QuickBites: How to Use Slides to Engage Your Audiences — Part 1.

Welcome to QuickBites, public speaking tips and techniques you can digest in five minutes or less. I'm Peter George, author of The Captivating Public Speaker.

Do you use slides in your presentations? If so, do you use them in a way that helps your listeners immediately understand their meaning and how they support your talk? Or do they confuse your audience or otherwise distract from your message? In this episode, you'll hear a few ideas that will make your next presentation more engaging — and more professional.

Reading from Slides

Reading from slides might take the prize for being the worst way to utilize a visual deck in a presentation. When a speaker turns his back on the audience and reads slide after slide, it signals that he prepared a written form of his talk but never intended to deliver it as an actual presentation. The result is devoid of human interaction — the very essence of an engaging talk that serves the audience.

It also shows disrespect. People took the time to be there, but the presenter didn't take the time to truly prepare. And here's the practical problem: people can read more quickly than a presenter can read aloud. Audience members reach the end of the slide and think, “Come on — flip to the next one.” That's exactly when they say, “He could have just sent us a PDF.”

Leave the Lights On

Don't lower the lights unless your slides have fine detail that's critical for your audience to see. There's usually no need to put your audience — or yourself — in the dark. If the lights are dimmable, they could come down a little, but not much. Keeping the lights on helps maintain energy, eye contact, and connection with the room.

Use Black Slides

Let's say you're talking about apples and you've put up a slide of a shiny red Fuji. Then you change the topic to oranges, but you don't have a visual for oranges. Many speakers leave the apple slide up until the next topic with a corresponding image arrives. But leaving an unrelated slide on the screen causes confusion and looks unprepared.

Instead, use a black slide when the topic has no corresponding visual. It's simple, and it works. When you get to a topic that does have a visual, you show it. That way, you'll only have an image on the screen when that image supports what you're saying — and that will always make sense to your audience.

That's it for Part 1. Next week, you'll hear several more tips on using slides to engage your audience. Thank you for devouring another episode of QuickBites. Are you ready to be calm, confident, and credible every time you speak in public? Then visit petergeorgepublicspeaking.com and let's make it happen. I'll see you next time.