While web-based communications make it easier to keep in touch with people around the world, they also make it easier for your attendees to check out. Attendees are free to check e-mail, work on projects, talk to people in their office or surf the web.

Adapting your face-to-face meetings to the web can prove challenging. Mastering this new medium isn’t as easy as you may think. The following tips will help keep your attendees engaged and make the most of your meeting:

1. Set guidelines for focused participation and state the agenda. In the first two minutes of your presentation explain the guidelines for focused participation. This may include how to ask questions, how to stay engaged and how to handle technical problems. For example, state:  “I will open the lines for each region to comment on their quarterly update.”  This lets people know you need them to pay attention.

Within the first two minutes also state the topics you will cover and how much time you plan to spend on each. This will help people focus their attention on the information that is most important to them. Lack of guidance makes it easy for participants to tune out.

2. Adjust your PowerPoint^® slides.  When delivering a web-based meeting or webinar, your PowerPoint slides are often the only thing your attendees see. Therefore, the slides must be simple, visually appealing and easy to follow. 

To maintain attendees’ attention, consider changing slides every 60-90 seconds. This means you’ll need more slides than in a face-to-face meeting. Each time you advance a slide, state the topic of the slide, list the highlights of the topic, then go into detail. 

3. Interact every two slides. Try to incorporate some form of audience interaction every few slides. Audience interaction tools will vary depending on your software, but common tools include polls, questions, chat and emoticons. You can also use these tools to ask attendees how you’re doing. Do they want you to go slower? Do they have questions? Learn about the tools available and make the most of them.

4. Adjust your delivery style. When your attendees can’t see you, there is a disconnect that is difficult to overcome. To keep them on board and to help them know what to expect during a web-based meeting, verbally state your actions and explain what you are doing as you do it. For example, if you are going to use video, tell your attendees, “Now I’m going to turn on the video feed. Click on your video panel to see me live.”