Hey Practitioners! Today I'm going to be teaching you, with the help of my friend Dana Bluen, the top 7 tips for a great presentation. Dana Bluen is an entrepreneur currently living in Bangkok, Thailand, where he is a co-founder and CEO of a company called Mango Labs.
Anyways, here's some of his tips. We all have to give presentations at different points in our life. That might be for school or work or an organization that you are involved with.
No matter where we give the presentation or to who, we want to make sure that it has the impact on the audience and that it's memorable. These are seven tips that are going to ensure that you nail the presentation and leave a lasting impression on your audience. Number one, know your audience.
The first step in preparing for any presentation should be to get a better idea of who your audience is. Knowing your audience will allow you to understand the type of content they are going to be expecting. with regards to depth and technical detail. You wouldn't want to give the same presentation to a group of high school students who are interested in entrepreneurship that you would to a room full of startup founders and CEOs because their expectations and level of understanding will be on completely different levels. Dig up as much as you can about who your audience is, what industries they work in, and what positions they generally hold.
This allows you to really tailor the content and delivery of the presentation in a way that will really make it stand out and be memorable. Too many times people give killer presentations at one venue to a group made up of their core audience and then bomb on the same presentation to a different group because they didn't make the changes they needed to better address the new audience. Just because you kill it in one audience doesn't mean the same exact content will replicate the reaction with all audiences.
Number two, use structures to build on ideas. If you stand up and give a presentation and all the points you want to make are just tossed around randomly and they don't make any sense, not too many people are going to enjoy your presentation, and if they remember it, It's likely that it's not for the reasons that you want them to. However, if you structure your presentation in a way that each idea, each section, builds on the one before it, you help your audience connect with the content and create logical links between the concepts. This is a great way to make more complex ideas easier for the audience to understand and remember.
Number three, use visuals. Another great tool to cement those ideas in the mind of your audience is to use visuals like charts, graphs, and infographics to illustrate and communicate a concept. As many as 65% of people... are considered to be visual learners.
So if you don't take this approach in your presentation you are going to ignore the vast majority of the population. Using an image regardless of if it's a picture, graph, or chart can be a much more potent conveyor of information and has a much more powerful impact on the audience. A single image can convey so much information.
Just like the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, it really is. Think of the impact this can have when explaining data or results in a presentation. If you had to stand there in front of your audience and go through every data point verbally, it can get bad quickly and this is much more common of an occurrence than you might think.
But if you're able to visualize that data for your audience with a graph or chart, you instantly make it much more understandable and memorable. Showing someone 200% growth with a graph is much more exciting than explaining it while they're looking at the raw data. For example, if I took away the screen of this video and all you saw was black, it wouldn't be near as exciting.
Number four, repetition is your friend. Having a bit of structure in your presentation goes a long way in keeping the audience engaged because they can follow the information from step to step. But even more than just structuring the flow of the presentation, you also want to build in repetition. This encourages people to remember the key points of the presentation and helps it stick, which again makes it, and you, more memorable. A classic way to go about repetition is something Dana learned early on when he started his public speaking career.
Another speaker at a big regional tech event came up to him after a talk. and complimented Dana on his delivery and the depth of the material, but asked why he didn't use more repetition. Dana was a bit stumped because he never really thought about that before. The other speaker suggested that Dana start telling the audience what it is he wanted to tell them, just to give them a brief rundown of the key points.
After that, move right into the body of the presentation and tell them exactly what was highlighted at the beginning, but obviously with more detail and extra elements that you add in to make the presentation stick. Then end the presentation by telling them what you just told them, reminding them of the key points and a brief summary for final repetition. Using this technique helps to reinforce the main points of the presentation at least three times, at the beginning, middle, and end. The key is to find a way to do this that it feels natural and not overly scholastic.
And that takes practice, which we'll talk about later on. Tip number five, have a story to tell. The difference between an average presentation that people zone out of and a great presentation that keeps them engaged is how you convey the information to the audience. A great way to convey the information or key points of your presentation is to use a story.
By using a story, preferably an interesting one, you get your point across and you're creating a moment in the presentation that is memorable and easier for the audience to recall later. It's also hopefully going to be something that catches their attention, pulling them into what you were saying. One of the keys here, though, is that it has to be a story you can tell with commitment, and it has to be true. Always be honest with your audience, because if you're not, they will know and you will have lost all credibility. Tip number six, be relatable.
Being relatable is actually one of the most important factors of your delivery. You want to be someone that your audience can relate to, that they would feel comfortable with talking to. Even when giving a talk as an expert on a topic, you want the audience to feel the relation. It helps them mentally engage with your content and remember you and your talk. Most people don't feel comfortable going up and talking to a stern authority figure, and no one wants to listen to someone with no confidence.
So there's a fine balance you need to strike, and here's how. The most important thing you can do to come across as more relatable is to be authentic. Be yourself. Another great way to accomplish this is to work on coming across as relaxed, which can be difficult if you're not used to presenting, but this goes a long way to helping people see you as relatable.
The final way you can be more relatable is to be honest. is to be enthusiastic about your presentation. Your enthusiasm will transfer to your audience and now that you have enthusiasm in common you will begin to see as more relatable. If you get all three of these techniques mastered you will be well on your way to making it to your audience relate to you. Tip number seven, build your confidence with practice.
This might be the last tip but it is by far the most important one out of these seven. Confidence in what you do is by far the most important element of your presentation. Having confidence adds an authority to everything you say during your presentation, but you're not going to develop the confidence you need if you don't practice, and practice a lot. Whenever Dana gives a talk or presentation, he practices, he says for hours. Dana wants to make sure he has the timing down, that he knows every slide so he doesn't have to read off them, he knows what the next slide is so he can smoothly transition between them so that he will sound natural and authentic, and can explain the concepts and tell the stories with confidence.
And this all comes with practice. When you are practicing a presentation, It's not enough to sit in front of your computer and go through it. You have to practice it in front of other people. Invite some friends over and have them give some feedback on your presentation and make improvements based on their feedback.
No one gets it right the first time, but practice will get you towards perfect. With these seven tips, you should be able to put together and deliver a masterful presentation that will wow your audience and make sure that they remember you and your topic. If you guys like this collaboration, be sure to check out Dana's YouTube channel and subscribe. He has tons of videos on entrepreneurship and self-development.
I hope you guys liked this video and learned something, and if you did, click the like button or if you haven't already, the subscribe button. Thanks so much guys.