Become a Good Presenter
Think of the last memorable presentation you’ve been to, is it easy to remember? Unfortunately many presentations are forgettable, and that’s a problem because that means presentations are not serving their purpose of communicating a message or information to the audience. The following steps will help you be a better presenter and make more effective presentations.
Contents
[hide]Steps
- Research your topic. It’s important to spend enough time collecting and confirming information in order to speak with confidence and knowledge.
- Organize. Organize the main points in the most appropriate order for the topic you’re presenting. Avoid writing complete sentences or paragraphs and prepare note cards to help you elaborate on the information presented.
- Use strong images. Your images don't need to be all charts and tons of text. Use a few graphics or images that will catch your audience's interest and remind you of what you want to talk about.
- Practice. Do not memorize written texts. Try to understand the topic to the best of your ability so you can communicate it well during the presentation and meet the time limit. Practice for a friend or a family member and get their feedback on your presentation skills.
- Deal with your stress. It’s common to be stressed before a presentation, try picturing yourself impressing the audience. Also, it’s important to relax before the presentation and think about nothing but how to make the most out of it.
- Look presentable. Dress well for the presentation, usually a formal outfit is preferred to show the level of professionalism. Appearance says a lot about someone’s personality and confidence.
- Keep eye contact. Do scanning the room technique by keeping an eye contact with as many people as you can.
- Speak clearly. Speak in a loud and clear voice to get your presentation through to the audience even the ones sitting further away.
- Engage your audience. Some useful ways to do that are sharing a funny yet tasteful story, or pose a question to see how much they know about the subject you’re about to discuss.
- Answer questions at the end of the presentation. Make sure you listen to the questions carefully, ask for clarifications if needed and repeat the question to the rest of the audience to give you more time to think about the answer. If you don’t know the answer for a question be honest and say that you will look into it since you don’t know the answer in the meantime.
- Learn from your experience. Ask your employers or professors for their feedback to be able to identify your strengths and weaknesses and help you improve for next time.
- Listen to presentations. Once you’re done presenting you should take the time to listen to other presentations to benefit from presenters’ skills.
Tips
- Try smiling in between segments or passages of your presentation. It gives the inclination that you are interested in your topic and enjoy presenting.
- Audience are not listening machines, you should treat your audience differently based on the topic being discussed.
- If things go badly when answering questions don’t make it worse. Just be honest and don’t be afraid to say I don’t know.
- Be yourself !
- If you hold an item in your hand while presenting (Like a marker) you tend to become less nervous.
- Most of your presentation speech will be forgotten, smile and sound optimistic people will remember that.
- Take your time and speak slowly. This will give you time to compose your delivery and find the right words to say.
- Put some jokes into your presentation so the audience will listen to you carefully.
Warnings
- Avoid reading directly from the slides or your notes
- Avoid going for too long.
- Avoid looking at the screen when speaking and giving the audience your back.
- Avoid using small font size to fit more text on the slides.
- Avoid showing complicated and unclear graphics charts or images.
Things You'll Need
- Use PowerPoint as it’s become the ultimate and most widely used presentation program. It allows you to display text, movies, videos, and graphics in slide show form.
Related Articles
Sources and Citations
- G. Torok, "Presentation skills success," [Online]. Available: [Accessed: Mar. 10, 2010].
