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5 Top Tips Event Organisers Should Share With Their Speakers

by admin

Any speakers you plan on having present at your event need to be confident and assured whilst giving a talk in order to keep an audience engaged. A speaker who does nothing more than repeat text that’s on a presentation is not going to provide a meaningful engaging experience for attendees.

To help combat that, it can be good idea for event organisers to give their speakers a few tips in order to help them deliver a presentation that will keep attendees on the edge of their seat. Most attendees will be there for a high quality learning / networking experience; and it’s the job of the speaker to educate and create an environment which will allow attendees to do this.

At the end of the day, your speakers need to deliver – share these 5 top tips to make sure they do.

1. Research content

Before your speakers even think about picking up the microphone, they need to have a solid understanding of who they’re speaking to. They can speak to potential attendees and ask what themes they might be interested in or want to learn more about.

Ask them to do their research! Looking at online forums or social media related to your event may give your speakers a better understanding of the kind of questions that the audience may ask. The worst speakers are the ones who assume they know what the audience want to hear. Asking your speaker to do their research is undoubtedly one of the most important things to do to help get the most out of them, and hopefully, a successful presentation.

2. Creating a more meaningful experience

Providing example(s) that attendees can relate to is a fantastic way to create instant credibility and build a strong emotional connection with them. This doesn’t need to be personnel to the speaker, the story could be related to a friend or colleague and work just as well.
The story telling technique shows that the presenter is familiar to the challenges faced by attendees, even if the speaker hasn’t faced them personally.

3. Say no to text heavy slides

Build simple, visual slides. In the opening sequence of Steve Jobs’ iPhone presentation, he introduced three new revolutionary products and the first twelve slides used 19 words. Now, we’re not all Steve Jobs, but if he can introduce the iPhone to the world using a PowerPoint that has just over a dozen words then spending time refining a presentation to make it more appealing to attendees can have a real effect on the information that they retain.

We’re not saying “no” to text on a slide, but just avoid creating text heavy slides – keep them simple and clear. When done properly, slides can be used to enforce powerful statements and can be truly effective.

4. Ask questions

To create a truly meaningful experience, attendees should feel that they’re involved or they will just lose interest. Make the audience an active part of the presentation by asking them questions. These could be questions asking the audience to raise their hand if they would like to answer.

What you shouldn’t do, is to randomly point someone out of the audience and get them to speak in in front of people. Some people do not like being involuntary put on the spot.

5. Technology is your friend

There seems to be a stigma among speakers and event planners that attendees shouldn’t use phones during presentations. We live in the 21st century and your events should be using technology to enhance the overall experience for attendees.

In order to truly reach attendees, speakers must engage them with technology. Tools such as Glisser can be used to create an interactive questions board, where the audience can vote on the questions of most interest.

Twitter is another example of using tech to engage attendees. Creating a simple hashtag that the audience can use to comment and interact with during the presentation is great for interaction. It also creates a buzz that will carry on the engagement post event.