That may surprise someone, but presentations are really important for every success story. They could be like a simple self-presentation for a job applicant, scientific speech or ordinary homework. It’s also a good practice to support each of your meaningful speeches, reports or lectures with slides. But creating a great presentation sometimes becomes some kind of art. In this article, let’s define 3 useful tips to create a true killer presentation that almost everyone may adore.
Don’t panic!
It’s the most important tip to notice. Lots of speakers start to get nervous during the presentation, lose their breath, start to forget parts of their speech, and, as a result, get nervous even more. It’s the vicious circle when a person feels like he or she spoils the entire presentation and makes the situation even worse. Generally, most of the listeners would just ignore the single mistake. Even a couple of them. Don’t be afraid to ruin your presentation after a single wrong word. Be steady, trust your speech and prepared materials, and everything will be fine. People trust a confident speaker a lot more than a nervous chatterbox.
Another kind of people is even afraid to be speakers. They think that they won’t handle this task and spoil the entire speech. And, as a result, they ruin everything due to their doubts. Their fears are usually unfounded, but these people don’t care and they are becoming more and more nervous.
Keep calm and don’t panic. Despite the theme of the presentation, nothing really bad will ever happen. Try to keep your mind free and your thoughts clear. Don’t worry, try to relax or maybe meditate before the speech. You may think this presentation is the end of the world but it actually isn’t. It may be hard to settle down at first. As you become more experienced as a speaker, this problem will gradually disappear. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Everyone does.
Create outstanding media
Prepare great media for the presentation. Find a suitable font and a template, search for some additional infographics to support your speech, e.g. pie-charts, graphs, icons, diagrams, etc. People usually understand visual representation better than dry text. You can stylize your infographics with some fancy design or an ornament but don’t overdo such an approach. Your slides must look fancy, elegant, and catchy but not pretentious.
Always avoid putting lots of information on a single slide. It’s especially important towards text slides and lists of data. Trust me, no one likes plain walls of text on the slide even if you place a fancy background image. Just put a couple of sentences or a thin paragraph in there. You don’t need more text. If you want to bring a huge pack of information to the audience – better say it but put its main idea on the slide. As a result, the presentation won’t be hard for the audience to read and understand, but they’ll be able to figure out the main idea of every part of your speech.
Be alive
Don’t act like a robot, the only purpose of which is to read a report and leave for a scrapyard. Show some emotions, play around with intonations and tone of voice. Prepare a couple of neutral jokes and insert them into your speech or even presentation slides. Don’t turn your speech into a circus but let yourself show some feelings. The audience usually follows lecturer’s voice so you’ll be able to up the audience to a certain enthusiasm even with a couple of benign words but a little control of the tenor of your voice.
Ask your audience questions. At first, people may keep silence or just be too shy to answer. Try to get your listeners talking by answering your questions and asking questions to you. Never give up to speak with the public. A really great presentation is a dialogue between the speaker and the audience but not a monologue. Such an approach will make the meeting more alive and informative because people may ask you questions related to the presentation theme and you’ll be able to extend your speech with more details.
Presentations are a good way to improve your speech or a lecture and make them more informative. It’s not scary at all, and you don’t need to be afraid of being a speaker. A stylized and fancy presentation is one of two key weapons to impress the audience. The other one is your confidence.
