First and foremost, to ensure a professional look during your virtual presentation, you need to use proper camera framing. Make sure your webcam is at eye-level. If you shoot from an angle too low, you will have a double chin; and too high and it looks like you are on your knees.

If you’re using your laptop’s integrated camera, it can be difficult to get the angle right. If this is the case, try stacking it on some books and or boxes to achieve the ideal angle.

If the angle still isn’t perfect, that’s acceptable — but make sure to put yourself in the center of the frame.

If you break your frame into thirds with horizontal lines, your eyes should be around the intersection of the top and middle third. If this cuts off your hair or head in the frame, move the camera a bit further away. Your entire head should be visible in the frame.

It’s also important to minimize the number of surfaces (walls, floor or ceiling) in your frame. Ideally, you should have only one wall behind you. Plus, this puts the focus only on the speaker (you).

Regardless of your home decor, you’ll want as little of it as possible in the frame. Why? Because it might be distracting to the point that the viewer’s attention is focused on your wall art and furniture instead of you, which is not good. As a rule of thumb, we suggest putting yourself in front of a single-colored wall. And, if possible, the wall should be white or another lighter color.

If you can’t find a solid-colored background, that’s fine. However, try to minimize the number of things that are in your background, get rid of any asymmetries and attempt to align the edges of your screen with the background.

Make sure that the horizontal items in your room are aligned with the horizontal border of the recorded screen, and the vertical walls (or things) are in line with the vertical screen recording.

This is one of the most important steps you must take. We cannot overstate the importance of lighting. Make sure you highlight this section. You need as much light in the room as possible when recording with a camera. Video quality drops rapidly when you’re filming in a poorly lit room.

If there’s not enough light in the room, the camera has to compensate by lowering the shutter speed (and in return frames per second, or FPS) and increasing ISO. Most videos that you watch are played at 30 frames per second (FPS), while your webcam can fall under 20 FPS when recording in low-lit rooms.

How do you mitigate this problem? Maximize the light in your room! Open your blinds and curtains, let the sun shine in and turn on all lights in the room. You want as much light on you as possible. So, if you have any extra bedside lamps or floor lamps, put them in the room (just beware of shadows), and play around with the lights till you get it right.

But once we let the light in, we have another problem. We can’t have the sun or the light hitting your camera frame directly. There are two things that can go wrong here: First, the camera focuses on you and it can’t make a good contrast with the amount of light coming in from somewhere else. Secondly, the camera focuses on the light coming from the outside, and it automatically darkens you and your room.

What you want to do is sit across the window and move any light sources away from the frame. If you can, try to make light sources point at you.

It is highly recommended that you do not sit in a high-backed chair that is visible to the camera. After all, you don’t want your audience distracted by anything but you. Chairs can ruin the frame composition. As a possible solution, you may choose to stand while doing your presentation.

Virtual conferences are supposed to simulate you, as the speaker, talking directly to each viewer. The best way to accomplish this is to look directly into your web camera, not your screen. This gives the viewers a sense that you are making eye contact with them.

We know it might feel a tad awkward to look at a camera while you talk, but this will help immensely for your storytelling. Also, it will create a stronger sense of engagement with your audience because they will think you are talking directly to them. Eye contact, even virtually, is what connects you to your audience. Consider ways to engage the audience with participation!

If you have been attending some of the online conferences and events that have been popping up lately, you probably notice some people use headphones, air pods or headsets. We believe headphones look unnatural and unprofessional for business events or conferences, even if they are virtual.

These days, most laptops are equipped with high-quality microphones and software that successfully blocks out most background noise. So, if you want to look professional, ditch the headphones and make sure your space is quiet for your presentation.

Considering there will be a lot of people with various tastes attending a virtual event, we believe business casual attire is the way to go.

Furthermore, we highly recommend wearing unicolor clothing, as it will look better on camera. Stripes and busy patterns can often be distracting. Additionally, you should probably refrain from attire that includes logos and/or images on them, as we believe these also distract the audience from your talk.

A speech that works well in a live venue may not translate well to a virtual one. You may not realize it at first, but large gestures and other visual cues that you (sometimes unknowingly) use during a live speech won’t work in a virtual event. For this reason, you should tap into special materials for this delivery medium, such as a modified slide deck. This can help convey information or emotion that may not otherwise be communicated effectively across a digital medium. Less is more in this medium.

Once you’ve gotten to this point, do yourself a solid and make sure you know the boundaries of your camera frame. See how much you can move to the right and to the left without going out of the frame as well as how close you can get to the camera. Once you start giving your presentation, it’s easy to accidentally slip out of the frame because you won’t see yourself on the screen. This is why it’s important to practice beforehand.

It is difficult to capture the essence of an in-person conversation via video conference. But there are a few things you can do to accomplish this. First (as mentioned in Step 7), it’s important to look directly in the camera when you are speaking and listening.

Second, and this is key — slow down the pace of the conversation. Once you say something, give pause, so the other speaker has time to reply.

Also, when someone else is speaking, be sure to show you are listening by making nodding movements every so often. This will show not only that you are listening, but also that the speaker’s cameras did not freeze. Make sure these gestures are natural and not sudden, jerky movements. Remember there is likely to be a delay in comments, too.

When you are giving an in-person talk, you probably put away your phone and turn off all notifications on your laptop. At that moment you are focused on only one thing: presenting to the audience. The same holds for a virtual talk: Put your phone away. Turn off alarms, make sure your dog does not bark and your kids don’t come barging in during the presentation. While you are speaking, you should only be interacting only with your audience.