Being able to deliver a powerful, convincing, and impactful presentation is crucial to any aspiring presenter. Presentations have the ability to change the hearts and minds of those listening. However, the risk is that if your presentation is boring, you could alienate the very audience you are trying to convince.
Several factors make presentations dull and unappealing to the people listening. Not having a proper structure, having too much content presented in a visually unappealing way will lead to an unengaged audience. Tackling these four issues will significantly improve any presentation.
To avoid a disastrous presentation, you need to be charismatic in your delivery and have an impressive presentation to back up your claims. If you have received negative feedback in the past, from either friends, family, or co-workers, don’t be disparaged, there might just be hope for you yet.
4 Reasons Why Your Presentation Is Boring
If your goals are to be the most engaging presenter at the meeting and you have a boring presentation, no one will care. Let’s establish what the four reasons why a presentation might be boring are.
1. No Presentation Structure
If your presentation does not have the right structure, you risk losing your audience. Structuring your presentation’s content inefficiently will lower your audience’s information retention rate. Without proper structure, you will be more prone to duplicate your verbal presentation in your slides. Without a general framework, you will inevitably lose focus and veer off track. The less focus your presentation has, the harder it will become for you as the presenter to deliver your message effectively.
2. Too Much Content
Suppose you have over-prepared your slide deck with an abundance of information. Your audience won’t find this very impressive. On the contrary, your audience will find it difficult to absorb all the information you are presenting. Having a mountain of text on each slide will cause your audience to lose focus, and their minds will start to drift to other places.
3. Visually Unappealing
People retain information more quickly if there are visual stimulants. Presentations with bad graphic designs and layouts will not entice the persons sitting in your presentation to pay attention to the information you present to them. More often than not, a presentation’s success hinges on its visual appeal.
4. Unengaging Content
Suppose your slides’ content does not have a solid point that you are trying to convey. In that case, your audience won’t care enough to pay attention when you give a presentation that includes content that does not pertain to the relevant information that the audience expects to hear about will often lead to failure.
There is no such thing as an uninteresting topic, only dull presentations. Your presentation needs to incorporate various elements for it not to feel tedious. The lack of videos, images, music, or other visual design spice, will often leave an audience wanting more.
4 Ways To Improve Your Presentation
Now that we have recognized some of the elements that make a presentation boring, we can now look towards fixing them. Recognizing which area of your presentation might be lacking is crucial if you seek to leave a lasting impact on your audience. You might have to incorporate one or more of these solutions into your presentation to achieve your desired results.
1. Structure Your Presentation
Fixing your presentation’s structure is a simple enough task. There are seven structures most presenters utilize that we can look to for guidance.
Cause And Effect
Using this framing device, you can create a narrative around the topic at hand by underscoring the logic you use to back up your theory or idea.
Chronological Order
This framework is probably the most straightforward way to get an audience to understand and follow what you are trying to convey. Start at the top and work your way through to the end of the events.
Opportunities, Benefits, And Numbers
This structure focuses on identifying opportunities with the topic being discussed, how those opportunities would benefit the audience, and provide the audience with empirical data to validate the benefits.
Problems, Solutions, And Benefits
This structure works best when the presenter tries to persuade the audience by laying out the facts of the matter, how to solve the issue, and why it would be beneficial to do so.
Topic, Who Cares, And What Can We Do?
This framework aims to tug at the audience’s heartstrings by convincing them that they should care about what is being discussed and what they can do to make a meaningful impact.
The Situation, Problems, And Solutions
Most presenters find this structure the most appealing and versatile design. Simply outline the case, identify issues as they present themselves, and then resolve the problems.
2. Reduce Unnecessary Content
A simple way to make any presentation more appealing is to reduce unnecessary content. But which content should you remove? After all, you spent so much time and energy on your presentation. Surely everything is too important to remove?
Here are some suggestions you can make use of to lessen your presentation’s size and refocus your audience on the meaning behind the slides.
Singular Points
Try and make your point on a single slide. If you have more than a few issues to address in a list of things, move them to their own slides.
Remove Excess Words
Less is more. If you have large text bodies on your slides, people will attempt to read them before moving onto the next slide. If it’s in your presentation, it must be important. If your audience is spending all of their time reading your slides, they won’t have any time to listen to what you have to say.
Refrain From Technical Speak
Always assume there might be someone in your audience that does not understand all technical terms that you might use in your industry daily. Try connecting with your audience by using terminology that they would appreciate.
Don’t Duplicate information
Only add information to your slides that support what you are saying. It should not be your words verbatim. If your talk is written out entirely on your slides, then there would be no reason for you to present in the first place.
3. Creative Visual Design Elements
Incorporating the right design elements into your presentation doesn’t just make the information easier to consume. It also makes the points your trying to make more impactful.
Here are a few design choices you can make the next time you create a presentation.
Use Less Distracting Transitions And Animations
The animation should only be used to draw your audience’s attention to a specific point. Slides that are over-engineered with elaborate animations might have the opposite effect that you are trying to achieve.
Simplify Data Visually
Finding a way to simplify complex data and graphs will help your audience better understand what is presented to them.
Easy To Read Font
Ensuring your presentation utilizes fonts that are easy to read will help clarify what you are trying to convey. The less time your audience spends on deciphering the text, the more time they spend listening to you.
Overuse Of Different Colors
Using the entire color spectrum to make your presentation seem more exciting sounds like a good idea on paper, but it is terrible in execution. Try limiting the colors you use in your presentation to three or four different colors and use contrasting colors to emphasize talking points.
4. Create Engaging Content
If you want to keep your audience focused on your presentation, consider using content that invites your audience into the conversation. Use photos, videos, and questions to make your audience feel like they are as much a part of the presentation as you are.
Conclusion
Presentations today can be more than just a boring person in a suit standing in the front of the conference room talking at people who would rather watch paint dry. Exciting presentations can shape public perception and bring about meaningful change to address the issue society faces today. It is our responsibility to ensure we make our presentations as impactful as we possibly can.
