Creating shifts in your presentation will keep your listeners engaged.
Every professional speaker knows, okay everybody knows, that too much of the same thing, even a good thing is no good. There must be variety. And spice. And all that sort of thing to give life to a presentation.
45 minutes of lecturing and I will go to sleep listening to myself. My wife used to fall asleep while chewing her own food.
Facts, jokes, images, stories, testimonies, videos, music, props, demonstrations, pacing the stage, increased/decreased rhythm, cadence and volume.
Related: 23 Thoughts to Improve Your Professional Speaking Skills
Mix all these together at various lengths and in different orders over various lengths depending on your presentation and you can will have plenty of shifts to keep your listeners engaged. Maybe even guessing as to what you will do next.
Guessing is good. Confusion is not. Don’t do ‘stuff’ just to have something going on.
At a conference I was at not long ago, one speaker used foul language because he thought that would keep his listeners engaged. He used it so much that the audience grew tired of him very fast and instead of being shocking, he came across as unprepared, immature and downright incompetent.
Find and use different tools for your presentation and your listeners will stay engaged.
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