By Peggy Yip

Photo by airfocus on Unsplash.

Have you ever spent hours upon hours working on a presentation, only to find your audience drifting off into their own world? If so, you aren’t alone! Here are 5 neat tips that you could use to transform your presentations. 

  1. Make slides less bland.

Let’s start off with the most noticeable part of any presentation– its visuals. When beginning a presentation, the eyes of your crowd will almost immediately make their first impression based on the way your slides look. The brain naturally processes images more easily than words, which is why using graphics is the best way to increase the attention span of your audience. Effective ways of making slides less bland and more eye-catching are: bold/large fonts, strong contrasts, and different colours (maximum 1-3). 

  1. Less words, more pictures. 

While we’re on the topic of slides, it’s extremely important to remember less is more. It is only necessary to put a fraction of what you say onto the slides, preferably apart. You shouldn’t use more than 4 points per slide. By keeping the slides short, the audience is able to leave with key ideas. This is the best way to keep things organized and less messy. 

  1. Interact with the audience.

In any case, one should always make the audience feel as though they have a reason to keep listening. Therefore, you should always take the opportunity to interact with your audience. For example, ask them rhetorical questions, praise them, try relating to them, and most importantly, look at them for the majority of time when speaking (don’t stare at the slides, or at your script). A

  1.  Be enthusiastic!

Mind your tone and body gestures while speaking; make sure to add enthusiasm to your presentation. As a listener, it is pretty unpleasant to hear someone repeatedly talk at the same level of voice, like a robot, and it gets tiring quickly. Put emotion into your voice, and focus on making big, open (and various) gestures. If the person presenting doesn’t seem interested or doesn’t have passion in what they themselves are saying, then there’s no reason why their audience should. 

  1. Add in the effect of humour.

Finally, it is not unusual to find a handful of people in the audience who can get bored easily, so talking about one topic for an extensive duration might not be the best idea. To avoid this, a good suggestion would be to add in ‘breaks’ with humour. This tip works especially well if it’s good humour, and can bring in some genuine laughs. If comedy is included in your presentation, the audience might even want to listen more intently, trying to catch another funny joke in your words. Before actually presenting your jokes to the audience, it’d be best to present them to your family or friends beforehand, so you can see if your jokes are in fact funny.

Works Cited

French, Katy. “11 Design Tips for Beautiful Presentations.” Visage.co, 24 November 2016, https://visage.co/11-design-tips-beautiful-presentations/. Accessed 5 April 2022.

Martinuzzi, Bruna. “How to Keep Your Audience Focused on Your Presentation.” American Express, 14 September 2012, https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/business/trends-and-insights/articles/how-to-keep-your-audience-focused-on-your-presentation/. Accessed 5 April 2022.

Melnyczuk, Tania. “man in white and black checked dress shirt holding white printer paper photo – Free Image on Unsplash.” Unsplash, 25 May 2020, https://unsplash.com/photos/K_VeavYEfdA. Accessed 5 April 2022.