How to improve your presentation skills: The Complete Guide
So, you’re giving a presentation soon, but you need to brush up on your skills? Follow this complete guide on how to improve your presentation skills and you’ll blow your audience away with your depth of knowledge, confidence, and professionalism.
How do I know this guide will help you? Because speaking in public and giving presentations is part of my job, and I’ve been doing it for the last 6 years. This is the exact method I use to plan out, structure, and prepare myself for every presentation or speaking gig. It works like a charm every time!
The first time I ever presented in public was just before I started college. I was 18 years old. I stared down at my paper and read it word for word. For a few years, I just couldn’t put my finger on why I wasn’t keeping everyone in the room engaged and getting them hyped with my ideas.
I figured it out. It was because I wasn’t planning and structuring my presentation. Also, my body language wasn’t confident, I was looking at the floor or at my slides most of the time, and I would even fumble my words when I got nervous.
Sound familiar? Yeah, most people struggle with presenting and speaking in public.
With this ultimate guide on how to improve your presentation skills, I’m going to help you fix all that.
Here’s what we’ll cover in this guide:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Plan Your Presentation
Planning and researching your presentation is just as important as delivering it to your audience.
If you don’t plan what you’re going to say, what you want to achieve, and how you’re going to do it, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Set your presentation objectives
What do you want to achieve with this presentation? This might sound like it’s about you, but it’s actually about your audience. Always have the following question in mind:
What benefit is my audience getting from this?
If you use this as your philosophy for creating every step of your presentation, you’ll have their attention captivated for the entire time you’re on stage.
Here are some common objectives. Think about which one applies to you:
1 - Inform your audience
If your goal is to educate your audience on a particular topic, this is the kind of presentation objective you should have in mind. This probably applies if you’re giving a presentation at a university, providing a workshop or at work about to start a new client or project, and so on.
Your call to action could be anything for this kind of presentation. It might be inviting the audience to ask you questions, or even to fill out a questionnaire!
Remember: you should be very well informed about your topic if you’re looking to inform others. That means that studying and researching your presentation is paramount here.
2 - Motivate your audience
Motivating your audience is another common objective in presentations. If this is our objective it’s important to establish solid rapport and engage with your audience throughout your presentation. Making sure they identify with you, trust you, and see value in what you’re saying should be at the forefront of your mind throughout the planning and execution of this type of presentation.
Your call to action is key for this kind of presentation, as you might be asking them to join an organization, volunteer their time, or take other significant actions.
3 - Convince your audience
This presentation objective will apply to you if you’re looking for investment in your company, or if you want people to buy your service or product. You’ll need to tell them what problem they have, and how you’re going to offer a solution to that problem.
A common mistake is to rely too much on logic and cold hard data for this kind of presentation. We’re emotional animals, us humans. So, to properly convince someone, you need to add a little emotion too.
Your call to action will be clear here. You’ll either be asking people to try your product or service, or to join you in your proposed business venture.
Learn about your audience
Planning to engage with your audience and keep their attention? Then you need to know a little about them first.
Presenting about advanced quantum physics to people who don’t know what an atom is, just isn’t going to end well for you. That means it’s your job to talk about your subject in a way that’s tailored to them, not to you.
Here are some things to consider:
WHAT DO THE PEOPLE IN YOUR AUDIENCE HAVE IN COMMON WITH EACH OTHER?
Maybe they’re part of the same organization, or they’re fanatics of some shared interest. Maybe they just live in the same place. This is all useful for helping you understand more about them.
If you have time, a good way to learn more about your audience is by reaching out to some of them with a questionnaire. If there’s an event organizer, ask if they have access to a few audience members and if they’re willing to put you in touch.
If you know your audience already (maybe they’re clients or work colleagues) Reach out and ask for their quick input on a project you're working on. Make it easy for people to give you the information you’re looking for. Get them on the phone, too. Person to person is the best way to know what the audience is thinking about, both by what they're saying and what they're not saying in the conversation.
Another option (albeit a last-minute one) is talking with your audience before or at the beginning of your presentation. Ask them what they’re interested in and why they decided to come to your presentation. This might be considered a “pro-move” and requires some presenting experience to pull it off.
WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN COMMON WITH YOUR AUDIENCE?
Finding out what interests or experiences you share with your audience will help you build rapport and engage with them on a more personal level. This will even help you incorporate a few relevant anecdotes into your presentation, making it easier to create a valuable human connection.
What does your audience already know about your presentation topic?
When presenting to an audience that isn’t familiar with your subject or area of study, then you’ll need to simplify concepts and terminology for them. If they don’t understand what you’re talking about, they won’t pay attention and you won’t achieve your goal.
On the other hand, your audience may already be well informed about your presentation subject. That means you don’t need to go over basic terms and concepts for them, and you can jump right into the specifics. This saves you time and stops your audience from falling asleep.
“When presenting to a mixed-knowlege audience, simplify language and terms at the beginning of the presentation.
Add more complex concepts as you go along. You can also roll out a smooth analogy or story to get everyone on the same page. How often do you buy clothing without trying it on? Sometimes, but not often. You wear clothing that fits - hopefully. Anecdotes help your audience “try on” your topic or message for themselves and their own lives.”
— Stephen
Ok, so you should know a little about your audience by now. Let’s get to planning your presentation!
Researching and structuring your presentation
Researching your topic is important, but if you don’t structure that information properly you risk looking like you don’t know anything. Make your presentation very thoroughly researched, then lay it out in a way that your audience can process and that you can easily present.
RESEARCH YOUR PRESENTATION TOPIC
Time to get your geek on. Find all the books, websites, and YouTube videos you can about your topic, and immerse yourself to the point where you really know what you’re talking about.
You’ve already done some research on your audience. Think about what questions they might have about your presentation topic and find out what information you need to answer those questions.
You might not need to look like a world-leading authority, but you should look like you really know your stuff. Guess what: that can’t be bluffed, so hit the books!
If your presentation is touching on complex or deep subjects, set aside enough time to prepare yourself beforehand. Do you need a whole week to do research? Is doing an hour of research a day for a few days enough? Be honest with yourself because last-minute cramming never works and will just stress you out. Trust me, I learned this the hard way!
STRUCTURE YOUR PRESENTATION
A tried and tested presentation structure is Intro, Body, Close. Or as they say in presenting circles: Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.
Stick to this and you’ll be doing yourself a favor by keeping things simple and easy to remember.
When you’re first brainstorming your presentation, there’s no need to write every single point that you’re going to make. A rough plan is fine to start off with.
1 - INTRO
The introduction is where you make a human connection with your audience before introducing your presentation topic. This doesn’t mean rambling on about your life story for 10 minutes.
Effective introductions include a short personal story (make it at least loosely related to your topic), an impactful statistic, a little-known fact, or even a thought-provoking question. All these options engage your audience and make it easy to transition into the main focus of your presentation.
After using one of these methods to engage with your audience and get them interested, you should then briefly tell the audience what you’re going to cover in your presentation. This makes sure everyone is on the same page about what this presentation is about and leaves any ambiguity out of the picture.
Once that’s done, it’s time to dive right into the main body of the presentation!
2 - BODY
This is where you aim to really make an impact with your audience by pulling out the big guns. Choose 2 or 3 main points that will help you get to the objective of your presentation. You might need to choose a couple of sub-points too, but don’t be too ambitious with what you want to cover. Remember that you have a time limit. You don’t want to overwhelm your audience with information either.
Don’t feel the need to cover every single aspect of your topic. Any other important information that your audience wants to know will come up in the Q&A.
Tie everything back to your main points, and as soon as you’ve covered a main point, move on to the next one.
“If you want to add credibility to your overall argument, consider briefly talking about opposing arguments or competitors. You can then come back to your argument and explain why it’s better.”
— Stephen
3 - CLOSE
This is where you make your last impactful argument. Use the end of your presentation to summarize your main points and emphasize why you’re right, or why the audience needs to shift their way of thinking. Close the deal!
Try and end the presentation on a positive note, tapping into the connection that you generated with your audience in the intro and body of the presentation.
This is also the time to bring out your call to action. Make sure the audience knows what you would like them to do next. Should they now think about investing with you, try your product, visit your website?
WRITE YOUR PRESENTATION
By “writing” I don’t mean sit down and write an essay or a word-for-word plan of what you’re going to say. This step should be a written visual aid that follows the structure of intro, body, close.
Think of it as a rough plan or chronological notes that cover all your main points without having too many complete sentences in there. The first draft of your plan doesn’t need to be complete and final. You can always come back to it later to add and improve.
If you draw a blank at first, try Google’s voice-to-text tool to get started. Pacing around your room and brainstorming out loud can be highly productive for some people!
Include any anecdotes or stories that’ll help you make your point so that you can later practice the emotional and engaging aspects of your presentation.
“Don’t memorize your presentation. This just makes it sound robotic, unauthentic, and you won’t gain your audience’s trust as an authority in your field. Instead, make sure you’ve done enough research on your topic and familiarize yourself with the sequence of your main points and sub-points.”
— Stephen
Presentation resources
Sleek looking presentation slides with relevant graphs or charts can be a great way to reinforce your argument. It gives your audience a visual aid that can help them process data or make them better understand a concept.
If you’re presenting to a small room of investors, consider giving them a sample of your product or service. This might convince them of the value of investing or working with you.
When using PowerPoint, Prezi, or Google Slides in your presentation, consider the following tips.
Presentation slides best practices:
Slides should be mostly image-based and with minimal text on each slide (aim for a couple of sentences at the most). Make slides visually attractive, with attention-grabbing colors, charts, and graphs.
Well made presentation slides should only exist to complement your presentation. Don’t use them to repeat what you’re saying, and don’t summarize your whole presentation with slides. If you do this, your audience may as well have just stayed at home and received this information in an email!
Presentation slides worst practices:
Slides shouldn’t have big chunks of text and no attractive visuals. You want your audience to be captivated by you and your presentation. If they have to read the equivalent of a short book off your slides then you’re doing it wrong.
Do not print and hand out your slides. This takes control of the presentation away from you, and provides a distraction to your audience. You are in control, it’s your responsibility to guide the whole room through your presentation point by point. All eyes should be on you!
Practice your presentation
As I mentioned earlier, you should never memorize your presentation word-for-word. But you should always practice as much as possible before presentation day.
We have some obvious ways of practicing, like presenting out loud and reading over your notes thoroughly. Those work and are a great first step when you first start practicing after writing your presentation structure and notes, but there are more effective methods too.
The following practice methods will improve your presentation skills significantly, hopefully making you the most memorable presenter of the day.
All these techniques should be applied as much as possible in the run-up to your presentation. Every day if you have the time.
Let’s jump right in:
Write notes from memory
Again, this does not mean memorizing your presentation. However, you should be familiarized with the order of your presentation to the point where you can write down the main ideas in the sequence that you’ll be talking about them.
This makes it much easier for your brain to retain information, and you won’t accidentally skip over any important points. Or worse still, add unnecessary information that wasn’t even part of your presentation plan!
Perfect you skills and nail your presentation: Read about the 8 best public speaking exercises.
Explain your presentation to someone
Find a friend or family member who is not familiar with your presentation topic and try explaining the overall idea of your presentation to them.
I always talk to my mom about my presentations. She’ll give me some straight and unfiltered constructive criticism - even if I don’t want to hear it!
If your friend doesn’t understand or gets very confused by what you’re explaining, then you might need to further simplify your presentation.
Doing this can also help you understand your own presentation better. Explaining difficult concepts by stripping them down to their most basic form is one of the best ways to deepen our understanding of a general topic.
Record yourself
Try recording yourself giving your presentation. Either an audio or a video recording will do. This might feel awkward at first, but it’s the best way to know how your audience will receive your presentation on the day.
An audio recording will help you improve the pacing of your presentation and will allow you to hear if your pronunciation is clear. It’ll also make you more conscious of the volume and tone of your voice so that your audience can hear you, even in the back of a big room!
Here’s a short video of the do’s and don’ts of verbal delivery during a presentation:
A video recording will help give you a look at your overall body language when presenting. Make sure your posture is confident, and don’t be looking down at your notes for long periods of time. Have an open stance and maintain eye contact with the audience (your camera in this case) as much as possible. Now that presenting via Zoom or other video conference programs has become more common thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, practicing with video recordings is even more relevant!
Here’s a quick look at some of the do’s and don’ts of body language when presenting:
Present in front of the mirror
This is another practice technique that might feel a little weird when you first try it, but it’s one of the best ways to improve your presentation!
Stand in front of a large mirror and simply give your presentation as you intend to do in front of your audience.
Imagine your audience sitting in front of you and give your presentation exactly as you would on the day. The more you do this, the less daunting it’ll be when you actually up on stage and present.
Try holding eye contact with yourself during your practice presentation. Eye contact is one of the most important ways of making a human connection with your audience, so you should get used to looking at someone while speaking.
Practice your Q&A
Ok, so you’re probably not a mind reader, but you can anticipate some of the questions that you’re likely to be asked on presentation day.
You do this by brainstorming a list of obvious questions, and a list of questions that you hope nobody asks.
You shouldn’t always avoid those hard to answer questions! Prepare for them, because if you get asked something important and you don’t have an answer, your audience might feel less convinced with your overall argument.
Remember that family member or friend that you explained your presentation to earlier? Ask them to write up a small list of questions that’ll help them understand the topic better. This is exactly the kind of question that your audience could ask you.
There’s always the possibility of being blindsided by a question you never considered anyone asking. If that happens, a good way to reply is with: “I don’t have any information on that at the moment, but I can contact you with an answer after the presentation” or something similar.
Do nothing
I can practically hear you saying “What? How is this going to help me with my presentation?”. Hear me out...
Once you’re comfortable with your presentation, and you’ve implemented the practice exercises above, it’s time to chill out. Let your mind rest and don’t overthink things too much. This is especially important the night before your presentation.
As long as you follow the plan in this post, you shouldn’t need to be frantically doing any last-minute preparation.
Give your presentation
Ok, it’s the big day already! You might be feeling a little nervous, and that’s normal. The key is to be prepared and punctual, and to stay grounded.
What should you wear?
You might think this is a stupid point to address, but it might be important depending on the context of your presentation.
If you’re presenting to a group of high-flying board members, you should probably dress formally.
If you’re presenting to your class in college, then something smart-casual is more appropriate.
What I’m saying is, don’t turn up to an important presentation in your favorite Pikachu t-shirt and a dirty pair of sneakers.
Arrive early
The universe sometimes conspires to make us late for things. Slow traffic, a faulty alarm clock, the possibilities are endless. The good news is that you can plan for this.
Act as if your life depends on arriving early to your presentation venue.
The benefits of arriving early are many. It means you can go on stage and familiarize yourself with the space, lighting, and view of the audience. If you’re using a computer or any equipment, now’s the time to make sure it’s working properly.
You’re going to want to do some warm-up exercises before your presentation too, so that takes us on to our next point:
Warm up before your presentation
You don’t want a cracked voice or a stiff tongue to ruin your presentation, so warming up before presenting is a must.
Check out this video for easy warm-up exercises:
The only thing left to do now is to get on stage and present! Once you’re up there, just relax and remember that you’ve spent time preparing for this. Everything is under your control!
The bottom line about presenting
After reading this whole post, you should have a solid understanding of what it takes to improve your presentation skills.
It’s not that complicated, and if you follow this guide step-by-step, there’s not much that can go wrong.
I’d really like to emphasize the importance of practicing your presentation. If you go on stage with a presentation that you came up with at 11.30 pm the night before, your audience will know.
By practicing every day in the run-up to your presentation, you’ll be perfecting every aspect of it, and it’ll go much more smoothly for you. It also means you have a better chance of achieving the goal that you set out to reach in the first place!
Another thing to consider is the importance of planning your presentation thoroughly. This includes researching your presentation topic. You should aim to have a comprehensive knowledge of what you’re presenting about. If you don’t do this, you could fail to convince your audience that you’re an authority on the subject. You also risk getting overwhelmed in the Q&A section of your presentation.
What works for you?
I’ve developed this guide over the last 6 years of presenting in public, and it’s worked for dozens of students and professionals that I’ve mentored.
But everyone’s different. Some people have slightly different tips and tricks that have helped them deliver effective presentations over the years.
Do you have any preparation techniques that have improved your presentation skills?
Is there something missing from this guide that you think would be valuable to other readers?
Let me know in the comments below, or shoot me a message. I’d love to hear from you!
Remember, speak yourself into existence!
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