In any presentation, engagement is key to its success. You need to ensure your whole audience is consistently engaged and interested in what you’re saying.
While there are great ways to boost engagement, there are also quite a few mistakes you can make too.
Providing too much information
When you’re passionate about the topic you’re presenting, you’ll never run out of things to talk about in your speech. However, that burning passion you have can also cause you to overload your audience with too much information.
While you might want to teach them everything you know about the topic, it’s important not to try and teach them too much. If you bombard them with information, they’re going to not only struggle to keep up, but they’ll also forget everything pretty quickly.
So, make sure you only talk about the most important things your audience needs to know. Break it down as much as you can, mentioning only the key points you need the audience to know.
Reading from a script
While it’s a good idea to take your script with you on stage, it’s really important not to continuously read from it. You should only use it as a prompt if you forget where you’re going with the speech.
The trouble is, when you’re constantly looking down and reading from a script, it causes two issues. The first is that you’re not engaging with the audience. You’re looking down, rather than at the attendees and this is a sure-fire way to lose engagement. Secondly, your tone of voice isn’t going to be engaging.
When you know the script, you can be more confident. You’ll be able to capture audience attention much easier than if you were focusing on what you’re reading.
Ideally, you’ll want to learn as much of the script as possible before you take to the stage.
Failing to structure the presentation
A good, memorable presentation follows a good structure. It needs to be structured just right if you want to see results.
If you don’t focus on how the speech is structured, it could end up coming across as a little all over the place. This is going to kill engagement and leave your audience more confused than anything else.
So, always spend time preparing the presentation, making sure it follows the right structure. How can you deliver all of the information and ensure it flows perfectly? When you figure this out, you’ll be ready to give a powerful, memorable, and engaging presentation.
Not rehearsing your speech
Following on from the advice not to read from a script earlier, rehearsing your speech is crucial. This allows you to familiarize yourself with how it’s structured, how it flows, and most importantly, what you’re going to be talking about.
It also gives you the opportunity to experiment with different presentation methods. Changing your tone of voice, understanding where to inject humor, and experimenting with how you say things will help you to perfect your speech.
If you don’t rehearse it, you're not going to deliver the presentation effectively and this is going to have a major impact on engagement.
Failing to provide a clear call to action
Finally, a big mistake you can make is failing to provide a clear call to action. You could have given the best presentation you’ve ever given, but if you haven’t told the audience what to do next, you’ve failed.
So, be sure to let them know what the next steps are. Is it to sign up for a particular cause? Or maybe they should be picking up a leaflet on the way out?
Whatever it is they need to do, let them know!
There are so many mistakes you can make which can kill engagement in your presentation. The mistakes listed above are just some of the most common you can make. Be sure to follow the advice provided in order to avoid them and ensure your speech is memorable for all of the right reasons.