How to Deliver Effective Presentations

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“O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters…”
William Shakespeare: Hamlet - Act 3, Scene 2
Giving presentations to audiences, large or small, can be a daunting and anxiety-ridden task. You’re going to be in front of a group of people, some you may know, some may be total strangers. You’re on stage, all eyes are on you, the audience has high expectations or they wouldn’t be there. Every word, every nuance, your appearance, the tone of your voice, not to mention the content of your presentation, will be scrutinized in every way. You know what you want to say – you know the material – but there’s that nagging feeling that you’ll say the wrong thing or you’ll have a spot on your suit or there will be some errant distraction.
Business presentations take many forms. Some are extremely formal with highly detailed information… how do you make sure the audience doesn’t get lost in the detail and focuses on the overall message? Some are informal and the difficulty is controlling the cross-talk. What about the technical aspects? What will you do if the projector goes out; do you have a backup plan? The outcome you want is that when the audience leaves, they will remember the information and be impressed with the overall presentation. These steps offer some guidelines on how to accomplish that purpose.

Steps

1. Research thoroughly. You absolutely must be an expert on the subject. Okay, you don’t have to be the world’s leading authority, but you have to know the critical facts as well as much of the little-known information. Just talking about things everybody already knows is a recipe for boredom. It’s not at all unusual to spend weeks, or months, getting the facts, alternate opinions and comments from reputable sources as well as what the general community may think.
2. Document your sources. Where you get your information is as important as the information itself. Without solid, peer-reviewed data, you’re just a person with an opinion. The audience, in this exercise, is expecting facts and projections. Your personal opinion may very well be important but it must not be the only thing you present. You won’t be listing the sources ad nauseum (you will bore them silly) but you do want to be able to give citations when asked.
3. Write your speech. Off-the-cuff talks are fine if you’re on a soap box in a park. In a large room with hundreds of attendees, you just can’t afford that. You might not exactly “read” the speech, but that’s certainly not uncommon, especially if you’re going to be using a teleprompter. Print the speech in large print so you can easily see it at a glance without appearing to read from it. You want to give the appearance of talking to the audience instead of reading to them, but you also want the words and phrases to be precise and predetermined.
4. Prepare the projection. The visuals you will show to the audience need to be designed to support what you’re saying. Avoid showing a slide that has an inordinate amount of detail – the visuals are for impact. A spreadsheet with dozens of rows and columns will be basically meaningless. Titles on the slide should reflect the content of the slide and support what you’re saying. Do not read the slide! Assume the audience can read. Your words should support the visuals but not duplicate them. There are very few things you can do that will have a worse impact than reading what the audience can read on their own. If all you’re going to do is put up slides and repeat what’s on them, then they don’t need you.
5. Rehearse alone. Do this repeatedly. Read your speech and watch your presentation dozens of times. This needs to be so familiar to you that you know what slide is next; what you’re going to say about each one, how you will segue between slides… this must be second nature to you. When you begin to get completely bored with doing this and you know it by rote, then you’re ready for the next step.
6. Do a dress rehearsal. Enlist some people that you trust to give honest opinions. These should be people that are reasonably representative of your expected audience. Give them the whole presentation. Have them make notes during the rehearsal – where are you confusing; what is particularly good? Have them also concentrate on you: Are you moving around too much; too little? You don’t want to appear “hyper” but you also don’t want to come across as a monotone statue.
7. Tweak the presentation. Take what you learned in the dress rehearsal and make modifications. Try to put yourself in the audience when you do this. What will they hear when the slides are on the screen?
8. Prepare yourself. So far, the steps have all been about preparing your presentation. Now, it’s time to think about you. Unless you do this for a living, you’re going to be nervous. Do some visual imagery of yourself in front of the crowd; doing a perfect job; getting applause, oohs and aahs. Find a quiet spot, close your eyes, and go over the presentation, imagine yourself being completely in control without any stumbling. This is a very, very important step. Professional athletes use this virtually every time before they go out to perform. It’s a proven technique.[1][2] Use it. You should also be doing this immediately before you go on stage.
9. Introduce the presentation. You’ve done a great job preparing, you know the material, you’ve rehearsed, you’ve visualized perfection – in short, you’re ready. One of the very important things to which you must pay close attention is your physical demeanor. You don’t want to look too stiff, and you don’t want to look too casual. You should have already gotten the right stance and movement in your dress rehearsal.
10. Present the material. Obviously, this is the meat of the subject. Remember you are the expert. Also remember… you will be nervous. How to avoid “stage fright” varies from person to person (you have heard the “imagine them in their underwear”) but one serious tip is to use eye contact. Present to one person – then another – then another. Don’t think of it as a large crowd… you’re talking to one person at a time.
11. Question and answer. This is optional. How to do a Q&A session is worthy of an article in itself but there are a few things you should consider. You must be in control. Some questions will undoubtedly be less than friendly. When you get those, answer them factually and move on. Just don’t call on that person again. You also might get “soft” questions that don’t really ask anything new – be careful with those. They’re easy and don’t deserve a lot of time. Don’t dismiss them or brush them off, but don’t rehash what you’ve already said. Answer factually, bring in some new information, then move on.
12. Exit the stage. Thank everyone for their attention, tell them the presentation is available in printed form. If you will be available for personal consultation, make sure you mention that. Don’t spend a lot of time in the exit; you’re finished – exit graciously.

Key Concepts

• Remember adults are self-directed. You are a facilitator and not a grade school teacher.

• Adults need to connect learning to their knowledge base. Ask your audience to share their experiences with the group.

• Adults are goal-oriented and will appreciate an educational program that is organized and has clearly defined elements. Help your audience see the importance of your topic to their work.

Above all, remember to show your audience respect. They bring a wealth of experiential knowledge to your presentation and will, if allowed, contribute richly to it.

Tips

• Dress for the event. Plan what you’ll wear and lay it out the night before. Is it formal dress; business casual; jeans and t-shirt? What you wear depends in part on the audience and in part on the material. Whatever you wear, make sure it’s clean and looks nice on you. Clothes that are too tight or too loose for your body shape will distract the audience from your presentation. You want them concentrating on the material – not how you look. Avoid clothing with distracting designs, as listeners may go on more “mental vacations” and miss important aspects of the presentation.
• Walk as you talk. Move around a bit, but not so much as to be distracting. Your movements and body language can evoke interest, reinforce the emotions of your stories and punctuate a change of pace or topic.
• Prepare handouts. You will want printed copies of the slides, and perhaps notes, to be available to the audience… after the presentation is over. You can also use these as a backup to hand out in case the technology you’re using fails. If the projector goes out, you can quickly distribute the printed material.
• If you stumble. Recover and move on. Don’t dwell on that. It’s perfectly OK to correct yourself, but don’t focus on it. Don’t try to turn it into a joke – just account for the error (if necessary) and proceed as though it didn’t happen. Focus on the present and the future – not the past.
• You might start with a humorous anecdote. If you do this, be very sure you try this on your dress rehearsal group and pay attention to their feedback. This often works to get the audience, and you, relaxed. But if you bomb on the joke, it will take time to recover.
• If appropriate, honor some attendees by name. Cite individual audience members by name as positive examples of the points you are making. Interview the meeting planner well in advance, sharing your main points and gathering examples that involve people in the planned audience. If you do this, make sure you pronounce the names correctly.

Warnings

• Do not hand out the presentation in advance. This is a very, very common mistake. If you do that, the audience will read and not watch. You will lose their attention and the impact will be gone.
• Strictly avoid “pause” words. “Um” or “uh” are things you must avoid. A pause is better than an inappropriate conjunctive.

On the other hand, when used appropriately, pauses can be highly effective. Winston Churchill was supposed to be famous for dramatically pausing during speeches, then blurting out what he would have said anyway, giving the audience an impression that the praise had just occurred to him.

Related wikiHows

• How to Speak Confidently in Public
• How to Be a Great Speaker
• How to Give a Speech
• How to Improve Your Speaking Voice
• How to Lead a Discussion

Sources and Citations

1. ? http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-19990501-000018.html
2. ? http://healthjournal.upmc.com/0405/MentalTraining.htm

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He’s not the only one getting a kick out of dogging out everyone’s work. I just picked him out because he’s a dick and he chose to say my site sucks. NEWS FLASH! * I know that* *So what*

What goes around, comes around. Welcome to the internet, where you can say anything about anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Without devoting too much of my oh, so valuable time, to this non-subject- let me just wrap it up in bullet points.

For all you self-righteous designers/programmers out there-

• kiss my ass
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• write a book if you’re so f*cking smart
• write a tutorial if you hate the way people screw sh*t up
• do a podcast so you can tell yourself how awesome you are
• stop listening to death metal
• be careful you don’t piss off someone who knows how to hack your sh*t or steal your personal information
• stop pretending (oops-I’m guilty of that a little)
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There- now I feel better. Thanks for listening.

*chirping cricket sound*

Internet Marketing in Tampa is growing like wildfire. Probably everywhere in Florida, or the United States, for that matter.

Yes, the search engine optimization business is one internet industry that has a bright future. In the downward turn of the economy, company marketing has to spend less and get smarter to stay in the game. We all know that media advertising of days gone by (TV, Radio-to some extent, Newspaper Ads, Yellow Pages) are not producing results like they used to. I read somewhere that PPC ads are 22 times more effective than direct mail. What should that tell you about direct mail?

How does a business owner know who to go to? Should they trust the PPC or text ads that dominate the search engine results pages? I wouldn’t. Should they give up on traditional advertising all together, and focus ONLY on optimization and internet marketing?

That depends-who is your audience? Is it all of America or the entire globe? In that case-yeah, I’d focus primarily on achieving more internet presence and web traffic.

I do SEO and Internet Marketing in the Tampa Bay area and I’ve witnessed first hand how some shady companies pawn off their “directory submission” and “link building” schemes to unsuspecting companies for thousands of dollars-on top of that we’ll manage your $3000 a month PPC campaigns for just a few hundred dollars a month extra. What does the business get in return?

A mess, that’s what. Links from un-related sites, links with no anchor text, a page on their site loaded with reciprocal outbound links with zero rel=nofollow tags, a 3% CTR for the PPC accounts while the SEO company gets their Adword Certification off their cash-Oh, don’t even get me started with the site optimization. That’ll be another post of it’s own.

To get to the point-this is what a decent SEO or search marketing company should do.

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