Those of you who have given presentations know that it’s tough to keep your audience engaged throughout. Some of you may have seen people even blank out in between. After a while, even you get bored and lose your train of thought! So how can you keep people interested in the topic? Here are some great ways to make your presentation more interactive!
- Use a fun icebreaker: Get your audience engaged in your presentation from the get-go with an interesting question. This opens up a discussion and acts as a fun icebreaker. It also gives you time to collect and organize your thoughts before diving into your presentation.
- Keep it simple: Use less content and more infographics and images to explain your ideas. The basic idea is not to complicate your presentation too much. Keep it clean and to the point. The audience also gets confused seeing and reading too much content. If they have questions about anything, they can be addressed in the Q&A round.
- Present the audience with questions: Use a tool like Mentimeter to interact with your audience and ask questions to them. They feel involved in the value creation process and valuable contributors to the idea or product. Take a poll to understand the viewpoint of your audience. This can also start a lively debate with questions going back and forth.
- Make humor your friend: Humor is a powerful tool that brings people together. It will help you build a good rapport with your audience. Show your funny side by telling them some funny and interesting anecdotes related to the presentation idea. The audience retains ideas and key points much better with a dash of humor thrown in!
- Use Compelling language: Adjust the tone and timbre of your voice based on what you are currently addressing. This adds a rich undertone to your presentation and interests the audience. Even if it’s a formal presentation, make sure to use simple words so your audience can understand you better. Using too much technical jargon can confuse people sometimes. More so if it is a layman’s audience.
- Add visuals and audio effects: If the content itself is dull, no amount of questions and stories will keep people engaged. You can easily get free PowerPoint templates to make things more interesting. Make your slides attractive with cool pictures and sound effects. The pictures should be powerful and gel well with the topic under discussion. They help the audience retain and understand the information better.
- Add more video content: Videos are a great way to interest your audience if they lose focus midway. Your audience may get uneasy and start scrolling their phones. But play a video, and you bring them back into the game again! Video content impacts people more than others. The audience actively pays attention to it and helps to reinforce your message too. Videos speak better than words and even open up discussions about the topic at hand.
- Give the audience more control: Use a powerful tool like Mentimeter to bring your presentation to the audience. Let them explore it and go back and forth at their will. In case they missed something or need to understand a concept better, they can simply flip to the previous slides. Your audience will feel more involved while giving a heart or pressing a Like on the slideshow, making it more interesting.
- Add a personal touch: Sometimes, the audience remembers the presentation due to the presenter. Then they slowly link the topic to them too. Sharing personal stories and experiences lets your audience know you are genuine and truly passionate about the topic. Let your real self shine through. This makes your presentation more memorable and brings a smile to people’s faces.
Final thoughts
Presenting your ideas to the public can be daunting. But what’s worse is if your audience is bored. So do use the above tools to present your ideas in a fun and interesting way. Using exciting videos and relatable photos will keep them engrossed in your slides. Interesting questions will break the ice and set the ball rolling on your presentation. So go out there and share your ideas today!