Every single person sitting as your audience is beyond doubt multitasking! Then why would they invest their time in you and what you have to say? Why would they take out the time (or sometimes their money) to come and listen to your session? These thoughts must have haunted you several times if your job requires you to address a room full of people. Many of us have seen that even with a well-prepared speech and all relevant data, a presentation can often be unimpressive. What could be the reason? The answer is quite simple: you were not able to catch your audiences’ attention and/or keep them focused on what was important!
In this article, we will talk about simple methods which will get you your audiences’ attention and will make your presentation more impactful and memorable. Where flashy PowerPoint presentations fail and detailed data work goes unnoticed, simple human gestures work wonders.
Eye Contact
The first and foremost step to catch your listener’s attention is to get rid of written pages and establish strong eye contact with them. Remember, they’re not there to judge how well you speak but to know how well you can help them solve their problem. There are a number of ways you can demonstrate your expertise while also maintaining eye contact. For instance, you could try to memorize the significant points of your presentation and use those as memory triggers to make your presentation seem spontaneous.
Know What Your Audiences Yearn For
Before addressing your audiences, ask yourself one simple question: will my session satisfy my audiences’ hunger for information? Your credibility and the usefulness of your presentation will increase when you are able to give your spectators the information they’re yearning for.
Invite Audience Response
How well you’ve managed to engage your audiences is one thing that you must judge yourself on. The simplest method of doing this is to ask for their views and opinions and prompt them to partake actively by means of discussions.
Friendly Tone of Conversation
While listening to you, listeners should feel that your message is actually directed toward them. To make this happen, it is imperative to use the words, examples, ideas and phrases that your spectators can easily grasp.
Minimize Deviating Audiences’ Attention
Many times, a clear, easy to understand, and friendly speech is able to do what hi-tech slide presentations cannot! Distracting listeners’ attention by such presentations breaks the flow of thought and doesn’t help anyone. Therefore, use PowerPoint features like animation and motion paths minimally.
Make Your PowerPoint Easy to Read
Your presentation must not be an eyesight test! Use a serif font and make sure the font size is big enough for everyone to read comfortably. Make deliberate use of bullet points and avoid crowding the slides with too many words.
Entertain Your Viewer’s Queries
Audiences asking questions simply suggest that you are getting attention. Prompt answers engross the audiences even more and encourage the audience to listen to you more attentively. Even if you feel the query is not related to what you are talking about, carry the conversation further by saying “I’ll get back to you on this later.”
Brochures/Flyers
Use hand-outs, brochures flyers etc. after the presentation to drive home the point and to point your audience in the right direction. This also helps reinforce all your material.
Rehearse
Rehearse you session aloud with the PowerPoint. You can practice by yourself or do it front of a friend or family member to get some useful feedback from them.
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Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in January, 2012. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.
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—About our writer:
Minal Mathur, an IT professional has been working as a freelance web content writer for last four years now. Besides supplying quality content for the websites, she has also earned a rich experience in editing/proof reading. With strong understanding for the niche, she has successfully developed content for brochures, sales letters, business proposals and more for various domestic and international companies. She is currently based in New Delhi.
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