Struggling to connect with your audience during a presentation?
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Know your audience:Tailor your content to their interests and needs. This ensures your message is relevant, making it easier for them to relate and engage with your presentation.### *Use interactive elements:Incorporate questions or polls to involve the audience directly. This keeps them engaged and makes the presentation feel more like a conversation than a lecture.
Struggling to connect with your audience during a presentation?
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Know your audience:Tailor your content to their interests and needs. This ensures your message is relevant, making it easier for them to relate and engage with your presentation.### *Use interactive elements:Incorporate questions or polls to involve the audience directly. This keeps them engaged and makes the presentation feel more like a conversation than a lecture.
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Follow PPP Plan Prepare Practice Plan properly. Know your audience, what they know about the topic. What is your objective, why audience should listen to you. Prepare properly. Use variety of elements so that the presentation isn't monotonous. Statistics, case studies, videos, audios, questionnaires, polls etc. . Remember no one likes to taught. Facilitate them, engage them. It shouldn't look like a lecture. Practice enough. It is said that for 1 minute speech, you ought to practice 100 times. To deliver flawless presentation, practice is the only key. And most importantly you yourself enjoy your presentation then only audience will do.
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Be vulnerable. It may be difficult at first to show yourself to a body of complete strangers. The reality is the more authenticity you share the more people connect with you. It’s impossible to fake authenticity and people can feel that.
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Tell stories. Early and often. Focus on the main point I want to convey and then tell 2 or 3 funny stories from my clients. If my topic is legacy, than I share about family, but if not legacy, I stay away from family stories. The funnier the story, the more the audience can connect. I also ask the audience, "by a show of hands, who ..." and I find out during the speech what is working and what isn't. If needed, I pivot on the spot. I have about 5 stories for each topic, but I pick the ones that are connecting. I always ask at the end of the presentation. "who had fun and did you learn anything?" You'll immediately know if you connected or not. Also, anyone reading this, I'm available for speeches...
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Don't be afraid to show your personality, vulnerabilities, and human-aspect. I find that often times, speakers are seen in this "other worldly" light, but we are human just like you! Connect with a joke, offer engaging dialogue, share a unique perspective, use another language or videos. Find what works for you!
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Tune into radio WIIFM- What’s In It For Them? Your audience needs to understand that what you are about to deliver will make a difference for them off the bat. Before I give any presentation I like to think about what are 1-2 things they did not know before I shared this. One trick I learned was before getting on stage chatting up 2-3 audience members and asking them why they came to this conversation. This either would confirm my talking points were going to be impactful or helped me modify either format or content to right size to my audience. Recap: it’s about them not you. And this is what makes it so much fun!