How To Make Fantastic Presentations
First impressions are lasting impressions. The first impression you make on another is the last impression you will ever make. This is true in life as well as in business. Every person no matter how experienced they may be before a public forum sometimes has an off day. How do you have perfect presentations every time, all the time? The trick is to have a certain set of guidelines to follow, always.
1. Do your homework
Research, research and research. Find out as much as you can about everything not only the subject of your presentation. Find out about location, lighting, seating, acoustics (how sound is carried), everything at the venue which will influence your audience response to the presentation. Find out who your audience will be to better understand your target’s response.
2.Organize
Prepare your wardrobe in advance. take it to the location with you and change there, you want to look as fresh as possible to impress.
Keep all visual aids simple and uncluttered. Use bold colors both for your clothes and visual aids when doing a presentation. Especially when using charts and graphs, bold colors help with disparity. It is preferable to use long segments of visual relief that complement your points rather than distract your audience when presenting such as long video clips, or if you are using pictures that stay on the screen for long periods of time as opposed to short and quick changeovers.
3. Rehearse
In all possible cases do a run through before the presentation. Break your presentation into main points and decide how you want to deliver them. Practice aloud, speaking clearly and reemphasizing on diction.
Know your stuff backwards. This will lessen your dependence on notes and you will be able to add detail as you go along. Also number your notes in case they get mixed up by some unexplainable cause of nature. This does happen, believe me!
4. On the day of the presentation
Work on your posture. don’t slump. Feet slightly apart, head high,shoulders pulled back, act regal. Most importantly, SMILE. Picture your audience as enthusiastic. hanging onto your every word. Got nerves? Concentrate on your breathing, listen to yourself inhale and exhale.
Speak confidently, Speak with authority pausing briefly each time you make an important point.
Use gestures that reflect your words.
Maintain eye contact with your audience, try as much as possible to target a face in every direction of the room.Involve your audience. If they seem bored use questions to stimulate their interest. This could be tricky and could backfire on you if the audience is hostile or unused to you. look for the ’smilers ‘ and those leaning forward in their seats to hear you more clearly.
Zero in on these for some duration not throughout just until you get balance back by working them into your dialogue. listen and invite the others to listen when you’re doing this. Most of all ….relax. You’ll do fine.
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