4 Ways to Remind Your Audience You Are Not Speaking Alone

Below mentioned steps will allow you to structure a presentation, which will help you connect and inspire your audience. Make sure you are not just presenting information to them or selling them your idea, but also make sure you listen and address their concerns. Be authentic in what you say and how you present it. People love authenticity!

1 = Start off by getting the audience to introduce themselves, put up their hand and tell you their name:

To engage your audience start off by getting the audience to introduce themselves, put up their hand and tell you their name. This way the audience knows that you are aware of them and they feel as though they can identify with you. Next, repeat the names back to them and get them to continue doing so until this is completely normal for the audience. This will let them know that you are truly focused on what it is they want, which will build up a rapport between them and yourself.

 

2 = To keep your audience engage

Ask them to share some things they are interested in or passionate about or how they can help you achieve your goal. Asking questions and getting help from your audience is a great way to drive the conversation forward and keep things interesting. You can also ask them what they like about your project? How do they find it interesting? Questions are always helpful to move conversations forward.

 

Asking people for help in any kind of situation is usually a great way to engage them and get them interested in what you’re doing. You can ask people to share something with you, retweet or share some links or ideas that you have mentioned earlier.

 

3 = Conduct a short ice breaker activity with the group

This can include anything from going around in a circle and introducing themselves to each other, doing an exercise on what’s been challenging for them recently, or everyone saying one thing that they like about their job/life (all people in the group can contribute things that they like about their job or life). The idea is to make a list and discuss it.

Use a 5 to 10 mins time limit and ask the group to come up with as many things that they like about their job/life as they can (independent of the other things you will be talking about towards the end of the exercise). This should help them get to know each other, so it’s a good ice-breaker. If someone wants to be lazy and don’t want to think of any things, that person can just say what he/she is doing now or is good at. You will need 6 or 7 people to make this whole exercise work. It’s best if you have a large group, so that most people can contribute things with a higher level of comfort.

4 = Finally take a poll/vote at the end of your presentation

on what should be shared next – this gives everyone an opportunity to have their voice heard and also ensures that you don’t just go with your first idea.

The point is to make sure you have a good range of topics and that you are catering for all potential audience member’s interests. The more people think of their presentation as an opportunity for others to learn from, rather than your time they can use to promote themselves, the more successful your session will be!

Conclusion:

Remember the ultimate goal of your presentation is not to convince people to buy something from you (and if it is, that’s wrong), but rather to be able to connect with them so that they can see the value in your ideas for themselves. It would take a lot of convincing for someone to become a real fan of someone who is fake! So the better we are at connecting with people, the more successful we will be at inspiring others…