Good Preparation, Great Presentation
Anyone can deliver a presentation, but not everyone can make an effective presentation. They are several things you should do before making a presentation:
Prepare your material of presentation.
The preparation is as much important as the presentation itself. The more preparation you made, the more confident you become in delivering presentation. Know all the numbers & literature needed to support & enrich your presentation, especially if it’s an educational forum.
Prepare yourself.
Practice as often as you need to with any kind of gadget you like: a voice recorder, a tape recorder or a video recorder to get the overall performance as a presenter. Make sure you bring all your visual aids, handouts, etc. Arrive early so you can check out the location and sound system as well as making sure that all other supporting presentation tools are functioning properly. You could also make any last minute adjustments needed. It is very important that you pay attention to even the smallest details.
Present yourself.
Be fully present & give the best of what you are to the audience — to make them feel your presence while you are talking to them. You can use several personal experiences which support & matches to the current topic you delivered. You could even make yourself as a joke object in your story, but don’t make a joke which will lower your dignity in front of audience.
Overcome stage freeze
Pray before you start speaking in public. Stay your mood in a relax state, yet in fully aware state of mind. Remember how important is the message you are about to tell audience, so they will learn from it & act upon it. What you feel is nothing compared to your passion to pass your knowledge to them.
Make a catchy entrance
The audience will judge you in the first 30 seconds they see you. So make the early seconds impressive & interesting — yet relevant to what you are about to say. Whatever the first words you say — will determine the audience’s perspective of early impression about you in the next sessions.
Know the audience
You should know how large an audience you will be speaking to and what are their backgrounds. Your early information about audience could help you choose the right kind of stories as the example or supporting stories that would impress them, based on their unique background of education, culture, social groups, etc.
Read the audience
Maintain eye contact with the audience & discover if they are still in the high mood of listening to your presentation — or some of your audience is starting to get bored by your speech.
Dance around the stage.
Establish positions where you will stand and plan how to move around and in which part in your speech you should move to make a stronger emphasis on what you are saying. Use three basic positions: one on center stage, one to your right, and one to your left. Remember that the stage is all yours.
Expect success
After going through many rehearsals & you are feel ready to go to make an outstanding performance as you imagined doing it, remember that your audience also expecting your success. Don’t worry about making mistakes, your audience would easily “forgive” you anyway.
Written by: Fiona Erna
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Tagged as PR, preparation, presentation, work organization + Categorized as Economy articles
I must congrats Fiona on this article! Hope we’ll get many more articles like this one.