Keep your audience awake with the following five tips.
1. Know your audience. Are they active people who like to get up and move around once in a while, or do you think they like to create or discuss? Are they a very opinionated bunch?
2. Use all three learning mediums: Audio, Visual, and Kinesthetic. Your audience, regardless of what your presentation does, will be listening, looking, and doing something with their hands. Try to make all of those tasks relate to your presentation.
3. Mix up your audio. When speaking, change your pitch, volume, and speed as relevant. Study effective verbal communicators such as comedians, athletic coaches, politicians, and monologues by great actors. Look for different ways they use their voice and other audio tools such as silence, a clap, a stomp, or the occasional raspberry, and study the different types of responses they achieve with those methods. Avoid overkill with any of the techniques.
4. Provide a visual aid: Power Point presentations, objects, documents, posters, a product, etc. Make good use of your design elements within your visual aids. A photograph can enhance an all text Power Point slide. Categories, bullets, and bold-faced key words can help the audience organize the information quickly. Don’t forget your main visual aid: You, yourself, should be dressed for your purpose and audience.
5. Get the audience involved. Let them work directly with the topic. Provide supporting documents (brochures, flyers, an agenda, and writing material for notes). Other ideas might include putting the audience in groups for discussion, asking questions where they raise their hands, and grabbing a few volunteers for a demonstration. You can also get really creative and have them stretch, learn a dance, sing, or play a game. Keep it relevant to your audience and your topic. A group of children would enjoy breaking out into song and dance faster than a group of physicians.
