Presentations have been around for a long time and are used in most day running events.
We all know the importance of creating complementing presentations that educate, while remaining engaging to the event attendees. But its a delicate balance and one that often swings either way. Its important to keep attendees focused throughout the presentation on the content in hand while remaining relevant and memorable. Otherwise the events agenda is left aside and often forgotten about after the fact.
So What to Avoid
Delivering too much information
Not paying attention to the audience
Little or no preparation
These three 3 things are easy to do and yet contain so much power in each in pushing your audience away from your agenda.
So what can we do right?
1.Set the right mood
An event presenter ought to pay attention to the mood in the room, including visibility, lightning and seating arrangement, particularly those seats at the back.
It is easy to ignore the importance of event atmospheres, but you do similar things at home. For some relaxation in the evening, you may dim the lights. So a very bright room might not be best for relaxing and unwinding.
Don’t be a mood killer
Therefore, using the right colors in presentations also makes the audience concentrate, colors like blue, orange and green provide visual clues to keep attendees focused on the content in hand, not on their phones. Avoid using colors that are too dark, bright, or filled with different colors that are hard to look at, as this complicates
perception, where eyes are trying to focus on something, while unable to grasp a clear picture. This can lead to people dis-engaging with your content, verbal or not.
2.Interact with the audience
In today’s world, much emphasis is placed on the importance of interacting with clients. This is achieved mostly by creating a better experience through social media, mobile apps and your website. This also extends to the hosted event venue, and those with enough confidence to engage with their listeners.
Good interactions range from some humor, storytelling and even technology that will require a response from the audience. Taking live polls or Q & A’s during a presentation often develops great interaction with your audience, while capturing some key data at the same time. There are many online tools out there which allow presenters the ability to do this, websites like Slido for instance.
3.Make it clear and concise
To retain your most important message, make sure you keep your presentation brief and straight to the point. A good way to do that is by designing the presentation with all the content you want to cover, regardless of how much it is, and then portion it out by 50%, effectively cutting it to half.
This process might seem painful and impossible at first, but once you get started, you’ll find ways to cut it down. This will make your agenda as concise and to the point as you need it to be and is more likely to be remembered after the event by attendees.
Also consider the amount of time you intend to spend on each slide. The most effective way to go about this is by limiting the onscreen text to one sentence per slide, with some compelling images to make up the rest of the message. This will hold the attention of your audience, and prevent them from switching off the minute they see a mountain of text on the screen.
4.Details are important
Getting into detail on your presentation is often the make or break of it. Not considering time to think over each slide and the elements of your message is dangerous. Even the length of time between each will effect your event outcome, before you’ve even began the day.
So think about what will make your presentation standout.
Use big font sizes on each slide. Avoid trying to fit in a lot of words into one slide, making good use of the space you have. The bigger the font, the easier it will be for your audience to read, and will make them retain the information better.
This is a great way to ensure your points for your agenda are seen throughout and not lost in the motions.
