Presentation Hacks

How To Give A Great Presentation

By: Leslie Belknap

How To Give A Great Presentation

Nobody wants to give a mediocre presentation. Presenters are always searching for a universal, magic formula that will, without fail, lead to a presentation that delivers the desired results, such as: increased sales, new investors, more fans, or a transformed perspective for the audience. Unfortunately, there is no universal, magic formula. Every presentation is different, no two presenters are the same, and audiences vary dramatically.

To give a great presentation, you need to review the best tips and tricks and select the ones that are the right fit for you, your presentation, and your audience. To help you discover the magic formula that will work for you and deliver the results you need, here are a few of the best advice for modern presenters. Use the tips that resonate with you, put a creative twist on the tips that are almost the right fit, and skip the rest.

1. Get Focused

To create a great presentation, you need to focus your thoughts before you take the plunge and start churning out slides.

You need to know why you are giving the presentation, and what you want to say.

You might think why is the easiest question to answer, however it is not as straightforward of a question as it might seem. For example, if you are pitching your company to investors, you might think you are giving the presentation because you need money to grow your business. While that is part of the answer to your why, it is only the beginning; that answer only scratches the surface. You need to go deeper to get to the real answer. Ask yourself why you want to grow your business. Will your company help people? Will it solve a problem? Will it fill a void?

If you are giving a presentation to educate the audience, why do you care if they have the information you will provide? If you are educating the audience simply because someone else told you to do so, then do some soul searching and find a way to develop your own passion for educating the audience. You were most likely asked to speak to the audience because you’re an expert on the topic, so ask yourself why you became an expert. Tapping into your passion for the topic will help you find a reason why the topic is also important for the audience.

Once you know why your presentation matters, you will have an easier time knowing what to say and what not to say. To focus the what of your presentation, write your presentation topic as a 140-character sentence. When you focus your presentation topic by defining it in a succinct sentence, you give yourself a compass to follow as you flesh out your presentation. When you’re writing your presentation content, refer to your sentence often. If you discover some elements of your presentation that do not fit with the one-sentence summary of your topic, cut out those elements. If your presentation rambles at any point, you will quickly start to lose the attention of the audience.

2. Tailor Your Presentation

Revisit your why and what when you prepare to present to a new audience. The why and what of your presentation will change every time you deliver your presentation to a different audience.

In addition, carefully consider how you present your material. Some audience will appreciate a short presentation, while others will prefer a more in-depth presentation. In addition, some audiences will desire an interactive experiences, and others will want to listen and absorb, instead of interacting.

When tailoring your presentation for an audience, ask these questions:

– How many people will be in the audience?

This question is important because it will determine how interactive you can be with the audience.

If you’re presenting to approximately 25 or fewer people, your presentation can easily be interactive. In addition, when you present to small groups, it is easier for you to provide handouts, samples, and other resources to enhance your presentation.

– Who will be in the audience?

Like the question above, and all other questions about the audience, this question is easiest to answer when you’re presenting to a small group. However if you’re creative and persistent, you can learn about attendees even when your presentation will be in front of a large audience.

If you’re preparing to speak in front of a large audience, you most likely have a contact for the conference or event at which you will be speaking. Start researching the audience by talking to that contact first. If they can only provide general demographics, that information is better than nothing. However, ideally they will be able to provide a list of names of all attendees.

With a list of names, you can research individuals, and look for patterns. For example, if you’re going to speak to an audience of 200 people, and you get all 200 names, start by researching 50 of the attendees. You might quickly notice that all 50 of those attendees are executives at creative agencies. Or you might realize that most of those 50 attendees are millennials. If you don’t notice a pattern after researching a sample of the audience, keep digging until you have a clear understanding of the audience, including their needs, and their interests, as related to your presentation.

– Why are attendees there?

As you’re learning about the audience, try to discover why the audience members are planning to attend the presentation. What are they hoping to learn or gain? Are they there because someone else told them to attend? Or, are they there because of their own passion? What will attendees need from your presentation to declare it a success?

If you can see your presentation through the eyes of the audience, you will be a successful presenter. However, if you create a presentation without considering the audience, you will likely deliver a presentation that falls flat and misses the mark.

3. Make The Audience Work

The more you know about the audience, the easier it will be for you to deliver a memorable presentation.

Your message will not only be memorable because you will know what to say, but you will also know what questions to ask the audience, as well as what type of interactive exercises you should incorporate into your presentation.

Questions and interactive exercises are important for presentations because they force the audience to actively process the ideas shared in your presentation. If you only talk at the audience, and don’t find ways to engage the audience, attendees might enjoy your presentation in the moment, but they will be more likely to forget your presentation because the ideas you presented went in one ear, and out the other.

It requires effort to get information into explicit memory. The more deeply that your audience thinks about the points you make, the more likely they are to remember what you told them later, according to Art Markman’s Harvard Business Review article, Getting an Audience to Remember Your Presentation.

When considering ways to activate the minds of your audience, first identify the most important points of your presentation. Ask yourself, what ideas are the most important for the audience to remember, as well as, what ideas do I want the audience to repeat if they discuss my presentation with other people? Once you identify the most important point(s), think of creative ways to engage those ideas during your presentation.

For example, if you’re going to present a critical stat such as, X percent of adults watch Y hours of television a week, and you hope the audience will remember that stat in the future, take a poll of the audience, asking them to guess the percentage before you reveal it in your presentation.

There are many options for polling your audience. If you’re speaking at a conference, ask the event organizer if they are already planning to interact with attendees through an app such as Zerista. If attendees have already downloaded an interactive app for the conference, stick with that app for your presentation so attendees aren’t required to download an additional app.

For presentations you plan to share online, instead of from a stage, consider using the presentation platform Slideklowd. Slideklowd offers many interactive options that will simplify the process of engaging viewers. If you don’t want to use technology to poll the audience, conduct a poll that only requires a show of hands.

You can also ask a question, and skip the polling portion. If you want to ask a question and incentive attendees to consider the question, offer a prize to the first person who solves the problem and raises their hand to share the answer with the audience. Your prize can be anything the audience will enjoy, however the best prize will relate to your presentation in some way. For example, if you’re speaking to promote your business services, offer a free one hour consultation to the winner; this gift could result in a new customer for your services. Or if you’re speaking on a topic that relates to a book you’ve recently published, give away a free copy of your book.

4. Create A Multidimensional Experience

If you use an app to interact with the audience, you’re already successfully creating a multidimensional presentation experience, however you can still take your multidimensional presentation up a notch by creating a multisensory presentation.

Since the most effective slides are heavy on photos, illustrations, and/ore graphics, and light on text, activating the sense of sight should already be on your checklist as you prepare your presentation. In addition, since you will be speaking during your presentation, you are also already planning to include sound in your presentation. However if you plan to describe a sound during your presentation, go the extra mile and let the audience experience the sound for themselves. For example, if you’re telling a story about a song that inspired you, play a snippet of the song for the audience instead of merely mentioning it.

To activate the senses of touch, taste, and smell, you can either get creative and find ways to give the audience something to touch, taste, or smell, or you can simply use a story to describe in detail the experience of touching, tasting, or smelling something. When you relay an experience with descriptive detail, it is scientifically proven that listeners will feel like they are actually having that experience. That’s just the way the human mind works.

In Talk Like TED, Dr. Richard Mayer, a professor of psychology at UC Santa Barbara, explains why a multisensory experience is important when sharing new ideas with an audience:

When the brain is allowed to build two mental representations of an explanation— a verbal model and a visual model— the mental connections are not just a little stronger. They are much, much stronger. Add touch and you’ve got a winner!

5. Structure Strategically

There is no doubt the beginning of your presentation is the most important part of your presentation.

Use the beginning of your presentation to present the essential elements of your presentation, as well as connect with the audience.

You need to share critical information early in your presentation to ensure your audience retains that important information when the presentation is over. Because of the serial position effect, your audience will most easily recall the first ideas you present. The middle of your presentation is important because you don’t want to lose your audience at any point during your talk, however the middle is no place for critical points that need to be retained. Your audience will remember your conclusion better than they will remember the middle of your presentation, however not as well as the opening of your presentation.

In addition, you need to use the beginning of your talk to connect with your audience.

As Amy Cuddy explained for the Harvard Business Review: A growing body of research suggests that the way to influence—and to lead—is to begin with warmth. Warmth is the conduit of influence: It facilitates trust and the communication and absorption of ideas.

To impact your audience, Cuddy says you must demonstrate warmth before communicating competence or attempting to influence the audience. You can communicate your credibility and your message once you have connected to the audience through your warmth.