7 IDEAS TO MAKE YOU A BETTER PRESENTER

Hello today I've got an awesome question for you. Have you seen really bad speaker present? I'm sure we've all seen somebody who is pacing back and forth, reading off this slides, stammering over their content or even worse, just plain boring.

Today I'm off to the Speakers Tribe Gathering. I've been one of the leaders of the Victorian Speakers Tribe for the last two years and I've been investing in myself to learn how to be a better presenter.

Along my journey I have learned a lot and would love to share seven points on how you too could be a better presenter. Now I completely encourage people to go and invest in themselves and learn the skills that they need in order to run successful events. One of those skills is presentation skills because we have to be great on stage that's just part and parcel of what we do when we're running events, especially when we are the authority we want to be the industry influencer, right?

7 Ideas To Make You A Better Presenter

Assume a position of certainty by planting your feet and standing up straight

First of all, assume a position of certainty on stage by planting your feet and standing up straight. Planting your feet, standing in one position to deliver your content will make you look certain. It also helps you to sound certain because as we move, our voice moves up and down, so unless we really need to move along the stage or move forward towards that audience keep your feet planted to the ground.

Slow down, breath and listen

The other thing that's really important is to slow down, breathe, and listen. Many people get on stage and feel flustered. Feeling flustered, makes us speak quicker, so focus on slowing down a little bit. Once we slow down we need to breath and listen to our audience. Listening to what they're saying with words and also what they're saying with their body language. This empowers us to really be with our audience instead of just being in our own head and not present to the needs of our audience.

Know your content so well that you’re out of your head and with your audience

Really knowing your content is super important!

Did you know it takes up to four times for us to say our content out loud to an audience before we learn our content enough to be able to really embody it? Once we've embodied our content, we're able to be with our audience, we're able to be present, we're able to pull the right stories at the right time and really be able to understand what's happening in the room rather than only understanding what's happening in our own heads.

Four times. That means that we need to practice, our first event, our second event, our third event, a web event, however that looks, but it has to be out loud to an audience.

Reduce the copy on your slides and use pictures (don’t read off your slides)

How many of times have you seen a presenter who's got the slides and the whole time they are presenting, they are just reading off the slide and clicking and reading, reading and clicking. We can all read, the purpose of you standing in front of the room is to be able to go way beyond what it says on the screen.

To help us do that, reduce the amount of copy we have on the screen, use pictures. A really good tip is to tell one story per slide. Don't click through your slides as you're telling a story.

Be clear, be concise don’t give TMI (to much information)

Be clear, be concise and don’t overload your audience with too much information (TMI). We tend to overload our audience and in the end, they walk away not really being able to implement very much because there's just way too much going on. So be clear, really understand what information you need to deliver right now and be very concise in that delivery.

Make it relevant to your audience

Make sure that your content is irrelevant to your audience. Tell stories; let them know how they can implement what you’re teaching into their own business or life. Get to know who they are and make it relevant to a specific person.

Many times I've seen presenters just talk about case studies in their content and not make them relevant to the people in the room. This causes boredom, because your audience don't actually know how to implement the content. Giving them some ideas and some suggestions around how this content is relevant for them. Will help you present and also really drive in your content so that your audience can understand how this will work for them.

Encourage audience participation

This is so, so, so important, encourage audience participation, ask questions, get people to answer. Encourage people to talk to each other. We are social creatures and we learn a by discussing information. Digesting the information that's been given to us and repeating it or sharing it to anchor it into our memories. Encouraging audience participation, encouraging people to talk to each other, even if it's an a large group is really important.

Audience participation will help to build the community. It will help to build your stand as a leader and it will help your audience feel like they've been able to contribute, participate and solidify the information in their minds.

Learn To Present Effectively

Don’t be rude to your audience by being a terrible presenter. Invest in yourself. Take on some of these tips and really learn how to present effectively so that you become that industry influencer you want to be. Be seen as the confident and certain person who delivers massive value.

If you’re ready to become and industry influencer, get in touch and see how we can support you on your journey to become an Eventologist!