The other day, one of my readers sent me this cool HubSpot blog post called Try This Insanely Easy Rapport-Building Exercise to Boost Your Charisma, and said I HAD to read it. So I read it (and enjoyed it), then replied back to my reader asking WHY I HAD to read it. Her response was simply, “It reminds me of one of your presentations and your simplification formula. I thought you’d know why does this simple rephrasing of words work so well.” A quick synopsis/example of the Hubspot post: Instead of asking someone, “How are you doing?” Ask the person, “How’s this [day of the week] treating you?” The writer gives lots more examples and goes into detail about training yourself to ask more thought-provoking questions, but I want to explain why this simple rephrasing of words works so well. It’s Different – The author uses examples from shopping at retail stores and if
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Public speaking isn’t hard, I remind my clients that it is just a conversation with more people. The challenge for many new presenters is that they envision the audience as cruel, rowdy, and a group wishing ill-will on the presenter. However, in the vast majority of cases (if you’re not a politician), your audience is quite hospitable and they want to see you do well. After all, your audience is spending their time watching your presentation, why wouldn’t they be rooting for your success? Knowing these basic presentation techniques will make you a better presenter, and your audience will appreciate it. Mastering these presentation techniques will make you a better presenter, a speaker audiences love and one they will invite to do more presentations. 9 Basic Presentation Techniques Your Audience Appreciate Arrive Early for Your Presentation – Rushing to a presentation increases your adrenaline, and being late is rude, so I suggest
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What do you do when you have to deliver an old presentation? You can’t just wing it and hope you remember it, you have to prepare your presentation again. Next week my husband is presenting a presentation he did back in January and he asked me what is the best way to deliver an old presentation. I told him to prepare for the presentation like he normally prepares for a new presentation starting with his outline. This time his preparations will be expedited because he does not have to redo many of the steps. He already did the right steps to prepare his presentation the first time: creating a thesis, brainstorming ideas, narrowing down the topic, creating an outline, developing his visual aid, and practicing his presentation until he was comfortable with it. His challenge was the natural evolution a presentation takes as you go through preparation steps; the presentation
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Every time I speak, I’m asked for public speaking tips & tricks. After delivering and coaching over 1,000 presentations during my five-year tenure at the zoo and coaching hundreds of presentations since starting Speak Simple, I guess I know a few things about public speaking tips & tricks. 21 Public Speaking Tips & Tricks Talk about What You Know – Before trying to book presentations or accepting an invitation to speak, think about what you know and what you’d like to share. You don’t need to be a Ph.D. to be knowledgeable enough to speak, just talk about what you know whether that is about work, a hobby, a personal story, or something you can research well enough beforehand. Many great speakers use hobbies like volunteering at their church as a way to improve their public speaking abilities. Focus on the Audience – I call it being “audience-centric“. The presentation benefits
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I recently found a great article on LinkedIn from Inc. about body language making bad first impressions (14 Body Language Mistakes That Make a Bad First Impression) and I found that many of these business interaction mistakes also apply to presentations. You don’t want to make these presentation body language mistakes. 6 Presentation Body Language Mistakes Not Smiling – Unless it would be inappropriate to smile because of your topic or the situation, I recommend showing your personality, smiling, and having fun when you present. Your audience wants to get to know you and most people enjoy a seemingly conversational style of presentation. As the adage goes, smile when talking on the phone because the person on the other end can tell — you definitely want to smile when your audience is looking at you. Lack of Eye Contact – Great presenters make the audience feel like they are talking directly to that
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Two months ago, I wrote a blog post called The Most Annoying Presenters where I detailed nine of the worst public speaking habits that I’ve seen over the years. That post was mostly my opinion, mixed with feedback from clients, audiences, reading, and some general common sense. You may know that I try to research nearly everything presentations, pulling articles like psychology studies to explain human behavior on why people are scared so I can better understand glossophobia (the fear of public speaking). I didn’t think there was any research on annoying presentations — little did I know. Last week, a subscriber to my blog tweeted (@speak_simple) me the 2017 Annoying PowerPoint Presentation survey. Who knew there was an annoying presentation survey? They even did the Annoying Presentation survey in 2013 and 2015! The team at Think Outside the Slide surveyed 439 people in their research and their findings aren’t that surprising
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I’m often asked by audience members, social media followers, and prospective clients about overcoming their fear of public speaking. Other times, the person is not scared, they just don’t know where to start with speaking. They either know presentations are important to their career or hobby (like speaking at church) or they recently received a promotion where they need to speak, so they ask me how to build self-confidence in public speaking. Although building confidence is different than overcoming fear, I regularly see confidence building as the step after overcoming one’s fear. Because once someone’s fear is gone, they want to grow their new found “power” (skill) in speaking. How to Build Self-Confidence in Public Speaking Start Small – You can’t build your confidence sitting on the sidelines, you need to do it. Look for events and associations where you can speak, especially ones with smaller audiences of 8-25 people.
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I apologize for using a vulgar word in the headline, but this topic gets my blood boiling and I’m using the language almost verbatim how it was asked to me. The other day, someone messaged me on Twitter (@speak_simple) and said she’d been following my tweets for a while and read many of my blog posts. She asked me, “What is the easiest way to figure out if my PowerPoint sucks?” My response was quick, and an easy litmus test to administer. Your PowerPoint is ineffective if you send it to someone who didn’t attend the presentation and that person can learn everything you had to share without attending the presentation. Essentially, a presentation shouldn’t be read, otherwise, it would be an article, essay, whitepaper, or book, not a presentation. A presentation is an experience that combines the senses hearing and seeing (sometimes feeling, tasting, and smelling depending on the type of
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There is truly an app for everything, even presentation apps to make you a better public speaker. It is hard to think how an app can make you a better speaker, but these apps are remarkably savvy and help you with one of my favorite things — presentation practice. I always say proper presentation preparation is the key to being a confident speaker that delivers great presentations. With these presentation apps, you can spice up your practice and rehearsals. Presentation Slide Apps The basic presentation apps are your slide apps that allow you to walk through your presentation slides on the go. Microsoft PowerPoint in AppStore | Google Play Prezi in AppStore | Google Play Apple Keynote in AppStore Google Slides in AppStore | Google Play Vocal Presentation Apps Orai rates your vocal clarity, pace, energy, and use of filler words (um, so, like, and you know) by having you read text aloud. The app will give you tips to improve your
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Recently I saw a blog post on Twitter from a presentation training company providing how to instructions for adding headers and footers to PowerPoint and I wanted to scream and gouge my eyes out. Why give anyone instructions to add a footer to a visual aid? Just because the feature exists doesn’t mean you should use it. You can crop an image in PowerPoint in the shape of a heart, but that doesn’t mean it is a good idea for a professional presentation. When it comes to using PowerPoint footers, just say “NO!” (My advice applies for Keynote presentations too. I doubt you can add a footer to Prezi, for good reason.) 7 Reasons Why You Don’t Need to Use PowerPoint Footers You Don’t Need Your Company Logo on Every Slide – Add your company logo to your title slide (if you want) and potentially to your last slide with
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