3 Essential Tips for Engaging and Effective Public Speaking

Expert Opinion By Neil Thompson, Founder, Teach the Geek @teachthegeek

Speaking at conferences is a great way to get your message out there. It's not something to be taken lightly, though. I'm sure you've attended conferences and witnessed speakers who could have been better. To be a speaker that conference organizers and audiences wouldn't mind seeing again, follow these three tips.

1. Have clean slides

Don't clutter your slides with excessive text and visuals. Aim for one visual per slide and five bullets maximum. It's difficult to do multiple things at once. When there's a lot of text on a slide, audience members are more likely to read than listen. If they're reading, what's the point of you talking? Minimizing the amount of text on a slide does two things: It limits the speaker's options, and it limits the audience's options. As the speaker, you don't have the crutch of just reading your slides. You have to know your content well.

For the audience, it eliminates the option of them reading the slides. They either have to listen to you or ignore you. When there are multiple visuals on a slide, it is difficult for the audience members to know which visual to focus on. While they're figuring out which visual to look at, they may be missing out on important information you're saying. Slides with minimal text and visuals make it easier for audience members to focus on what's important--your speaking.

2. Tell stories.

I attended a lot of technical conferences when I worked as an engineer. Most, if not all, of the presentations I sat through consisted of data dumps of information. Perhaps, if you were deeply interested in the topic, a data dump would suffice. But it's a great way to lose people if they're not deeply interested.

To develop a more effective presentation, ask yourself why the data matters, and tell a story to answer the question. Even better? Tell the story behind the data. I once gave a presentation telling the story of how I cleaned cow bone samples with an industrial-grade Water-Pik (I had to get the samples clean enough to perform protein concentration testing on them). Describing the pungent smell of cow bone being cleaned was certainly enough to keep the audience's attention.

3. Stay within time.

I recall being at a conference, listening to a speaker. I looked at my watch. It was 11 a.m. I looked at the agenda. The presentation was slated to be 30 minutes. The speaker started at 11:05 a.m. The previous presenter ran long. The speaker ended the presentation at 11:41 am. Started late. Ended late. Can you relate?

Conferences have a schedule. Presentations have set times. During a session, when one presenter goes over time, the entire agenda gets thrown off. Subsequent speakers rarely shorten their talks to get the agenda back on track, so the session ends up finishing late and subsequent sessions start late. As a speaker who runs late, it's disrespectful to the conference organizers to go over time. It's disrespectful to the audience too, as you're not respecting their time.

To avoid this issue, practice your presentations so that you finish a couple of minutes before time. That way, if you say something during the presentation that you didn't practice, you can still finish within time. Plus, if the previous speaker goes over time, you can still finish within time and get the schedule back on track. Find yourself significantly under time after finishing your presentation. Ask the audience if they have questions. If they don't have any, have a set of questions that you're prepared to answer. Here's how you can queue the question up: "I thought about questions you might have. Here's one of them." Then, state the question and give the answer. Do this until you're much closer to the allotted time.

Speaking at conferences can be nerve-wracking, but by following these tips, your presentations can be a joy to audience members and conference organizers alike.

Photo Credit: Getty Images.