What are the best ways to present at a conference?

1 Know your audience

Before you start working on your presentation, you need to understand who you are talking to. What are their backgrounds, interests, expectations, and needs? How familiar are they with your topic, terminology, and methods? How can you tailor your message, tone, and style to suit them? Knowing your audience will help you craft a presentation that is relevant, engaging, and respectful.

2 Define your goals

Next, you need to clarify what you want to achieve with your presentation. What is the main point or argument you want to convey? What are the key takeaways or implications you want to highlight? What are the questions or challenges you want to address or raise? How do you want your audience to feel, think, or act after listening to you? Defining your goals will help you structure your presentation and focus on the most important aspects.

3 Design your slides

Slides are an essential part of your presentation, but if they are not designed properly, they can be distracting and confusing. To ensure that your slides are effective, follow these general principles: use a simple and consistent layout, font, color, and theme; incorporate images, graphs, charts, and diagrams to illustrate your points without creating clutter; summarize your points with bullet points, keywords, and phrases; use transitions, animations, and effects sparingly and purposefully; and always check your spelling, grammar, and accuracy.

4 Practice your delivery

Once you have your slides ready, practicing your delivery is essential for improving your confidence, timing, and fluency. Rehearse your presentation aloud multiple times in front of a mirror, camera, or friend; time yourself and adjust the pace and content accordingly. Pay attention to your voice, tone, volume, and intonation while using gestures, eye contact, and facial expressions to enhance your communication. Additionally, anticipate possible questions and prepare answers.

5 Engage your audience

Finally, you need to engage your audience during and after your presentation in order to create a rapport, elicit feedback, and spark discussion. To do this, you could start with a hook such as a story, question, quote, or statistic. Additionally, using humor, anecdotes, examples, and metaphors can make your presentation more lively and relatable. Furthermore, asking questions, inviting comments, and acknowledging responses can help to keep your audience engaged. Summarizing your main points and key takeaways at the end is also important. Finally, providing your contact information and inviting further communication can help to ensure that the audience remembers you. Presenting at a conference can be both rewarding and challenging; however, following these tips can help you plan for and present at conferences with confidence and impact.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?