Planning an Effective Presentation Using Presentation Management System

If you are a public speaker speaking to a large house, a keynote speaker addressing during a corporate event or someone who trains people you’d always focus on the effectiveness of your presentation. Nothing irritates a speaker more than seeing people fiddling with their phones or staring with blank eyes. In a world where attention spans are dropping low due to the intrusion of technology, the challenge while making a presentation has multiplied manifold. Before we share tips on planning an effective presentation we need to understand what actually is meant by an effective presentation.

What is an Effective Presentation?
An effective presentation is one that establishes strong relationship between the presenter and the audience. In these presentations the speaker prepares the content based on the needs of the audience, their knowledge levels and most importantly creates opportunities for interaction and engagement with the audience. The presenter must focus on inspiring confidence among the audience and achieve the objective of the presentation through discussions and feedback. 

Steps to Planning an Effective Presentation
It goes without saying that an effective presentation requires meticulous preparation. In today’s world most presenters leverage technology to make their presentations engaging and effective. The use of a Presentation Management System allows you to make the whole presentation inspirational for your audience and also allows them to engage easily. Let us walk you through few easy steps of preparing an effective presentation –

·         Know Your Audience– The first step to preparing for an effective presentation is to have knowledge about your audience. You need to know who they are, their age groups, social stature etc. You need to be aware about their knowledge and familiarity with the subject to be presented during the presentation. For instance if you are speaking about astronomy your presentation for students would have to different for one in front of the scientific community. This knowledge is important as it will help you prepare the kind of presentation that is aligned to the needs, knowledge and aspiration of your audience.

·         Create Quality Content - Why you are making your presentation? You need to find answer to this question before you start working on the content of your presentation. The correlation between the content and the objective is often the difference between a boring and an engaging presentation. Once you have defined your objective you can start preparing the content. Here are few things you need to keep in mind –   

o    The information/data that you want your audience to understand

o    The actions/decisions you want them to take after making your presentation

o    The best methods in which the content can be created to meet these goals

               
The best presentations are the ones where there is lot of visual content. The use of charts, graph and other audio-visual components makes the presentation interesting and engaging. This also saves you from having to explain the minutes of details reading out paragraphs of text. Since Presentation Management Systems support different types of file systems you can easily incorporate images, videos or audio files into your presentation. If you are big fan of Microsoft PowerPoint or other similar tools you can create content using these tools and easily upload them into the PMS.

·         Focus on Quizzes/Polls- To maintain high level of attention among your audience throughout the presentation you can focus on including periodic quizzes and polls during your presentation. Audience Response Systems and mobile applications allow you to conduct these polls and quizzes easily. The results for these can be displayed on the big screen immediately. Apart from engaging your audience this also ensures you would be able to ascertain your audience’s level of knowledge, knowledge retention of what you have presented and also the opinion they have with respect to your presentation.

·         Run Tests – If your presentation is a part of training or educational program it would be wise to incorporate small tests during the presentation. This will allow you to assess your trainees midway through the presentation. Along with this you will also be able to revise some of the complex concepts presented where the students are facing difficulty. 

·         Encourage Questions & Feedback – The idea behind using a Presentation Management Systems is to break the monotony of traditional presentation. Don’t let your audience sit at the venue as passive listeners but make them an integral part of the presentation. Encourage them to ask questions where the Audience Response System can be used. This will allow you to resolve their doubts and queries and also add new and meaningful ideas to your presentation that benefits everyone. Similarly you should ask all the attendees to share their feedback at the end of the presentation as this will improve your own standing.

To conclude an effective presentation requires meticulous preparation and you need to prepare one thoroughly and make use of the features and the possibilities offered by a Presentation Management System.

Summary – In this write-up we discuss some of the ways in which an effective presentation needs to be planned and how it can help you engage your audience.