10 Most Effective Tip to Improve Presentation Skills
No matter where you go or what you do, you require public speaking. Especially in work places you require traditional presentation or might have to make a couple of awful cold calls each day where you might be forced to step out of your comfort zone. Public speaking, for some it is too hard to face and for some it is a piece of cake. What is it that marks the difference? Some get cold feet to stand up in front of real audiences. But you may overcome the fear and deliver at a pace you never imagined only with constant practice. We help you with your presentation skills; we have asked a number of presentation experts for their tricks and opinion.
Here are the 10 best tips we came across in our interrogation. These will definitely help you overcome anxiety and deliver better presentation. Read along:
1. Get your basics right and know exactly what you will speak about. When you stand up in front of your audience, they take you to be expert on your subject matter. Hence, go through a solid background research so that when the audience puts up questions, you are pretty confident about the answers.
2. Right in the introductory phase make it clear why are you standing in front of them and what do you intent to discuss throughout your presentation. Outline briefly the key points initially and gradually get to the depth of the topic. In the end, summarize your presentation in a few sentences.
3. If you feel pubic speaking is next to impossible for you, take a class that help get rid of cold feet. Many offices have training departments that takes care of this drawback on your part. You may also consider your local college where refresher classes are offered.
4. Another mantra behind mastering a presentation is you have to see yourself as others see you. Hence, video tape your practice sessions. Watching yourself deliver help you understand your strength and weaknesses so that you may work on them for better responses.
5. To err is human. At any point during the presentation, if you make a mistake, you need not panic. Simply acknowledge it, laugh and move on.
6. Audience participation is important for the success of a presentation. Ask questions from time to time and engage actively as much as people as you can.
7. Every slide should contain at least one key point to share and if it makes no point, simply delete it. Hay wire slides create a bitter impact and you lose interest of your audience.
8. Though voice and hand gestures create an impact, you need not be over conscious. The overall presentation will create a much bigger impact if it goes well.
9. Memorize the key points and not the whole presentation. No one likes to listen to a boring, dull and lifeless presenter. A tip to get interesting is to have a mental outline drawn before getting on the stage.
10. The more you practice, the better you get at presentation. Practice in front of someone and ask for feedbacks to improve your skills further. Evaluate the points you need to emphasize more and the low points to strengthen them.