7 Ways to Make an Instant Impact on Your Audience when Presenting

Want your presentations to have more impact? Here are 7 ways you can create impact with your audience and give your public speaking skills a boost.

1.      Make the stage yours. You are in control of what happens up there, so take control.

2.     If you are being introduced by someone, say thank you as you take the stage. Make sure you have supplied the intro material so that you know what is going to be said. Don't leave it to the last minute.

3.       Centre yourself on stage. Make sure that your feet are grounded and face your audience. They may well be as nervous as you are so show them you are not nervous but excited to be there.

4.       Make eye contact with one or two people. If possible, work out beforehand who you are going to connect with initially. And stick to them at the beginning. Once you start speaking you can allow yourself to send one line of your presentation to each person in the room. Try making a figure of 8 across the room as you look to make sure you don't favour one side more than the other.

5.       Have a powerful opening. Make your first words a startlingly fact, an attention grabbing headline or (if you dare) a joke. When writing your talk, think about it as an inverted triangle. The key point  comes first and it may be controversial. The rest of the talk is about justifying  why you opened with that statement. A newspaper report can be a good template to use.

6.       Use humour if you know you can do it well, otherwise stick to the facts.

7.       Have a powerful opening story about yourself so that the audience can connect with you. You are interesting and you are an expert in your subject so it is very powerful if you can combine the 2 aspects.


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