Have you ever given a presentation to glazed-over eyeballs and blank faces? It’s one of the worst feelings. You’ve lost your audience. A way to avoid that is to use the tips I’m going to share with you in this blog to increase interaction during your presentation. An involved audience is a more receptive audience. A receptive audience should be the goal of your presentation, no matter who you’re presenting to or for what purpose. Let’s get your audience involved in your presentation with these four tips.
1. Create Attractive, Visual Slides
Lucky for you, this is what I do for my clients! Visual slides are much more appealing to viewers than text-heavy slides. Think about what you want your audience to remember. If it’s a number, create a graph or table that demonstrates the value of the number rather than typing it out. Illustrations can also support your key points. Create a visual representation of bullet points using tables and icons. Visual slides will keep your audience’s attention.
2. Ask Questions Throughout the Presentation
Force your audience to interact by consistently asking questions during the presentation. Asking your audience questions subtly encourages them to pay attention and shows that you want your presentation to be interactive. You could ask them:
- To share an experience that relates to the point you’re making
- Questions of what you just reviewed to ensure they are paying attention
- If there is anything else they want to know about this topic or slide
3. Encourage Audience Questions
Make people feel comfortable asking questions. Sometimes presentations are too complicated for the audience to think of questions, or the presenter doesn’t give the audience a chance to ask a question. Determine stopping points in your presentation to check if your audience has any questions and let them know that you are open to questions.
Another way to encourage questions is to purposely not cover every single aspect of your topic. Questions will come more naturally, and you will be prepared to answer. Speaking of, you need to be prepared to answer questions. When a presenter consistently doesn’t know the answer to questions, the audience disregards your credibility and doesn’t want to ask anything else of you.
4. Use Interactive Content
Seems obvious, right? People easily overlook the power of interactive content because they think it takes up too much time or is cheesy. However, you can gain insight into your audience’s thoughts and beliefs. Polls are a great way to learn more about your audience. It makes them feel like they are involved in the presentation. As mentioned above, you can also ask questions about a topic you presented and make it into a fun game for audience members.
Video is another form of interactive content. I’ve seen this used in presentations in many ways. Two of my favorite ways are using video to break the ice or articulate a point. To break the ice, I’ve seen companies use popular gifs or clips from popular TV shows. The key is to choose videos that still relate to the topic of your presentation. To articulate a point, you can use video testimonials, a company introduction video, or a demonstration of your product. Sometimes using video is easier than explaining the point you’re trying to make. It can also be a fun way to break up your presentation.
You don’t want your presentation to be boring. In this blog, I gave you four ways to increase interaction during your presentation. Create attractive, visual slides to keep your audience’s attention, ask questions throughout the presentation, encourage audience questions, and use interactive content. These four tips will ensure your audience is receptive to your presentation. As I mentioned before, I create beautiful PowerPoint presentations for my clients. I’d love to make one for you too! Contact me today to set up a complimentary introduction call to learn more about how I can help ensure your presentation is visually appealing to your audience.
I’m a professional graphic designer and freelance PowerPoint specialist from Canada. I’ve been working as a graphic designer for over six years. Unlike other graphic designers, I specialize in presentation design, which gives me a unique perspective when it comes to creating engaging and persuasive presentations. My work is my passion, and I chose presentation design after realizing my love for layouts and my enthusiasm for making things easier for my clients!
