The success of your presentation depends not only on your knowledge and shining personality. No matter how well you understand the subject and answer the questions, how wonderful, beautiful and intelligent person you are, but if your presentation skills are really bad, the success of your presentation is questionable. A good speaker is not the one who gets awards. And not even the one who is 100% sure that he is perfect. A good speaker, like a wise man, never stops learning and he is never sure about his own genius. What you can do to make your presentation skills better?
Take every chance to practice
First and foremost, you should practice a lot. This is the first answer to this question. And this is the first answer you'll see in all useful articles, all manuals, videos, textbooks about public speaking and art of creating high-quality presentations. As obvious as it may sound, practice as much as possible, and only then you will be able to develop your own technique of giving a successful presentation, you will learn how to understand your audience - what do they want, what do they need, how to interact and collaborate with them. This is the only way you will be able to give information to your listeners in the most proper way, and, therefore, to achieve the goals you set in your presentation.
In order to practice a lot, you don't have to rent a big hall, invite operators to gather a crowd of people. Every time you talk to someone (speak at a meeting of the inhabitants of your house, try to convince the wife that you need a new car, tell your children about healthy nutrition or call a short meeting at work) you practice in public speaking. Your presentation skills work!
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Motivate yourself with good examples
We are sure that there are at least 1-2 famous speakers who inspire you. This can be a famous businessman or a millionaire, one of the TED speakers or guests of another popular program for a wide audience range, this can be an actor or an actress, a singer or another famous person. This can be your school teacher or your university lecturer, or just your friend. If you think about it, that person will be found. Go to his lectures, listen to his stories, watch videos and listen to audios with his voice. Be inspired with his rich energy and enthusiasm, copy his gestures and words, pay attention to his posture and way of talking. This is really good motivation exercise you can regularly do to improve your presentation skills.
Don't be afraid
By default, assume that your audience is friendly to you. Many speakers subconsciously think that the audience had come there to criticize them, to catch their every mistake and to tell the whole world about it. But the truth is that nobody will pay to listen to the unpleasant and uncomfortable person, and if your lecture is free, no one will come there to be inspired by the experience of someone who is not good for them. They are here because of you and your knowledge.
They are here to learn something new with your help. They want you to succeed! No one is trying to catch you up on your nervousness. No one will notice your small mistakes, and even if they do - most people understand how difficult it is to give a presentation to a large group of listeners. So, they will understand and support you.
Focus on your listeners
One of the most common mistakes of novice lecturers is to focus on themselves. You think about how you look, what you're doing, where your hands and eyes are, how you stand and what kind of intonation you speak. Of course, it's all important. But it is necessary to make these skills automatic while practicing and rehearsing a lot beforehand. During the presentation your task is to focus on your audience, to interact with them, to involve them in discussions, to ask questions and to answer questions.
PodioBox, the all-in-one presentation system, will help you to make this process easier – you can use real-time questionnaires and work with this information during your performance. This helps to interact more and to turn every your listener to an active participant.
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Remember the important don'ts
Don't sell. Talk about benefits your audience will get if the buy your product, attend your next lecture or follow your advice. Don't sell directly, talk about the real advantages and bonuses that will interest these people. Don't be late and don't speak too long. If you comply with the time limitations, which were announced to your audience, you show respect to the people who came here to listen to you.
Don't overplay with the apologies. Most small situations do not need to apologize - no one will notice it. But if you really made a noticeable mistake, just apologize shortly and once. Don't say that you are a bad-prepared or poor speaker - no one will appreciate this joke. Don't forget to smile and to interact.
After your presentation collect feedbacks and analytics – you can do it easily with PodioBox. Analyze this data and use it to improve your presentation skills more. It really helps!
Good luck!
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