Reinforce who you are. At most conferences, you will be introduced, and that introduction should make the audience look forward to hearing your story.

Help everyone find you. A lot of presentations end with a slide that shows the speaker's name, URL, Twitter handle, and email address.

Share real stories. People love stories. The best presentations I've seen didn't feel like presentations at all--they were stories told by people with amazing experiences. When you want to explain something to an audience, see if you can translate it into a story, an anecdote, or even a joke. (If you need to convey data or information, tie it to a story.) If the story you tell is something that happened to you, that's even better. If the story is funny, even better!

Entertain as much as inform. An often forgotten point: Your job is to, at least in part, entertain the members of your audience. They're taking a break from something else. They've closed their laptops and are focusing on you. Why not reward them with something interesting or funny? Your entire talk doesn't need to be completely on topic. It's fine to start off with something that is beside the point as long as it's entertaining.

4 0

3 years ago