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Tips For Your More Effective Presentation

January 3, 2018 by Muhammad Noer

The effectiveness of a presentation is determined by the ability of the presenter to be presented to the audience. Of course, every presenter has his or her own style, which can influence the way he or she presents the presentation.

How to deliver a presentation that is inconsistent with the theme of the presentation can affect the effectiveness of the presentation.

There are 10 tips to make your presentation become more effective:

1. Show your passion

Show your passion to your audience. Show them that you are passionate and enthusiastic in bringing the presentation theme.

You should make an interesting presentation material. But, if you hesitate when delivering it, then it can make you seem incompetent.

Or, you make good material, but you look reluctant when delivering it. Then the audience will also be reluctant to listen to you.

Passion can be shown with confidence. When you feel confident delivering a presentation, then it will be very influential to the audience.

Confidence will make you more excited. The audience will also be eager to listen to you.

2. Start With A Stunning Presentation Opening

During the presentation, the first impression will be shown when you open the presentation.

The first two to three minutes of presentation will be decisive, whether the audience will be enthusiastic to listen to it or not.

If the audience listens with enthusiasm, plus doing the expected action, then the presentation is effective.

If presenter could not deliver an interesting presentation presentation, then the presentation could not be effective.

3. Say It With Brief and Simple

Just tell the most important points of the presentation theme. Focus on the opening and closing of presentations, because that is the part most will be remembered by the audience.

4. Relax

When delivering a presentation, you should not only stand still onstage or pulpit. You can walking on stage, even occasionally close to the audience.

With this way, you do not create a boundary between you as a presenter with the audience. The audience will feel closer to you. If the audience feels close to the presenter, then they will be more trusting.

5. Using Technology

You can use technology to help your presentation become more effective.

For example, you can use a handle remote. So, you can freely move around, while still able to point out the important points that are in your presentation slides.

Or, you can include animated pieces or videos related to the theme of your presentation into the presentation slides. So, the audience will be more interested and not bored with your presentation.

6. Master Your Tools

During presentation, you use tools such as projector, laptop, or handled remote. Although you may be assisted by an assistant to operate the equipment, but you must also master it.

It’s very important. You would not panic or nervous when suddenly there is a problem with the equipment. When there are technical errors, you can stay calm because you know what to do.

When you’re calm, you’ll be more confident.

7. Make Eye Contact

Eye contact is very important to establish a more intense relationship with the audience. When the presentation is done in front of a small number of audiences, this eye contact process will be easier to do.

But, don’t worry if you have to deliver a presentation in front of dozens, even hundreds of audiences. Eye contact can still be done. All you have to do is direct your gaze to the audience that is supposed to represent the corners where they sit.

And, don’t forget to smile when you make eye contact with your audience.

8. Know Your Audience

This is very important. You will be able to make the right presentation material if you know who your audience will be. You will also know how to fit it in.

Knowing the audience can be done by looking at their background, such as their age, gender, level of education, or work. For example, your presentation materials and style of presentation to the students will certainly be different from the presentation to the managers.

9. Beware for Your Appearance

Your appearance as a presenter is a manifestation of your appreciation to the audience. If you look neat, then your audience will feel appreciated by you. By appreciating your audience, you are self-respecting.

In addition, your appearance in accordance with the presentation you bring will also increase the confidence as a presenter.

10. Be Professional

This professional attitude you can show by coming before the time set. So you can prepare before you perform. Presentation can be started on time.

In addition, professional attitudes can also be demonstrated when an audience asks a question. Answer the question well and correctly.

If you need more time to give a satisfactory answer, then tell the audience that asks you that you can not answer the question now. Say that you will answer the question via email and do not wait too long to send the answer.

No More Boring Presentation

December 20, 2017 by Muhammad Noer

Have you ever involved a conversation with a stranger?

For example, when you are in a train on your journey, then someone next to you starts to open a conversation. This conversation is usually rigid, only for showing politeness. We usually feel uncomfortable, unless you or he has an initiative to get acquainted. Although it is just sharing names and shaking hands, these will make conversation more enjoyable.

Having conversation with stranger will make us uncomfortable, tend to be boring. Different to if we talk to someone we know. The longer we know our interlocutor, the more enjoyable the conversation will be.

It is the same with presentation. If you have attended some presentations, you will know which one is easy to attend and which one is not. But, there is also one that so very boring that you want to walk out immediately and sleep.

How to make a presentation not boring? Here are some tips.

1. Know your audience well

Knowing who the audiences when delivering presentation is a key for you to make presentation exciting and not boring. By knowing the audiences, you will understand them: how they digest information, what information they need. It also helps you to make the material suitable to your audiences so that your presentation becomes effective.

Knowing the audiences means knowing their positions and what they need from your presentation. You also know why they come to attend your presentation.

You know the terms communicator and communicant. In a presentation, the communicator is the presenter and the communicant is the audience. The communicator must understand what he delivers in order to reach the communication goal. That is why he must know the communicants. By knowing them, the communicator can adjust the material so that the material becomes relevant and he communicants can receive the message properly. In other words, the communicants must get inspiration from the communicator. That is when the presentation called spectacular.

2. Deliver your presentation like you talk to your friends

When you talk to someone you know, you will deliver the message directly. Seldom people talk to someone he knows with rambling conversation unless he has something not good or he doesn’t understand what to say.

In delivering presentation, you must know what you will deliver. It will make your presentation runs smoothly.

You also must speak with persuasive style. Your way of speaking determines whether the audiences believe what you say or not. If you know your audiences, you will know the speaking style suitable for them.

Knowing the audiences is as the same as knowing your enemy in a battle. A presentation is the same as communication battle. You must know your audiences so that you will know your strengths.

If you know the audiences and know your strengths, you will easily find out how to deliver presentation which is suitable with the audiences’ thinking paradigm. Therefore, you will say the exact and correct words. If what you deliver is suitable with the audience’s thinking paradigm, the audiences will listen to your presentation gladly. So, they will not feel bored while listening to your presentation.

3. Use helping tools

An interesting presentation doesn’t only require your speaking ability, but also tools. There are some people gifted to do public speaking without tools at all. But, if you think you don’t have such gift, tools, such as slide show, is very helping. Slide show doesn’t only make presentation more interesting, but also help you to focus on the material during your presentation.

Interesting presentation slide show is the one that is eye-catching, not exaggerated with many writings. It is better if it raises curiosity among the audiences. If the audiences feel curious, they will be interested to listen to your presentation.

Besides, don’t forget to make eye contact with the audiences. Eye contact shows friendliness, shows that you want to be close and intimate with the audiences. It is very important for the audiences because they will feel that you already know them.

A conversation between people who know each other is usually interspersed with humor to make it more friendly and intimate. Humor can refresh the conversation. There may be an audience who is sleepy. With humor, he will feel refreshed. The audiences will feel friendly to you.

If you don’t feel confident to deliver a presentation in front of the audiences, you can learn it. Everyone is gifted the ability to communicate and to learn.

How to be a Good Speaker in a Presentation

November 22, 2017 by Muhammad Noer

Do you want to be a good speaker and to impress your audiences at the same time? Well, there is no shortcut for such things. You have to practice and practice industriously and learn from the experts and also explore your speaking ability in every occasion.

Here are some tips you can practice in everyday life.

Learning by observing

The easiest thing for you to learn is observing how good presenters perform. You can learn from TED videos that you can watch for free. For instance, you can learn by watching global or local TED like TED Jakarta.

Besides TED, you can also watch Pecha Kucha videos. There is something interesting while you watch Pecha Kutcha videos. Each video shows a presenter performs 20 slides which every slide switches every 20 seconds automatically. Each presenter must make sure that his presentation corresponds to every change of the slides.

Learning by Practicing Together

You can also improve your speaking skill by following Toastmaster club near your place. Toastmaster is a non-profit organization that helps people to improve their speaking skill. You can learn further about it in this article.

Learning by Following Training Class

Besides doing autodidact learning from videos, observing other speakers or joining speaking club, you can also learn by joining training.

The advantage of joining training is that you will be managed to improve your presentation skill, from formulating your presentation’s material, transforming it to visual slides in instantly and delivering your presentation convincingly.

Now let us go back to our topic, how to baa good speaker.

1. Deliver a Story

A good presentation doesn’t only give facts and data but also wraps it with good story to make your presentation understandable.

2. Know Your Audiences

Knowing your audience is imperative. You will deliver a presentation to them so you must know who will attend to your presentation. You must know their position in their company. By this way, you will be well connected to them

3. Visualize What You Deliver

Delivering a good presentation needs a skill to elaborate complex idea into an intelligible visualization. That’s why besides you must learn how to speak understandable language, visual slides also help you to perfect your presentation.

4. Speak Naturally

A good speaker doesn’t pretend to be anybody else. He just becomes the way he is. By speaking with your own style, your audiences will see you as a confident speaker because you are the way you aye and not being exaggerate on everything.

5. Perform with Confidence

Show yourself! Deliver your ideas! Don’t hide behind your slides! Use a clicker to help you move from one slide to another easily.

6. Do an Eye Contact

Among many tips to perform in front of audience, eye contact is one of the most important things. Eye contact shows that you care. It is a prime stage to create connection between the speaker and the audience.

7. Don’t Do a Blocking towards Your Audience

It’s a sin if you do this thing: block the audience. Don’t block your audience even though your presentation is over. Can you imagine what you feel when someone is not facing towards you while you have conversation with him? You will feel that you are abandoned. That is exactly what the audience feels. That is why don’t make a long and gobbledygook slides. Instead, you make visual slides which are more interesting and evoking the audiences.

8. Don’t apologize

Apologizing is a good thing. But apologizing to the audience as an excuse of your imperfect presentation is bad because it just shows that you are not a credible presenter. So, make sure you avoid such thing!

You are a star in your presentation. You are the one who manage the scenario of your presentation. So, take control!

How To Prepare for Questions from Your Audience

November 8, 2017 by Muhammad Noer

Question and Answer Session is always present in every presentation. The aim of this session is to help the audience understand more about the material that has been delivered. So, as a presenter, you must be ready to face all the questions from your audience.

Question and Answer Session is sometimes stressing presenters. They are afraid they could not answer all the questions well. Besides, this session is actually something good for a presenter. This session tests his ability in delivering presentation. When he answers questions, he actually performs his competence especially on the material he delivers.

Besides, question and answer session can also give you an opportunity to interact more intimately with your audience. From the questions that the audiences ask, you can measure their knowledge about the material you deliver. So, this session can assist you to evaluate your performance.

In order to be ready on facing questions from your audiences, here are some tips you can use:

1. Give Limitation

It is better to put the question and answer session after you finish delivering the material. The aim of this is to make sure the audience won’t throw you questions while you are still delivering your material. By giving the limitation to the time to ask questions you will not be interrupted during your presentation. It also helps you to focus on your presentation.

Besides, you also can limit how many questions they can ask in one session. The limitation of the amount of questions will make the audience aware so that they will think over about the question they want to ask. They will ask you about important and urgent things. This will make your presentation more effective and efficient.

2. Carefully Listen to your audience’s question

Listen to the question carefully so that you can comprehend the question well. This is important so that you can give the most appropriate answer that the audiences really need.

3. Think about the answer carefully

After the audience ask you a question, pause a moment to think! It is important for you to digest the question in order to give the best answer.

How if you can’t give the right answer? Don’t be panic! Sometimes, as a presenter, you can’t predict the question they ask.

If that happens, first thank to the audience, then you can apologize for not being able to answer the question properly. You can also give further discussion of forum to satisfy the audience. For instance, “thank you for the question. But, I apologize for not being able to answer that properly because this question needs further research. So, you can leave me your email address. I will send you the proper answer as soon as I have done my research on your question.”

You can also reject the question that is “out of the line”. You can say that the question is irrelevant and out of the context so that you don’t need to answer the question.

In fact, if you prepare you presentation material properly, you can answer all the question your audiences ask. By preparing the material, you learn about anything you will deliver in your presentation.

You must make sure that you do the preparation well, make the material that is understandable, use proper and understandable language. You must also make sure that your audiences don’t fall asleep. If they fall asleep, they don’t comprehend the material and ask you less important questions.

It is also recommended to make good supportive material, like slides, pictures, or videos that can help the audience absorb the material.

If you are well prepared, you don’t need to worry on facing questions from the audiences. You will answer all the questions properly and satisfyingly. To be a great speaker, you must master the technique of presentation. One of the indications that your presentation is great is when the audiences understand the material and be moved by the presentation to do what the presenter expects.

Preparing an Effective Presentation

October 25, 2017 by Muhammad Noer

Delivering presentation is sometimes frightening for some people because they must speak in front of people they don’t know yet. In time you must deliver a presentation, you must be ready to receive many questions from your audiences. You are sometimes afraid of delivering an ineffective presentation.

A presentation is not frightening at all actually. A presentation is a media for you to perform your ability. It can be your way to improve. By delivering a presentation, there will be many people understand your ideas, but with one condition: you must deliver an effective presentation.

The key to an effective presentation is a proper preparation. There are many things you have to prepare. But, many people focus only to prepare the material, like making slide show or video to make a more interesting presentation.

Preparing the material for your presentation is important, but that is not the only thing you have to prepare in order to deliver an effective presentation. What are they? Here are some tips for you to be able to deliver an effective presentation.

1. Know Your Audiences

This is actually the most important thing: knowing your audience. If you know them, you will understand them. By that way, you will position yourself as theirs. So, you can prepare the material that fits to their needs.

Knowing your audience doesn’t mean that you must know them in person one by one. But, you can know them from their position. For instance, you must deliver a presentation in front of managers. You must look up, about what field they handle, how many staffs they have, or their educational background.

By knowing the information, especially detail information about the audience, you can prepare the proper material for your presentation. The presentation material for financial managers is different to human sources managers, although the theme is the same, about the proper way to communicate to staff.

People with different background need different approach to receive information.

When the audiences are in the same level, you have to look for information that can unify them. When they gather to hear your presentation, there must be something that unifies them.

2. Make a Structuralized Material for your Presentation

After knowing your audiences, the next step is to prepare clear and structuralized material, and the most important thing is that your material should be understandable.

For example, you want to open a presentation with a story, you should make sure that you also attach some stories in the middle and the end of your presentation. By doing so, your every session of presentation is interconnected to each other.

By making a structuralized and interconnected material, you will be able to direct the audience to your purpose of delivering your presentation easily.

3. Prepare a Visual Material for Your Presentation

A presentation without some helping tool will be a boring presentation. So, make sure you prepare some visual material, such as slide show or even videos to make your presentation more interesting.

For slide show, make sure your slide is not too full of sentences. Summarize important points of your presentation to be shown in your slide show. Don’t forget also to give contrast and proper illustration. If you want to give your audiences some data, it will be better to deliver it in an interesting diagram or table.

The most important thing is to make sure you make understandable slide show. Use the fit font size and make sure the balance between your writings and pictures.

4. Use Understandable Spoken Language

When you deliver a presentation, use good and understandable language to the audiences. For you are assumed using bahasa, use daily bahasa. You must notice the grammar, but sometimes using slank or jargon is okay as long as it fits to the aim of your presentation.

5. Practice

You are required to keep mastering your presentation ability although you have delivered so many presentations.

Practicing in front of a mirror about the best way of the way you talk, your body position and body language. Besides, you can practice in front of your close friends or family. Evaluate whether they understand your presentation or not. You can ask their opinion about your way of elaborating your presentation. If there is any imperfection, take time to practice more.

Those are some tips to prepare a presentation in order to make effective presentation. If you think that you have some imperfection in doing so, you can attend seminar and workshop from those who are experts in presenting world.

Presentation is sometimes frightening but it can be overcome. There’s the technique and you can comprehend and practice it.