If you’re preparing yourself to give a powerful presentation, you have one thing on your mind. You want your audience to really adore what you’re saying. There’s no worse feeling when you’re up on stage presenting your speech, then see your audiences’ eyes glaze over, start to get bored and antsy.
Every speaker wants his audience to talk about his presentation for days or even months to come. So here is a list of presentation tips that cover the design, performance and overall reach of your slideshow. To really knock the socks off your audience, be sure to check off each one of the tips below.
A powerful story can make your whole presentation. Take TED talks, for instance. They’re all based on captivating stories that support the main argument or line of thought of each speech.
Give your presentation a concept. Use a classic narrative structure, from a gripping outset to an impressive end. A presentation designer Nancy Duarte advises presenters to spend twice as much time on framing the storyline than creating the presentation itself.
Don’t forget to add emotional and powerful words. These will make your audience feel much more connected to you.
Visual hierarchy is a design strategy for organizing elements depending on their importance. This goes for font sizes, icon size, contrast and any other visual element in your presentation. This is an important presentation tip because you want your viewers to know exactly which part of the slide they should be looking at first, second, third, and so on. It’s all about focusing on what can grab the user’s attention first, whether it’s a larger font, more space between elements, or creating deliberate alignment.
People can usually remember only three main points from presentations, so take advantage of this psychological phenomenon. While creating your storyline, think of three key messages that you want your audience to walk out of the room with.
To make these three key points stick, you need to make them short, memorable and attention-grabbing. In a nutshell, you should properly introduce the point you will be making, make your point, and wrap up by summarizing the main point.
You might have people sitting in the back of the room, relatively far away from your screen. To make sure they can still see your presentation slides, you need to create a strong contrast. This means your text should easily stand out against your background. If you have a dark background, all of your text and design elements should be light in contrast, and vice versa.
When used sensibly, numbers can strengthen your point and back up your arguments. To make data easy for your audience to digest, you need to make it specific, relevant and contextual.
When Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod, he did not emphasize its 5GB storage and 185g weight. Instead, he repeatedly said that it could hold 1,000 songs and physically manifested that he could fit it into his pocket. This number was easy for the audience to remember, and called even more attention to its tiny size.
One great way to create an interactive presentation is by adding audio and video elements to your slides. This helps you take a break from talking and can give your presentation another dimension.
Using photos, graphics or icons in your presentation with low-resolution makes your slide blurry. To eliminate this, always use high-quality vector graphics that look great no matter how big or small they are.
As a speaker, you often find yourself addressing an international audience, whether it is at a big conference, or an internal company meeting joined by remote teams. Greeting international participants in their local language gives a nice personal touch to the offset of your presentation. It helps you create a connection and the feeling of intimacy with the people sitting before you.
Despite all your efforts, the audience might need a bit of a nudge. Giving out small rewards can bring another interactive element to your presentation. You can go with the event merchandise or small treats, like chocolates and candy.
With the tips listed above, you’ll be able to turn your presentation or lecture from a one-way content broadcast into an exciting conversation between you and your attendees.
