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A new Era of Audience Engagement shapes the ‟Presenter 2020"
For 30 years, the best practice for delivering a Presentation in front of an audience has been set by Steve Jobs’ famous Keynotes. Virtually every manager from every company tried to replicate his presentation tricks, learned the art of storytelling and dreamed of achieving his level of Charisma ever since, in order to get the best Audience Engagement for their own presentation.
It is often forgotten that a Keynote speech is about obtaining information from a Presenter to a receptive and captivated audience (galvanized by the exceptional context motivating their presence). However, when it comes to a more typical presentation (during a training, a business meeting, a lecture…), the context is usually less appealing. How can one keep the audience engaged? It will be down to the Presenter’s skills and entertainment tricks to avoid ‟death by PowerPoint” and make that moment a success.
A new Audience Engagement standard has arisen
Presentation landscape changed dramatically over the last decade, but few have noticed yet. The rise of Personalized Marketing and Social Media interactions in every corner of people’s connected life has set a new Audience Engagement standard, changing the way Presenters need to communicate.
In this new era, a successful presentation is when a presenter turns the Presentation into a Conversation. This is achieved by actively engaging with the audience. The audience becomes active during the presentation, and the Presenter is the architect of the interaction. This requires a fundamental mindset shift for the Presenter. As sharing content over social media grows, and as participative interaction becomes a prerequisite, this shift will impact all meetings, conferences, training, town-halls, lectures, originally designed for ‟one-to-many” [presenter to the audience]. A similar mindset shift and teaching mechanism are already growing in Education today.
New conference guideline: ‟Please, turn ON your mobile device!”
It is said that smartphones are the presenter’s enemy, stealing the attendee’s attention. Such popular belief is now outdated. Smartphones are here to stay for good! Everyone has one. They are kept ON to feel safe and are an easy escape from boring Presentations.
However, if the presenter would change the presentation material, integrating digital polls/surveys/quizzes to query the attendees, it would motivate them to participate live, using their mobile device. The audience curiosity and engagement level would rise while being less tempted to chat with friends on Social Media sites.
‟- Can we get the slides? - YES, immediately, as I speak!”
Sending slides after an event is often a delayed exercise, which can disappoint the audience. Proactively, attendees take live photos of relevant slides, losing focus and attention. Some may share slides on Social Media, but the photo quality is often poor, limiting its marketing impact. The paradigm shift of the Presenter 2020 is to leverage the attendee’s motivation to share, in order to increase the presenter’s visibility, influence level, and reputation on Social Media! The Presenter 2020 will share the slides publicly while the presentation is live: the fear of “info leakage” is turned into a planned communication strategy!
Of course, there are valid exceptions to sharing content publicly. But the influential impact of sharing presentations is a strong communication weapon worth considering.
By using the right sharing solution, the Presenter 2020 would get the best slides, and even supporting documents, shared live on Social Media much faster and far more than if the material were sent after the event. The Social Media Era is all about NOW and not tomorrow.
Today’s Q&A session is dead!
In a large, dark, and silent room, while listening to the presenter the audience mutes itself... but would certainly like to have a say! The Q&A session is meant to solve this, but repeatedly fails: either few dare standing and talking openly, or the Q&A session is simply skipped altogether! “Sorry, time is up!”
The Presenter 2020 will enable the audience to discuss the slides and ideas while being presented! Live written-discussions, in-room direct chat, written Q&A are technologies all available today. Such Audience Engagement tools could give a voice to the silent ones, and improve the presenter’s understanding of the audience’s state.
Using their Mobile device, the Audience is then engaged like never before. Attendees reflect, write, discuss, share... creating a sense of community while listening to the Presenter 2020!
And the great thing is, you can become this Presenter… today!