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In this first video of the Presentation Foundation Series, you’ll learn one of the key things every presentation must do… Entertain. Before you scream out in shock and disagreement, have a look at the video or skip below to read more about why I’m saying this.
If YouTube is unavailable in your area, please click the following link to watch or right-click to download: Presentation Foundation Series – What a Presentation Must Do Video 1
Video length 1:41 (Click CC for captions or read transcript below)
Special thanks again to Powtoon (http://www.powtoon.com) for making this video possible.
Why entertain?
People are constantly bombarded with distractions and the result is most of us have a very short attention span. Your audience is no different. Checking email and reading and/or posting to Twitter and Facebook are probably way more interesting to your audience than your presentation.
Add to that things going on in their personal lives and they have every reason not to listen.
So your presentation must entertain them just to keep their attention. And this applies to every type of presentation.
But I’m not an entertainer!
Neither am I. And you don’t have to be one to entertain your audience. You don’t have to be a comedian, a juggler, a sword swallower or a champion bird caller to entertain your presentation audience. The point is you don’t have to do anything out of character or unusual.
How to entertain
To entertain your presentation audience, you need to get and keep their attention. You do that by getting your audience to experience some sort of emotion. It can be any emotion you like. Happiness, excitement, confusion, anger, frustration, sadness and any other emotion is a form of entertainment.
Where to find the emotion
The emotion, or emotions, come from your presentation content. Sometimes it’s easy to find the emotion, but there will be many other times when the emotion is not so obvious. Your job is to dig a little deeper to uncover the emotion. Typically, emotion comes from conflict and the resolution to that conflict.
So look closely for conflict and you’ll likely find the emotion. Once you have the emotion, you have a way to entertain your audience and you now understand one of the three key things that a presentation must do.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments.
Thanks.
Carl
The Presentation Foundation Series will teach you…
- What a Presentation Must Do
- What You Must Know About Your Audience
- How to Choose the Right Presentation Content
- Presentation Structure
Transcript:
What is one of the key things that all presentations must do?
Ok, maybe not that.
The fact is, people have better things to do than to sit through another dull presentation.
They’ve sat through so many dull presentations that they expect every presentation to be the same.
Even your presentations.
But this is actually an opportunity for you to grab the spotlight and take charge of the room.
How you do that is by doing what a presentation must do…
Entertain.
Why?
Why?
Well, because if your presentations do not offer some sort of entertainment, your audience will not pay attention beyond the first few minutes, if you’re lucky.
However, being entertained does not mean being a comedian, knowing how to juggle or acting all animated and crazy.
Instead, think about the different emotions your content can help your audience experience.
Anything from happiness to excitement, to fear, to anger, to frustration, to, even sadness, can be a form of entertainment.
You just need to look beyond the surface of your data or information to uncover the emotions…
The things that will entertain your audience and keep their attention.
And there you go…
You just learned one of the key things that all presentations must do…Entertain.
And if that doesn’t work, you just might want to learn how to juggle.
Thanks for watching and talk to you next time.
Bye bye.
