Eight seconds to create impact
People decide whether they find a particular subject interesting or not within the first eight seconds (1). This means the very first slide of your presentation is crucial to your success. In other words, it better be a good slide.
Make sure it is a slide with impact, one that raises people’s eyebrows and immediately draws people’s attention. Maybe this is the right moment to challenge the audience with a bold statement, a teaser for what is about to come.
Don’t start with a lengthy introduction of yourself; eight seconds are over in no time.
Five minutes of undivided attention
If you’ve survived the first eight seconds, then you will have your listeners’ undivided attention for five minutes (2). That is why it is good to start immediately with the essence, the key message of your presentation.
Turn it into an executive summary, a summary of the most important elements in your presentation so that the audience understands quickly what you want to tell them. Keep it clear, concise, and relevant.
As this is the most important part of your presentation, it also deserves the utmost attention. Read and reread until it is perfect.
And then what?
Viewers who are interested in the subject will automatically follow the rest of your presentation.
After the 5-minute introduction, you can substantiate your premise, view, or opinion more. Keep your audience’s interest alive, try to deepen it by constructing your message in a phased and structured way.
Figures and statistics are possible, but remember that few people remember them. A clear message is preferable and statistics and figures can play a supporting role in this.
Finally… plan your presentation in 20-minute chunks
Presentations longer than 20 minutes are not recommended (3), but there’s often no other way around it; many subjects cannot be explained in 20 minutes.
You could opt for short 2- to 3-minute breaks during the presentation, so-called “stretch” breaks, but this is not always practical.
However, you can also insert breaks in your presentation in other ways. If you have planned an activity programme, an exercise, a video, or another type of interaction, plan to do it after an interval of 20 minutes. Although it is not really a break, at least it allows listeners to assimilate the information.
And don’t forget, you have the audience’s undivided attention again for 5 minutes after every break.
(1) According to a new study from Microsoft regarding transient attention spans, people now generally lose concentration after eight seconds (one second shorter than a goldfish).
(2) Research by British bank Lloyds TSB pointed out that the attention span has plummeted from 12 minutes a decade ago to just 5 minutes now.
(3) Maureen Murphy had adults attending a 60-minute presentation at work, and tested to see the difference in memory and reaction to the same talk given in one 60-minute-long presentation versus a presentation that had 20-minute segments with short breaks in between. What Dr Murphy found was that the people enjoyed the presentations split into 20-minute chunks more, learned more information immediately after, and retained more information a month later.
If you want to read the research:
Maureen Murphy, 2007. Improving learner reaction, learning score, and knowledge retention through the chunking process in corporate training. Denton, Texas.
http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5137/
Written by Carl De Cleen & Christine Kohl
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