How to Make Your Presentations Go from Boring to Bravo by Kristin Arnold

How to Make Your Presentations Go from Boring to Bravo by Kristin Arnold

Engage With the Audience Before Your Presentation

Your presentation starts the moment the meeting is announced with your name on the agenda. Pick up the phone and interview a few participants, email a simple survey, open discussion with a blog, post a question to a group on LinkedIn or Facebook, start a unique wiki about your presentation, etc. There are a ton of technologies out there to enable you to start the conversation before your presentation even begins. And, the side benefit is that you are doing research on the audience.

Here's what I mean by engaging early. When Don Tapscott, author of the bestseller Wikinomics, was the keynote speaker at Meeting Professionals International (MPI), he reached out to the MPI registrants. According to CEO Bruce MacMillan, "he blogged with them, invited questions before the event, and considered them; he built them right into his presentation. In essence, he built the presentation around the interests of his audience even before they got there. The audience felt like they were personally involved. They felt like they could see their fingerprints all over the content he delivered. And so they got more out of it it was personal, and the people who were in the audience felt that they had collaborated and created something remarkable."

Question: Are you engaging the audience before you even step up to the front of the room to give your presentation?

Your presentation is all about THEM not about you!

Even though there are a bazillion meetings a day in North America, we have all been in the exact same kind of meeting: The presenter is sharing boatloads of information about the topicfar too much for you to care about, no less understand. Your eyelids begin to droop and sleepy time is close at hand.

Rather than spew forth everything you know about your topic, do your research. Find out who will be in the audience, their hopes, fears, interests, and, most important why they will even bother to come to your presentation. Then tailor your speech to connect your comments with what they care about. Not the ones you think they should care about. This is a subtle distinction with dramatic implications. If you do not address something that helps make their lives better or improve the lives of people they care about, you will be boring. Guaranteed.

Want a quick way to know whether your presentation is all about you or oriented toward the audience? Here's a simple litmus test: Count the number of times you use the words "I, me, mine, my" versus the more inclusive words of "you, yours, we, ours". Are you speaking more about yourself or about your audience?

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