Did you know that your audience's attention virtually drops to zero after only ten minutes? Presentation expert Carmine Gallo reveals this, but there is a trick to keep your audience happy: Interaction! With presono, by the way, it's very easy. Here we reveal our best tips.
Include the audience instead of slaying them with text
In most cases, the creation of presentations is done as follows: Text, diagrams and images are placed on charts, laboriously searched for pre-designed layouts and content, and the whole thing is spiced up with (more or less) funny transitions and animations - ready is the presentation document! In the presentation itself, one slide after the other runs, packed with text, text and even more text. But can you really convince with such a presentation? Does it really motivate employees and encourage customers to buy? Probably not. A good presentation turns the audience into active participants instead of passive listeners. Through interactive presentations you create a personal connection and the content is more memorable.
Our six best tips for more interaction with the audience
Monotonous, lengthy, soporific: Probably everyone has experienced a bad presentation at some point. To ensure that your presentation continuously captivates your audience, you should definitely take these six tips for interactive presentations into account:
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Ask questions
The simplest method of interacting with the audience during a lecture is to ask questions. This is a perfect way to interrupt the flow of the presentation for a short time and thus recapture the audience's attention. During a presentation, almost every attentive listener will ask a question or two. But often important and interesting questions are not asked - for example because the listener does not want to interrupt the presentation. Therefore, always include short pauses in which you directly ask your audience to ask questions.
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Telling stories
stories are food for the brain. A good story effectively captivates the audience and stimulates emotions. These are the best prerequisites for lasting memories. The formula for good storytelling in presentations is simple: Present a starting situation; a conflict that needs to be resolved. Pick up the viewer and let him or her accompany you on the journey until the conflict is resolved. You can read about how excellent storytelling works exactly here.
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Integrate multimedia content
Pictures are known to say more than a thousand words. This also applies to presentations. A short video clip, pictures or interesting graphics effectively get every viewer out of a microsleep. With our presentation solution, for example, multimedia content can be easily integrated into presentations. Your full attention is also required when selecting the multimedia formats. Minutes of professional videos will probably only put the audience to sleep again. Instead, play with humorous elements , because these loosen up the mood. Make sure that the clip or picture underlines your story.
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Utilize the power of non-linear presentation
Linear presentation sequences leave little room for individual responses to queries. Instead of jumping back and forth between slides or even presentations, you can use our presentation tool to deepen individual contents at any time depending on the questions and needs of the audience. Since in our presentation solution all content elements are centrally stored and retrievable in the content management system, any content can be dynamically inserted as needed into a running presentation without having to stop it. In this way, the audience can basically participate in deciding on the structure and the course of the presentation. Targeted answers to questions from the audience, visually supported by the right presentation content, are thus possible at any time.
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Share slides and documents
Ideally, your presentation should contain a lot of relevant and useful information for your audience. In order to be remembered in the long term, we therefore recommend that you give your audience the presentation after the lecture . By announcing this beforehand, you prevent the audience from taking meticulous notes and thus paying less attention to the actual presentation and opportunities for interaction. But this is easier said than done. Usually, the process is such that the slides shown have to be manually assembled to form a new presentation and then sent out manually. Because of the huge amount of data this is mostly not possible via mail and you have to use extra tools like WeTransfer, Dropbox or FTP-Server.
Presono, on the other hand, does all this for you automatically: all shown contents are recorded and logged, these can then be easily sent via Web link and your recipients can easily view your presentation in their browsers without tedious data transfer and the need to install an app. With all pictures, videos and multimedia elements.
React skilfully to troublemakers
In most cases, interaction with the audience is desirable. But now and then we would prefer to do without them. After all, unpleasant encounters can also happen with any good presentation. For example, what is the best way to deal with listeners who are physically present but are bored with their smartphones during the presentation? Even typical troublemakers, who constantly interrupt the presentation with inappropriate comments, are unlikely to be desired by the presenter. Some things simply cannot be avoided in presentations. The question is, how do you skilfully deal with such disturbances?
We recommend:- Take a deep breath and stay calm. Do not allow the troublemaker to visibly upset you.
- actor and stage expert Cornelius Obonya recommends an open approach to the audience. This also means, People , who are obviously busy with their smartphones and co. during the lecture, directly to respond to it.
- Be well-disposed and grateful with interjections . Comment for example with the words: "Thank you very much for your objection, which however would now take us too far away from the actual topic. We would be very happy to talk about your topic after the lecture".
- If you don't have the perfect answer to a question right now, a good trick is to discuss the statement openly: "I'll pass the question on to the plenum. How do you see the whole thing?"
Conclusion: Follow the 10-minute rule
If you want to be sure to still have the audience on your side after ten minutes, you should take Carmine Gallo's advice to heart and consider one of our tips for interactive presentations every ten minutes at the latest . Resulting (positive) reactions from the audience are not only animating for the listeners themselves to continue following your presentation. You yourself can also benefit from this and react all the more relaxed to disturbing people.
image: ©Adobe/Zoriana