Strategies for keeping your audience interested in any kind of presentation
We are all aware of how easy it is to get distracted nowadays, aren’t we?
We live in an age where the flow of content is lightning fast – think short videos on TikTok or YouTube shorts – and keeping your audience’s attention has become one of the biggest challenges ever, especially for those of us in the presentation business.
It is difficult to get those in front of us to pay attention to our words for just a few minutes. Let alone when we have to engage our audience during a webinar that could last even more than an hour!
Quite a problem, isn’t it?
I recently talked about this in an interview with Patti Sanchez, Chief Strategy Officer at Duarte and author of an interesting book on how to manage presentations: “Presenting Virtually“.
It was a super insightful chat, during which a lot of food for thought emerged about the world of presentations. If you want to enjoy it in full, watch it here and let me know in the comments what you think!
Here is what emerged from our interview.
Patti distinguishes 3 main types of presentation:
- the linear presentation;
- the interactive presentation;
- the collaborative presentation.
The linear presentation
This is the classic webinar, an online seminar during which the speaker gives a presentation to an audience that can be very large. You can easily get up to a hundred participants, and that is the norm!
Patti, in this case, is extremely precise and firm: a webinar must last no longer than 30 minutes and the interaction tools are reduced to the essentials, video and audio activated and that’s it, except for the time reserved at the end for questions from the audience.
In short, a direct, one-way communication.
And the chat?
According to Patti, it should remain closed. But I like to play by different rules. I prefer to leave it open even during simple webinars, thus allowing a freer and more spontaneous flow of communication and turning a monologue into a dialogue, so as to build a more engaging and dynamic atmosphere. Of course, keeping the chat open requires special attention, great skill in handling the participants’ comments and slides. But I think the effort is largely repaid by the increase in audience engagement.
And then there are the tricks of the trade to make the task easier: I, for example, set PowerPoint’s Presenter View so that I have full control over my slides and, at the same time, I constantly monitor the chat so that I can interact with people in real time.
Want to learn more about the Presenter View and how to make the most of it for your presentations?
Check out my video tutorial on PowerPoint’s Presenter View!
The interactive presentation
Patti then goes on to describe the so-called interactive presentation, which is more dynamic than a webinar: it lasts between 30 and 60 minutes and, in addition to the audio and video link through which the speaker communicates with the participants, a chat is finally added to create a dialogue with the audience.
The chat, of course, must be moderated by you or one of your collaborators.
Here the most frequent mistake is to set the slideshow in full screen mode, paying attention only to one’s own slides and losing the overview. Those who commit this oversight are no longer able to follow the chat and what the participants are commenting on. But, above all, they are unable to anticipate the slides to follow.
And this is no insignificant subtlety: managing the transition time between slides intelligently is an art, a factor that makes a huge difference to the success of the presentation.
In addition to chat, Patti also proposes the use of other interaction tools, such as polls and quizzes. Many speakers use them, launching polls, sharing the results and so on.
What about me personally?
I don’t use them often. I prefer to create a dialogue, ask a question, give people space to express a thought or answer a question. And here chat plays a key role, but so does direct conversation via microphone!
If I have the opportunity, in fact, I like to allow participants a real peer interaction with each other, promoting discussions and exchanges of ideas that greatly enrich the experience.
In this ball of words and ideas, the role of the moderator is crucial.
You have to guide the conversation, making sure that you don’t lose sight of the goal of the session: the goal is to interact, to get people to communicate with each other, but always in line with our goals.
Read also: Complete Guide to Creating an Effective Presentation
The collaborative presentation
And here we come to examine the third type, the collaborative presentation.
Here we enter the world of workshops, with sessions that can easily last up to 90 minutes! And Patti lets us know that the game gets serious.
Audio and video are activated, but so is the participants’ microphone, so that everyone can speak and interact with each other, just like a face-to-face conversation.
During a collaborative presentation, we can greatly enhance the participants’ experience by using special tools. I love using Jamboard, a digital interaction tool designed to work with Google Workspace: me and my team at my PowerPoint presentation design agency use it all the time in our Lean Presentation Design courses and it helps us a lot!
With Jamboard, for example, I can draw on my iPad and, in the process, share the screen with other participants, so I can show what I’m creating in real time and get everyone actively involved.
At the same time, participants can, and should, share their screen as well. This is a crucial detail: everyone must have the opportunity to show their work, what they are experiencing, so that they can share their experience and possibly receive support from others.
Realising the difficulties of others and being able to help them in a direct way is a powerful learning experience, both for the teacher and the learner! Of course, such a comprehensive interaction system implies that there cannot be as many participants in a presentation as in the previous types.
Returning to what was mentioned earlier, the webinar can connect a hundred people or more. The interactive presentation, on the other hand, ideally has a small number of participants, certainly less than 100. But here, in collaborative presentations, we are talking about a much smaller group.
Let’s say 12-13 participants is a good number, but no more, because it would be too complex to maintain the level of involvement and interaction required to build an experience that works.
What lessons can we learn from the interview with Patti Sanchez?
Well, from the topics we touched on with Patti, and which I have reported to you in this article with the addition of some tips and clarifications, we can draw some guidelines to ensure that our audience not only listens to us, but feels involved and actively participates in the presentation, enriching the collective experience.
A presentation is not a one-way trip with only one protagonist
First of all, we talk about ‘peer interaction‘, a key element that transforms a one-way communication into a constructive dialogue.
We don’t just talk, we stimulate conversation between the participants themselves, whether it is via a chat or a direct audio-video link. The people listening to us must feel more than just spectators: they must feel at the centre of the event, they must be protagonists of the experience.
Of course, these interactions must never go outside the scope of the session.
This is where our skills as moderators come into play: we must be able to guide and direct the discussion, always keeping it focused on the objectives of your presentation.
In short, we ‘ignite’ the dialogue, but we are always careful how it develops and make sure that it does not ‘derail’ from the main purpose of the session.
There are several tools to help us keep audience engagement high: let’s use them!
Let’s use digital tools to make the experience even more engaging.
There are many that we can use for this purpose: for example, Office file sharing.
Think about the possibility of creating a file on PowerPoint and then sharing it on Sharepoint to the other participants, so that each of them has the opportunity to design and insert their own slide. Co-creation to the nth power, during which everyone does not just learn, but actively contributes to the construction of the collective experience!
Another example, very useful for collaborative presentations, are Zoom’s Breakout Rooms, which allow us to divide participants into different virtual ‘classrooms’. Here, everyone has the opportunity to express themselves, to confront each other, to build something together.
Admittedly, this is a much more demanding method of working than a banal, ready-made presentation that we simply have to present to the audience. But at the level of involvement it is an absolutely exceptional experience because it allows people to collaborate (going back to the previous paragraph) in pure peer learning style.
Read also: How to create professional PPT presentations
Final words
The interview with Patti Sanchez provided us with valuable insights and practical suggestions for making presentations not only informative, but also engaging and stimulating. Through the distinction between linear, interactive and collaborative presentations, it emerges how each format requires a specific approach to keep the audience’s interest high and encourage active participation.
It is clear that, in the digital age, traditional one-way presentations have become insufficient to capture and maintain the audience’s attention. Active engagement, ‘peer interaction’ and the intelligent use of digital tools for co-creation and sharing are essential to transform presentations into educational and emotionally engaging experiences.
Takeaways
- Patti Sanchez highlights three types of presentations: linear, interactive, and collaborative. Each type requires specific strategies to keep the audience engaged. Linear presentations benefit from concise delivery, interactive presentations thrive on dialogue through chat and polls, and collaborative presentations excel with tools like Jamboard for real-time collaboration.
- For linear presentations, Patti suggests keeping webinars to 30 minutes and minimizing interaction tools to essential audio and video. This focused approach helps maintain audience attention, though some prefer keeping chat open for dynamic engagement, balancing between control and interaction.
- Interactive presentations should last between 30 to 60 minutes, incorporating moderated chat and additional tools like polls and quizzes to foster dialogue. Effective moderation ensures the conversation stays on track and aligned with presentation goals, enhancing the overall experience.
- Collaborative presentations, suited for smaller groups (ideally 12-13 participants), benefit from tools like Jamboard and Zoom’s Breakout Rooms. These tools facilitate real-time interaction and co-creation, allowing participants to share their work and support each other, enriching the learning experience.
- To ensure participants feel like active contributors rather than passive listeners, encourage ‘peer interaction’. Use digital tools to enable co-creation and sharing, such as sharing PowerPoint files on SharePoint for collective slide design. This method promotes engagement and a deeper connection to the content.
FAQs
What types of presentations exist?
There are mainly three types of presentations: linear, interactive and collaborative. Linear presentations follow a unidirectional flow, interactive presentations engage the audience through chat and other interaction tools, and collaborative presentations allow participants to actively contribute to the creation of the experience.
Is it always necessary to set up a chat during an online presentation?
It is not always necessary to set up a chat during an online presentation, it depends on the type of presentation and the presenter’s objectives. Chats can be useful to encourage interaction with the audience, but can also be managed in a way that does not distract from the main topic.
How to keep audience engagement high during a presentation?
To maintain high audience engagement during a presentation, it is important to encourage peer interaction, use interaction tools such as polls or quizzes, and promote active sharing of content among participants. Furthermore, it is crucial to maintain an open dialogue with the audience and to adapt the presentation according to responses and interactions.
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