3 Presentation Skills Tips to Keep Your Audience Engaged (For Professionals)
How would it feel if you had the power to effortlessly keep your audience engaged? That they would remain tuned in from the start until your last word is spoken?
With just a few small tweaks, you can already transform your presentation skills and transform a “boring” presentation into a far more engaging one. Below you’ll find three practical presentation skills tips that can make a world of difference — all focused on involving your audience.
1) Presentation skills: have a strong start (introduction) and get your audience on board!
The majority of people that start a presentation start with the sentence “I am going to talk a bit about…..(subject)” and then they immediately dive into the subject matter.
But the audience also wants to know THE WHY of the presentation and WHY THEY should listen to this presentation. This is really important and needed to INVOLVE them.
So, instead of: ”I am going to talk about alternatives for anti-biotics” and immediately diving in.
You could also say:
“Do you know that anti-biotics will most probably no longer work in 10 years times? That we will go back to the pre-war level of 1939 in this respect? Can you imagine we go back in development more than 80 years, not to mention all the diseases we are no longer able to cure anymore. That is why today I want to discuss with you some new promising alternative to anti-biotics that…” (WHY of presentation)
As fellow scientists it is important for you to remain updated about these significant developments and today, I will give you…”. (WHY they should care).
Give your audience the WHY of the presentation and WHY this information should matter to THEM, upfront, before you dive into your content. This will make a big difference in involvement throughout the remainder of your presentation and is a key part of strong presentation skills.
2) Presentation Skills: use interaction to INVOLVE your audience.
One very simple, quick and effective way to use interaction with your audience is to ask hypothetical questions.
After each slide you can say, “next slide” or “now something about the adaptive approach”.
But you could also say:
“So, how did this adaptive approach help the local women to get unstuck?”
And after a pause, you start explaining or in this case it would be more like revealing the story.
This simple question that the audience gets in 3 seconds, digs an instant knowledge gap in the brain of your audience. And that gap wants to be filled! They would want to know the answer, it INVOLVES your audience into your story almost instantly.
3) Presentation Skills: build your story step by step.
Instead of instantaneously showing the 3 steps of solving the problem of errors in your company’s reports, it is better to reveal them step by step. And even better to reveal first orally the first step and then once finished show the first step with a click on your slide visually.
This way you keep the suspense and intrigue (engaging) and also give the information incremental, step by step (clear). I have to listen to the speaker this way. Audience and speaker remain in the same spot, so to speak.
If you already give all the answers explicitly upfront on the slide once clicked, I as an audience start reading the slide and I will stop listening to you the presenter. We are no longer in the same spot, no longer in tune.
Once finished, reading the whole slide, I will think ahh I get it these 3 steps. I have it in the pocket. I have the answers, I no longer need to listen. I can think of something else to occupy my mind with. Mmmmm what shall I eat for dinner tonight? In short, I will tune out. No longer in tune, but out of step.
Small tweaks, big impact on your presentation skills
These three small adjustments:
- A strong start
- Interaction
- Sequential build
…can already make a huge difference in how engaged your audience feels.
Want to take your presentation skills to the next level?
Do you want to truly master the art of keeping your audience engaged from start to finish?
Take a look at my presentation training in Amsterdam where you’ll learn not only these fundamentals, but also the full set of proven techniques to elevate your presentation skills.
Kind regards,
Mabel