Stop Doing it if You Don’t Want Your Audience to Ignore Your Presentation!
Do you ever watch or listen to a presentation that makes you bored? Of course, you don’t want to have the same experience as those presenters. So, in this article, we will discuss 10 mistakes you should avoid when you present your slides. What are those mistakes that will make your audience feel bored and ignore your presentation? Let’s look at the below.
10 common mistakes you should avoid
1. You begin poorly
Make sure your presentation has a strong opening. “Hello, my name is…, and today we will discuss…” It’s too boring. Try something new; be audacious, imaginative, and motivating. Additionally, arrive early to avoid feeling hurried. It will be shown in your presentation. Being fascinating is most important.
2. You don’t address your audience’s issues
Before you give your presentation, try to understand your audience’s main concerns. So, you can address their issues and solve their problems through your presentation. Moreover, addressing their problems can involve their willingness to listen and be curious about your presentation. We prefer to think that people make logical decisions, but studies reveal that people often make emotional decisions first, then reason about them.
3. You make the audience bored
Don’t bother speaking in front of others if you can’t be engaging. Use body language and give intonation to your speech. Practice a lot to make your presentation attractive. It needs time and practice, so do it as many times as you can.
4. You use too many transitions and animations
Vertigo, motion sickness, and nausea are common problems. Never move text in their honor; if you must animate it, keep the text static on the screen while it fades or wipes in. This enables viewers to focus their gaze and begin reading before the animation is finished. Don’t make your text bounce, fly, zoom, spin, grow, float, or do anything else that would need your viewers to follow it.
5. You use excessive jargon
You must use language that is appropriate for your target audience. They are unable to pay attention to you as they strive to understand what you say. If you talk over them, they might never catch up. If using jargon or a technical phrase is unavoidable, be sure to define it before using it and avoid using too many at once.
6. You are very verbose or rambling
Don’t waste your time. Get to the point quickly and respect people’s time. Don’t ramble, and keep it short, but also take your time. Only provide important information for your audience. Too much information will be boring and easy to forget.
7. You go over the time limit
This is just a simple respect issue. If your presentation lasts longer than the permitted time, there’s a significant risk that your audience will become disinterested and leave. Or at the very least, they’ll stop listening because they’ll be thinking about other obligations and trying to figure out how they will fulfill them.
8. You don’t focus
You should use your slide deck to keep you on track. To ensure that you proceed rationally from one idea to the next, use it as a guide. Don’t put the whole sentence or material on your PowerPoint. It will be more difficult to present your message.
9. Making excuses or calling attention to your insecurities or fears
It’s normal to want to say something like, “I didn’t sleep well last night, so please excuse me if I seem sleepy,” when you’re having an “off day.” But when you do that, you bring doubt on your own credibility since it’s possible that your audience didn’t even realize you were exhausted. But now that you’ve brought it up, they’ll pay attention to it, search for hints, and perhaps even leave a note on your feedback form.
10. A boring and monotone design
In fact, it’s best not to even open PowerPoint when creating a presentation. Create an outline first using Microsoft Word. Only after the structure and content are excellent should you begin designing your slides in PowerPoint.
While poor slide design probably won’t make or break your presentation, it can undermine your credibility, distract your audience, or put them to sleep. If you don’t know how to design good slides, find a presentation design service
to organize your outline or content into well-designed PowerPoint slides. You can save eight hours by using these 4 presentation design services to design your slides.
Catch you later. Bye!
