9 Ways to Create an Interactive Presentation
Anyone can create a presentation, but when it comes to creating a memorable, engaging, and effective presentation, this is a whole different ball game. One of the best ways to ensure your presentation is well-received and stands out from the crowd is by making it interactive. When a presentation is interactive, it’s more likely to generate audience engagement and excitement. Not to mention, it can also boost retention rates so your attendees are more likely to recall the subject matter from your presentation.
Interactive Presentation Ideas
Here are nine ways to create an interactive presentation to help you make your next presentation your best yet.
Live polling
When your audience is asked to take part in live polling during a presentation, it’s bound to create a more memorable and engaging presentation. With polling platforms like Swift Polling, it’s easy to create and launch a poll and share it with attendees in just a few clicks. This platform enables presentation creators to launch SMS polls, web polls, gaming and quizzes, word clouds, and even Q&As. Each of these can be used to make a presentation more interactive. Presenters have a number of tools at their fingertips to create interactive presentations, and it’s just a matter of trying them out! In addition to live polling, presenters can use a number of other solutions from Swift Polling to create interactive presentations. Let’s take a closer look at some of them now.
Live quizzes
While polling can tell you interesting data or information about your audience, including their demographics, their level of interest, or their preferences, live quizzes work in a different way. During a presentation, when you launch a live quiz, you can find out in real-time how well your audience understands the concepts you’re presenting. If you test them on material you have already covered and most audience members don’t answer correctly, you’ll know you need to cover that topic again. On the other hand, you can also launch a quiz at the start of your presentation to determine the level of understanding your audience starts with. By the end of the presentation, you can quiz again to see how much they have learned.
Q&As
Giving your audience the ability to ask you questions throughout your presentation or during a designated Q&A period is another valuable resource for creating interactive presentations. Rather than a constant stream of interruptions throughout the presentation, letting them ask questions with an app is a lot more effective. To make your presentation truly interactive, you can also switch things up and ask your audience questions instead. This keeps them on their toes and also demonstrates the value you place on their input.
Icebreakers
One of the best ways to loosen up your audience so they’re relaxed and can better focus on your presentation is with a simple icebreaker exercise.
There are all kinds of ways to do this, including:
- Asking everyone to say where they are tuning in from (for virtual presentations)
- Simply asking everyone to introduce themselves and say their name
- Having each audience member turn to the person beside them to introduce themselves or share an interesting fact about themselves
Crowd photos
Another fun way to help your audience relax and interact is taking a crowd photo. When you announce to your audience that you’re about to take a photo, you’ll see audience members smile, lean in, and engage. Even long after the photo was taken, this can have a positive effect on the mood and engagement of your audience.
Tell a story
Presenting cold hard facts is one thing, but if you can make your presentation more personal, it will also become more interactive at the same time. By telling the audience a personal (yet relevant) story, they will feel more connected to you as a presenter. They are more likely to engage with the content, ask questions, and remember the presentation more positively this way.
Eye contact
Although it’s one of the most common pieces of body language advice you’ll ever hear, don’t let the importance of eye contact get lost on you. Even if you’re presenting to an audience of hundreds of people, making eye contact with different audience members throughout the presentation helps establish a connection on an individual level with your audience as you go. In addition to helping these audience members feel more connected to you, it can also benefit you as a presenter. When it feels like you’re speaking to a close friend (or at the very least, not a total stranger), you are more likely to be relaxed and more comfortable in the presenter role.
Movement
How many times have you sat through a presentation that you couldn’t wait for to be over? By halfway through, your legs had pins and needles, your feet couldn’t stay still, and your eyes and mind could no longer focus on the presentation. When presentations aren’t interactive and engaging, this is a lot more likely to happen. Luckily, there’s a simple way to combat this effect: simply ask your audience to move! There’s no need for everyone to get up and go for a jog, but something as simple as encouraging your audience members to stand up, stretch their arms over their head, and take a deep breath can have a great effect. Your audience will instantly be rejuvenated and engaged in the rest of the presentation.
Find out what your audience wants ahead of time
We already talked about using a live poll during your presentation, but what about setting one up ahead of time? If you poll an audience before an event, you have access to incredibly valuable information most presenters wouldn’t think to get! With this information at your disposal, you are better able to create a presentation that’s in line with your audiences’ expectations. You will know what they want it to cover, what they want to get out of it, and anything else that will make the presentation stand out more positively in their mind.
Here are a few questions to ask an audience in a pre-event survey prior to your presentation so you can tailor the content to their expectations and needs:
- What do you hope to get out of the presentation?
- What device will you be using to tune into the presentation? (For virtual events)
- Which topics are you most looking forward to covering?
You can also share a post-presentation survey to find out what an audience liked best, what they want to see next time, and any other feedback that will help you make your next presentation even better.
Put These Interactive Presentation Ideas to Work
There you have it, nine interactive presentation ideas to help your next event stand out for all the right reasons! Try one or a combination of these tactics and watch engagement rates skyrocket.
