Do you want to know how to improve presentation skills?
If you do, then come along with us.
At one point in your life or career, you will have to stand in front of people, and make a presentation.
As a business person, the chances of speaking publicly and delivering presentations are higher.
So, if you do not want to mess up in front of people, or lose that opportunity to grow yourself and your business, then you need to work on your presentation skills.
In this article, we will be sharing some essential information that will enable you to improve your presentation skills.
Hence, we encourage you to join us on this quest for self-improvement.
To begin, we will be looking at what presentation means…
What Does The Term ”Presentation” Mean? – How to Improve Presentation Skills
“Presentation” is a term used to define the act or practice of sharing information from speakers to an audience.
It can adapt to different speaking situations or settings such as speaking to groups, addressing meetings, or briefing teams.
There are different types of presentations which include informative, instructive, persuasive, motivational, and so on.
The way you deliver your presentation is based on the type of presentation you are delivering and the speaking situation.
Regardless of the type of presentation you are delivering, if you don’t possess strong presentation skills you might struggle with your presentation.
What are Presentation Skills? – How to Improve Presentation Skills
Presentation skills are a set of skills that enables one to pass information or messages to an audience.
These skills include:
Organizational Skills
If you are not organized, several issues can occur during your presentation.
Organizational skills will help you to arrange your devices and notes connect your laptop to a projector, and so on.
This way, you will deliver your presentation smoothly with little or no glitches.
Organizational skills help you to prepare your presentation, proofed your notes, and also fine-tune your presentation materials.
The following are what makeup organizational skills:
- Auditing
- Event planning
- Prioritization
- Detail-oriented
- Benchmarking
- Recordkeeping
- Quick thinking
- Scheduling
Analytical Skills – How to Improve Presentation Skills
Analytical skills enable one to analyze their audience and discover how to communicate their information in a way that will engage the audience.
They also help one to predict questions that might pop up during their presentation, and prepare answers to those questions.
When you possess analytical skills, you will demonstrate to your audience that you know what you are sharing with them.
The following make up analytical skills:
- Problem-solving
- Problem sensitivity
- Surveying
- Predictive modeling
- Strategic planning
- Reporting
- Optimization
- Evaluating
- Dissecting
- Judgment
- Process management
- Integration
- Restructuring
- Diagnostics
Nonverbal Communication
While making a presentation, you don’t only make use of verbal communication.
You also need to make use of nonverbal communication.
Nonverbal communication helps you to make use of good body language and make and maintain eye contact with your audience.
When you can make use of nonverbal communication while making your presentation, it makes you seem confident and interesting to your audience.
The following are what make up nonverbal communication skills:
- Gestures
- Eye contact
- Facial expressions
- Body posture and movement
- Space
- Paralanguage
- Touch
Public Speaking – How to Improve Presentation Skills
If you do not possess public speaking skills, then you will have a hard time making presentations.
This is because you need to speak to people.
Oftentimes, presentations are done in public.
So, if you cannot speak publicly, you will most likely make mistakes during your presentation.
The following are what make up public speaking skills:
- Engagement
- Articulation
- Memorization
- Modulation of vocal tone
- Emotional control
- Consulting
Writing Skills
You may have your presentation written in a script or not.
However, even if you do not have it written in a script, you still have to pre-plan the things you will be saying during your presentation.
Also, you will have to know the order of how you will say your points, and the details you will be sharing for each point.
So, you need writing skills.
If you possess writing skills, you will find it easy to plan your presentation.
The following are what makeup writing skills:
- Spelling
- Vocabulary
- Grammar
- Proofreading
- Note-taking
- Document markups
- Building outlines
Research – How to Improve Presentation Skills
The first thing to do when preparing for most presentations is to conduct research.
Carrying out research is important to avoid sharing wrong information, and also to know the necessary details and facts.
This way, you will confidently speak to your audience.
The following are what makeup research skills:
- Brainstorming
- Data analytics
- Case analysis
- Calculating
- Classifying
- Data interpretation
- Inductive reasoning
- Deductive reasoning
Oral Communication
You need to make use of oral communication to deliver presentations.
Oral communication allows you to speak to your audience.
If you do not speak to your audience, they will not get the information you intend to pass across to them.
Hence, you need to possess effective oral communication skills.
The following are what make up oral communication skills:
- Focus
- Affirmation
- Enunciation
- Focus
- Active listening
- Assertiveness
- Empathy
Effective Usage of Presentation Software – How to Improve Presentation Skills
For some presentations, visual aids are needed.
Hence, one has to know how to effectively make use of the software that is used to create presentations.
Benefits of Presentation Skills – How to Improve Presentation Skills
Presentation skills will come in handy as you run your business.
It will also benefit you in your professional and personal life.
We will share with you some of the benefits of presentation skills to boost your motivation to improve them.
Let us quickly see them:
It Promotes Better Conduction of Business
As we earlier said, presentations can occur in different speaking circumstances.
You might need to brief your team or address shareholders and investors.
If you possess good presentation skills, you will effectively brief your team members and they will play their part smoothly.
Also, you will not have a problem sharing your ideas with investors or addressing shareholders.
This will help you to run your business more smoothly.
It Makes You a Better Communicator – How to Improve Presentation Skills
Good presenters and also good communicators.
When you are a good communicator, you will not have any issues communicating with people.
You will find it easy to interview potential employees, make new acquaintances and friends, and sell your products and services to loyal and potential customers.
Check here to discover the 10 communication skills every entrepreneur should master
It Improves Your Confidence
Public speaking can be quite scary for people, especially when you try it out for the first time.
However, when you possess presentation skills, public speaking will be less scary.
This is because you will research, prepare, and know what you want to say.
Your confidence level will increase, and you will be confident to stand in front of different groups of people at any time.
It Builds Your Speaking Skills – How to Improve Presentation Skills
When you do presentations you speak to people.
You cannot speak to an audience with bad grammar, wrong vocabulary, wrong spelling, and bad tone modulation and expect your presentation to be successful.
This is why verbal communication skills are included in presentation skills.
In other words, possessing good presentation skills helps you to build your speaking skills.
The more you put your presentation skills to use, the better your grammar, vocabulary, spelling, phonology, and so on.
It Boosts Your Chance of Being Persuasive
Persuasion is all about presenting convincing arguments and facts to people and getting them to agree with you.
You cannot persuade people without presenting convincing facts.
Most times, when you conduct research, prepare your presentation, and then deliver your presentation, you are not only sharing information with people, you are also seeking to get them to agree with you.
Your presentation skills help you to prepare and present information that will convince people to see things from your angle.
Hence, presentation skills help to boost your chances of being persuasive.
It Improves Time Management – How to Improve Presentation Skills
When requested to make a presentation, you are often given a particular duration to do so.
As a result, you will have to learn to pass across your message quickly and effectively for that time duration given.
Good presentation skills will help you achieve this.
You will deliver your presentation to your audience in a memorable, understanding, and engaging way, even within a short time.
This will help to improve your time management skills.
Tips on How to Improve Presentation Skills
We have discussed the different presentation skills and their benefits.
Now, we will be sharing with you vital tips that will help you improve your presentation skills.
So, let us see them:
1. Make Use of Useful Information
Your presentation skills are not only centred on when you are delivering your presentation.
They also help you to prepare for your presentation.
When you prepare well, your delivery will be better.
So, while preparing any presentation, ensure that you make use of helpful or useful information.
In other words, consider the information that will be most useful to your audience or listeners.
For example, if you want to present a proposal to your shareholders, consider the aspect of your idea that will communicate the core message.
To effectively do this, you will need to understand your audience.
So, ensure that you do background research and find out more about the people who you will be communicating with.
Also, think of what their potential concerns or questions will be about, and prepare to tackle them.
2. Watch Expert Presenters/ Speakers –How to Improve Presentation Skills
A great way to learn and improve is by watching experts.
When we say “experts” we mean effective and successful presenters and speakers.
So, make out time to attend conferences or presentations of experts.
Or you can watch their videos online.
Ensure that you notice what they do and say, and consider how you can improve.
You can also try to make use of their strong presentation or speaking strategies to deliver your presentations.
3. Know Your Topic
Making use of cue cards can cause issues.
This is because you can misplace cue cards or have them disorganized.
Also, memorizing your script is not such a great technique either.
This is because you can forget your line while making your presentation.
So, instead of only depending on cue cards, or having your whole script memorized, get to know your topic.
In other words, make use of loose outlines; understand each of your points, and how they connect to the next one.
When you make use of this strategy, your words will flow more naturally.
4. Practice In Front of a Mirror – How to Improve Presentation Skills
This is a very practical tip.
All you need to do is to stand in front of a mirror and practice your presentation.
While you do that, watch the mirror, and notice your eye contact, body movement and posture, and your overall demeanor.
Observe if they are confident, welcoming, and friendly.
If they are not, ensure that you work on them.
Furthermore, ensure you look engaged and interested in the information you are sharing.
Finally, you can have it recorded.
This way, you can take your time to watch the video afterward, and observe the things you did not catch while practicing in front of the mirror.
5. Prepare Before Presenting
Before you start your presentation, you should have time to prepare, set your things up, and get to know the setting.
When you get time to settle and prepare before your presentation, it will help make you feel more confident and calm.
To do all of this you should ensure that you get to your presentation venue early.
Then, you can get to set up and do everything that needs to be done before your presentation.
6. Make Use of Visual Aids – How to Improve Presentation Skills
Visual aids have a way of engaging and keeping your audience’s interest throughout your presentation.
So, you should consider making use of slideshows as you speak.
However, when you make use of slideshows ensure that you add text to them.
Your slides should show statistics, graphs, images, and data.
If you like, you can add supplementary videos to maintain the audience’s interest.
7. Develop A Positive Mindset
Understand that you can be either your biggest supporter or critic.
It all depends on your mindset.
A positive mindset will help you to go far compared to a negative mindset.
So, you need to develop a positive mindset.
You can do this by practicing positivity.
Before you deliver any presentation, make positive affirmations or have a pep talk with yourself.
Remind yourself of the effort and time that you invested into preparing your presentation.
Also, assure yourself that you will do great.
8. Stay on Your Topic – How to Improve Presentation Skills
The can be tempting to divert from your topic when delivering a presentation.
This is especially true when making an illustration and getting lost in it.
However, you need to avoid doing this.
Try to narrow down your presentation; ensure to cover the relevant information with your audience.
This will help you to keep the attention of your audience.
9. Follow the General Outline
Every presentation has a starting point, middle, and an ending
So, ensure that you follow this outline when making your presentation.
You can introduce your topic to your audience during the first couple of minutes of your presentation.
From there, you can go on to talk about your points in bigger detail, and you can talk about any supplementary information you have.
After all of that, you can end the presentation with your summary and also give time to take questions.
10. Relax Your Body and Mind – How to Improve Presentation Skills
You need to be mentally and physically prepared to deliver presentations.
So, before you start a presentation, find a private room where you can stay without distractions.
While you are there you can start speaking positive affirmations to prepare you mentally.
To physically prepare yourself, you should practice deep breathing, power stances, and stretches.
11. Tell Stories
Stories have a way of drawing people’s attention.
It can also help you to connect with your audience.
So, during your presentations, you can incorporate some anecdotes.
These should be stories that are engaging but also relatable to your topic.
While making use of anecdotes, ensure that you do not get lost in them and derail from your topic.
Also, learn to incorporate humor into your presentations.
This will lighten the audience’s mood and keep them interested in your presentations.
12. Be Audible – How to Improve Presentation Skills
Your words need to be pronounced well for your audience to get your message.
Also, your voice needs to be audible enough for everybody to hear.
When your voice is loud, and your words are well pronounced, you will have little problem communicating with the audience.
So, ensure that you practice enunciating your words, and your voice volume.
13. Watch Your Pace
While speaking, your pace can be too fast, too slow, or moderate.
When your voice pace is too fast, you will likely get your audience lost, and if your voice pace is too slow, you might likely bore them.
So, the best pace to use while delivering a presentation is a moderate pace.
That is, not too fast and not too slow.
So, practice speaking at a moderate pace.
When you feel nervous during your presentation, you might likely speak faster.
So, if that happens, make a conscious attempt to slow your pace down.
Conclusion on How to Improve Presentation Skills
Presentation skills come in handy in different aspects of life.
In this article, we have shared amazing tips that can help you improve your presentation skills.
So, we encourage you to take advantage of them.
