How to Make a Great Presentation

Making presentations can be stressful. A lot of work goes into them, but sometimes we don't know where to start. This article will offer some tips on how you can make an effective presentation.

It can't be stressed enough how important it is to prepare your notes and speaking points before your presentation. Unless you want to stand in front of your peers with a deer in the headlights look, I suggest you gather everything you want to say, organize your notes, and focus on the message you want to send to your audience.

Index cards can be your best friend, especially if you're a novice presenter. It's not cheating if you look at index cards. It's something you can use to remember your speaking points. My advice, however, is to write notes and NOT your whole speech. Your audience does not want you reading to them. They want you to speak to them. Remember that they are there to listen to your message, whether it's to teach them about something that is important to you, or to persuade them into buying an idea. So, let's say you're presenting on why dogs make better pets than cats. Instead of writing "Dogs make better pets because they love to serve their owners, while cats don't come out from hiding unless they want to be fed." On your index card you can write:

• Dogs serve owners, cats are lazy

• Dogs help the blind; act as caretakers

No one is going to see your index notes so don't worry about semantics. If you get stumped during your presentation you can look down to remember your second point.

A word (or several) on PowerPoint presentations. PowerPoint can make any presentation look esthetically pleasing to the eye. However, do not overuse PowerPoint. This is where many presenters, both novice and experts, fall. What could have been a great presentation is now overshadowed by too much information, color or pictures on the screen. This distracts the audience from paying attention to you, and eventually makes them disinterested.

Like your index cards, your PP slides should not have your whole speech written. PP slides should have relevant information like facts, statistics, charts, pictures, or interactive visuals that relate to what you're saying. And if you want to reiterate what you've said, write short sentences that get to the point, and don't make any slide have more than 7 lines.

You don't need to have slides for every point you make. If there is a space between the previous slide and the next slide, you can have a black screen as the background so as not to distract the audience. If you do need written information on your slides for your presentation remember these tips:

• Make the font on your slides large enough so that it can be read from the back of the room.
• Your background color and font color should not keep the audience from being able to read the words.

For more information about PowerPoint slides, visit this article:

Making eye contact with your audience makes you look like you know what you're talking about, makes you look confident, and makes the audience want to listen to you more intently.

The best advice I can give is to look at the back of the room for no more than 5 seconds at a time. Slowly start moving your glance towards the audience, trying to make eye contact with everyone. And then start at the back again. It will take time before you feel confident looking at the whole audience without having to rest your eyes at the back of the room. Take your time, and don't rush. Even expert public speakers feel nervous speaking in front of people.

As many times you hear it, and as much as you know you should do it, you don't. A lot of people don't take the opportunity to practice in front of an audience or in front of a mirror. It's hard because you tend to be really critical and you feel it makes you more nervous. It's true. Sometimes I hate practicing because I tend to notice the inflections in my voice, or the face I make when I'm thinking too hard. However, practicing your presentation will help you better face the anxiety you have.

Instead of going up to your actual audience and realizing that "which" sounds a lot better than "and" in the middle of your presentation, it saves a lot of time and anxiety to notice these things before you go up in front of people. So, rather than being crowned the next Miss America wordsmith "and, if we, like, the, us, and..", take time to practice in front of friends or a mirror.

Above all else, if you have practiced your speech, have your index notes, and have a good PowerPoint presentation filled with relevant information, you should be confident that you will have a great presentation. Let's Review:

• Decide on topic of presentation, what your stand will be, who your audience is, and what evidence/information you want to use.
• Use index cards for support, not a crutch during presentation.
• Don't let PowerPoint do the presentation for you. It's used to offer relevant information (graphs, pictures, interactive visuals), not to restate what you have just said.
• Making eye contact and having a straight posture will make you look confident. Your audience will appreciate your confidence, even if you are nervous underneath.
• Practice makes perfect. It's hard, but worth the effort.

Hope I have offered some new and effective tips to making a great presentation! Remember, everyone gets nervous. Don't let it faze you. As long as you prepared and practiced, the only person holding you back is yourself. Good Luck!