https://visme.co/blog/presentation-skills/
Behind every successful presentation, there was carefully crafted planning that went into it beforehand. To ensure that you’ll have a powerful presentation, you need to consider your message.
The very first step to any good presentation is to define its purpose. This goes on in the very beginning during the planning process where you consider your message.
Your presentation’s end goal can be any of the following:
To inform
To entertain
To inspire
To persuade
Your presentation’s end goal might even be a combination of the four purposes above. Consider the fact that you may need to inform buyers of your product and what problem it solves for them, but you also need to persuade them into buying it.
This is where engaging storytelling and proper visual aids will come into play to help you achieve your goal, and will either make or break your presentation.
Once you pinpoint the purpose of your presentation, you can then begin to work on the subject matter and your audience journey map.
First, you need to start your explanation at a low point — the current state of an issue. Maybe there’s a problem that you are able to solve. Describe the current situation before you lay out the undertaking ahead.
Once you lay out the problem, you can then start showing your audience the process of solving this problem. To not overwhelm your crowd, give them an actionable roadmap to follow.
With great verbal communication skills, you can tell them how you plan to take the first step.
This is many times the hardest part of the presentation, but once you have the foundation for your first step, you can easily lay out the next stepping stones and take them to your end goal with ease.
Creating an audience journey map will be a major success factor in a compelling presentation and needs to be done before writing and creating your slides.
Having a clear audience journey map will also help ensure you take your audience on a smooth journey with all your main points in line and achieve your end goal with no bumps in the road.
When giving a presentation, make sure that you keep it short, sweet and as informationally-condensed as possible. All of your slides should be easy to digest and understandable at a glance.
To make sure that you stay on topic and won’t overwhelm your crowd with too much information, you need to have a plan. When you have a solid plan to go by, you won’t go off track and begin rambling about things unrelated to your presentation.
Another practical way you can stay on topic and not overwhelm your audience with too much information is to have your main points written in bold somewhere on your slides.
As you can see above, you don’t need to write out all the information surrounding the main points, as this will cause your audience too much confusion.
An experienced presenter will be able to quickly glance over at their own presentation slides, see the main points and continue on with their presentation, engaging their audience without going off course.
This, of course, comes with a lot of rehearsing out loud, which we will cover more in tip number six.
Another great way to keep your presentation short is to set a specific time for asking questions.
By reserving a few minutes during your presentation for your audience to ask questions, you can present your main points and achieve your goals, without going into too much detail.
Your audience can then ask for clarity on anything that interests them and you can answer their questions in however much detail you need.
Presenting your data can be an incredibly tricky and difficult task.
Instead of adding a bunch of tables and numbers to your slides, try switching things up by using charts, graphs and other data visualization types.
When creating a chart for your presentation, you need to be mindful of several things.
First, you need to choose the right chart to begin with. Not every type of graph is suitable for all data sets. The chart you choose will depend on the nature of your data and your unique purpose of using that chart.
Here's an infographic to help you understand what type of chart to use depending on your unique needs and nature of data.
Practice, practice and practice again.
Some would argue that writing up and designing a presentation from scratch is the easiest part. Delivering the presentation in a way that it engages your audience — that's the tricky part.
When it comes to public speaking, it’s only natural that one would get a little nervous and stumble upon their words.
That’s why practicing your public speaking skills in front of others will be vital to how well you present and connect with your crowd during your actual presentation.
It’s one thing to practice in front of the mirror, but it’s something completely different when people are waiting for you to deliver information that will improve their business or life.
So gather up some friends, family members or even your pets, and present your presentation from start to finish as many times as you need.
By presenting your slides out loud, you might even catch some mistakes in your presentation or find you need to add in some missing information.
By shaking your attendee’s hand before a meeting, you’ll begin to make connections and become more approachable and likable by your audience.
Meeting your audience will help break the ice and make them more likely to listen to what you have to say. They will also feel more comfortable asking you questions later, which will increase the value they get out of your presentation.
Plus, you’ll also feel more relaxed speaking to your audience if you've met them already. When you can put a name to a face, you’ll automatically feel a sense of comfort when you make eye contact with them while presenting.
Even the most famous movie stars and popular public speakers will still get nervous before a public presentation.
It’s human nature to get butterflies and perspire a bit before having tons of eyes on you, critiquing every word you have to say.
So, if you’re feeling nervous before a presentation, instead of emotionally shutting down, take that nervous energy and transform it into enthusiastic energy.
Before getting up on stage, listen to your favorite hype music, maybe have a coffee (if it won’t make you jittery) or get a pep talk from a friend.
By being confident and using your enthusiasm to your advantage, you’ll have your crowd on the edge of their seats, completely engaged, following every word you say.
Enthusiastic presentations will much better received by listeners, rather than monotone informational presentations. So, as important as your presentation design is, the way you present it will determine a big part of the outcome