all gone online. We are living with Zoom and Microsoft Teams every day. And it’s changing the way we communicate. You need a different set of skills to communicate through a webcam or camera, and when you master these skills, you will stand out from the rest of the profession, win more work and have more success.

If you found this content helpful and want to build your confidence in online communication, enrol in the Online Live Academy to get live training every month, plus additional video training, systems, tools and resources designed to get results FAST!  

If you found this valuable and would like to learn more about value pricing, I run a free live online training session every month with a topic chosen by you. Attend live and you can ask me any questions you have. Click here to register and I will send you an invitation to the next session.

Wishing you every success on your pricing journey

Mark Wickersham

Chartered Accountant, Public Speaker and Author of Amazon No.1 Best Seller “Effective Pricing for Accountants”