Participating in a conference as a speaker is always a demanding task. How many times have you been to a conference where the speaker just didn’t manage to capture your attention and you lost interest? Sometimes this could be because of the subject they are walking about, the way they are talking, their presentation, or a combination of those factors. When it’s your turn to step up onto the stage and present to your audience, you have to make sure that none of these factors are negatively affecting your presentation.
These are a few tips that you should keep in mind when preparing for your presentation and to use during your presentation to increase engagement and keep your audience interested in what you are saying.
1.Juice Up your Presentation
No matter what the subject of your presentation is, it does not justify your slides being boring. This is the first and most crucial mistake that many presenters do, which results in their audience losing interest before they even manage to finish their introduction.
Try to be creative in your slides, keep the text to the minimum and make the slides visually friendly. Choose your colours wisely and feel free to add a few images, maybe even a short video! This will help you attract your audience’s attention and at the same time make your presentation more interesting.
2.Ask Questions
Your presentation isn’t just about you! It’s about what you have to say and how it applies to each person in the audience. Make sure that your audience is on track with what you’re saying by asking them questions, encourage their participation and apply what you’re saying to their specific cases.
You can always create small quizzes and ask people to participate by solving them or use polls to engage with even more participants. At A2V Lab, we can provide you with our Audience Response and Voting System which can be used for case studying during conferences, or as an ice-breaker game during an event.
3.Team-up your audience
Not every person is the same, and this applies to their reaction and their willingness to do something you’ve asked them to do. Therefore, another way to increase engagement is through team-projects. You can prepare a few easy tasks or quizzes based on your presentation and ask your audience to team up with the people sitting next to them in order to create teams and participate together. This will give some people the chance to participate as part of a team and without having to speak in front of everyone. It could also help increase their interest in your presentation and help them refocus on what you are talking about if they are starting to lose interest.
The most important thing is to make sure that your audience remembers at least one part of your presentation when they get home, and making your speech more engaging might just do the trick!
