Engaging Your Audience

Eye Contact To Connect With Your Audience

One of the key techniques for engaging your audience and making a real connection with them is through the use of eye contact.

Every effective presenter that I have ever experienced and observed has made abundant eye contact with their audience. So one of the consistent pieces of advice that I offer to the people with whom I may be working with in presentation skills coaching, is to ensure that they look into the faces of individuals in their audience – making eye contact for the duration of at least a few seconds, and up to ten seconds (unless you are answering an individual question).

The reason for suggesting a time limit with individual eye contact is to ensure that as a presenter, you are sharing the eye contact inclusively with your entire audience, rather than focusing upon one individual in your presentation.

A nice short video from YouTube helps to explain this point …..

Tips For Engaging Your Audience

The more that I see and hear of Ken’s tips for public speaking, the more of a fan of his I become. In this short clip he explains the importance of energy, enthusiasm and confidence in engaging an audience ……. and Ken clearly does practice what he preaches!

Powerful Presentation Visuals

Most of us have experienced death-by-powerpoint, where the presenter has become over-reliant upon slides to get their message across. We all want to avoid this, and yet there is still a place for powerful and welll-designed visuals to support our message as presenters. The following brief clip offers some useful tips on designing presentation visuals that have a focus upon the interests of the audience, and add impact to your message (be patient with their brief advertisement at the beginning – some good advice will eventually follow)