Practice! :  There are very few people who can ‘wing it’.You need to put time into knowing your presentation and what you plan to say or else you’re more likely to have many run on points and take way too long! As well practicing can’t be done in your head as it doesn’t account for the speed of your talking  and any Ummm’s and Ahh’s that you’ll have trying to put decent words together. By doing it out loud you can hear how your presentation is going to sound and can change any wording that  doesn’t flow right. 

Personalize: This comes in two parts,  adding a personal aspect/experience  to  your presentation to build credibility ( can’t be done in all cases)  and personalizing it for the audience. What I mean by personalizing it to the audience is if you’re speaking to  for example a  group of Computer programmers you’re not going to tell them the basics of a computer. So basically don’t regurgitate information that you’re audience already knows this is probably the easiest way to have people tune out, even if  you have something relevant to them later on. 

Learning to use less : Another very common mistake I’ve seen is people trying to cram as much information as possible  onto slides. People aren’t there to read from a powerpoint, they’re there to hear you speak . So speak more than what you place on the powerpoint/blackboard etc. This will keep the attention on you and your audience won’t zone out after reading the slides before you’ve gotten to your points. There are so many general rules out there that I won’t go into in terms of how much you should place on  slides , what I can say is to put on only as much that it will compliment what you’re saying  and not dominate the presentation.

Be Creative and Interactive:  Unfortunately we all have very short attention spans and if we’re not engaged we start talking with the person beside us or do anything that doesn’t involve actively listening to you! Again if you’re using powerpoint it needs to be interesting to the eye  and what you say needs to keep the audience listening . Moving beyond just telling the audience information is effective as well. It can be a demonstration, a short skit, a funny little game  just something to break away from just constant speaking. 

 To add more to this,  audiences tend to take away more when they are actively involved. This also can be the hardest thing to do as there will be a lot  resistance. Through asking simple questions, having people do small activities or at least giving them a small laugh , not only will they be more likely to pay attention but they will also remember  the key information that you’re presenting! 

I hope this helps out a bit for the next time you’re doing a presentation in whatever setting that may be. The biggest take away I would like to express is to be audience oriented! Your audience is the whole reason you’re presenting, if you loose them you’ve pretty much failed at your goal.

Have any Questions/Comments? Contact me at kevin.richard@ryerson.ca or send me a twitter message.