PRESENTATION SKILLSGETTING AND KEEPING THE

AUDIENCES ATTENTION
Trainer: Nicoleta Buzatu

1. Have a clear idea who your audience are,

2.

3.
4.
5.
6.

dont assume that they are naturally going

to be interested in your topic;
Have an agenda and a clear structure with
clear transitions so that the audience know
where you are going;
Make it easy for the audience to follow you
and your slides;
Help the audience to understand why you
are showing them a particular slide;
Involve your audience and give them lots of
examples
Make frequent eye contact;

7. Avoid too much text on your slides;

8. Use simple graphs and tables;
9. Make your text and visuals big enough in the

audience to see clearly;

10. Avoid entering into much detail;
11. Avoid spending more than a couple of
minutes on one specific detail;
12. Have a variety of slides (not just all bullets,
or all text, or all photos;
13. Speak reasonably slowly and move from
slide to slide at a speed that the audience
will feel comfortable with;

14. Sound interested and enthusiastic about

your topic;
15. Vary your tone of voice;
16. Inject some humour;
17. Move around occasionally rather than being
static;

Exploit moments of high audience attention

Audiences tend to remember things that are said at

the beginning and end of a presentation,

because their attention is generally high at these
points;
They also remember things that they hear more
than once;
Finally, they remember curious facts, things that
stand out;
Ideally you need to state your key points both at the
beginning and ending. In the middle go through
each key point more in detail. If possible, include an
unexpected/counterintuitive/interesting fact for
each key point;

Dont spend too long on one slide

Our attention span is affected by how long we

look at something that does not change;

Research has shown that we can only look at
something static for 30 seconds and then we
start thinking about something else;

Maintain eye contact with

the audience

Be aware of the implications of the

time when your presentation is
scheduled

There are clearly good times and bad times in

the conference schedule for presenters to give

their talks

Quickly establish your credibility

How the audience judge your credibility will

determine the success of your presentation;

How do you establish your credibility? It is
helpful if you tell the audience something
about your knowledge and experience with
the topic, and also why you are interested in
it.

Learn ways to regain audience

attention after you have lost it
There may be various distractions that do not always

depend on the level of interest of your presentation;

You have to try and regain their attention by:
Blanking the screen (on PowerPoint you can do this
by using the B key);
Using the whiteboard;
Asking the audience a rhetorical question;
Giving the audience a statistic;
Showing an unusual slide-this could simply be a slide
that breaks with the normal pattern of your other
slides; It could be an interesting photo, a clear and
effective diagram, or contain a number, a short
quotation or a question;

Be serious and have fun