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The use of visual aids, coupled with good public speaking skills, work hand-in-hand to create effective presentations. Your speaking style and stage presence are personal talents that you can refine with much practice and experience. However, if emphasis is given to visual aids, here are a couple of essentials that will help you give a powerful presentation-with the use of visual aids.
(Know The Audience} It is essential that you know who will make up your audience in order to produce an effective presentation. For example, if you are presenting a presentation to a group of entrepreneur or small business owners, what you will present will differ from delivering a presentation to a roomful of corporate executives. Your business owners are going to be interested in basic ideas or explanations of helpful tips that will aid their businesses. Whereas executives are usually entertained by reports, statistics, graphs, and charts. Now if your audience is a mixture of both, then you will need to know that.
Once you have prepared your presentation accordingly, allow some time at the very start for a brief introductory engagement if possible. You can start by telling your audience a little about yourself. Then, depending on the size of your group, what you can do is to invite them to introduce themselves individually. Going back to your small business owners for an example, get each to briefly stand, give their names and the type of business they are in. You are not going to remember all of their names, but try your best to remember a few, to start off with. This will serve four purposes. (1) You and your group are getting acquainted on a personal level. (2) You will become more relax since you may be already gaining information as to what they may need specifically to assist them. (3) Your audience will see that you are genuinely interested in them as individuals, and for this they will warm up to you rather quickly. (4) This will encourage good audience interaction which is something you may like to include as part of your presentation.
(Choosing the Appropriate Tool) Visual aids help your presentation make things happen! Visual aids help you reach your objectives by providing emphasis to whatever is being said. Clear pictures multiply the audience's level of understanding of the material presented, and they should be used to reinforce your message, clarify points, and create excitement.
Visual aids and audio-visuals include a wide variety of communication products, including flip charts, overhead transparencies, slides, audio-slide shows, Power Points presentations, and video tapes. Demonstrating a process or simply passing around a sample of some equipment or model are also effective way to clarify messages visually. If visual aids are poorly selected or inadequately done, they will distract from what you are saying.
