Presentation Tips

5 Mistakes to Avoid in a Presentation

Presentation Mistakes

It doesn’t matter whether your presentation is a killer if the presenter kills it completely by making some miserably common mistakes while presenting it. You might be that enthusiastic person who wants to be the voice of either the company you work for or for your own business but it takes more than enthusiasm, a presenter needs to be intelligent and a timing expert. He or She should know how to tackle any situation on stage without looking dumb & meaningless.

The importance of ‘what not to do’ is more prominent whenever you decide upon throwing words at the audience. Sure we make a list of what to do but ignore the former which ultimately makes you look like an absolute bore. Remember that you are the messenger not your presentation, people come to listen to you and not just to see you move from slide to slide yawning away your audience.

Let’s have a look at 5 common Presentation mistakes to avoid –

  • Don’t know your topic! Why the hell are you presenting? – Cramming the topic with few slides and its explanation can take you to the disaster land. Imagine a situation, you give your presentation aptly with all your crammed pointers and suddenly someone asks a question, O my God, this wasn’t covered in my slides how can I answer this? And there sets in a cold wave of misunderstanding between speaker and the audience and then people won’t take you seriously. So know your subject so well that all questions are answered and you don’t have to be miserable any more.
  • Don’t be a Blabber – Just because you love the subject of your presentation and know a lot on the topic doesn’t mean you have to say it all in one go. The audience has come to listen to you for a crisp, entertaining and meaningful presentation where they hope to get the best out of the topic you are going to present. But they don’t want to sleep, Giving too much information will bore them. so decide upon the depth of topic to be covered in your presentation, time it well & then smartly, with the help of creative slides deliver a great presentation.
  • Don’t use too many Filler words – Your presentation can go off track suddenly if too many or meaningless filler words are used. The most common that come to our mind are ‘ummm’, ‘so’ and ‘right’ etc. I don’t mean that you should just keep on speaking until you are done with the presentation, of course you need to take pause time to time. For that filler part you can use real life instance to let the audience know you better or even add relevant jokes to your pause moments. But remember that you need to come out of the filler phase as soon as possible and continue with the original topic.
  • Don’t let Slides take over you – You are the presentation of your topic not merely a presentation slide which either has too many or no detailing at all. The slides are just you r back up with few bullet points to keep you apprised of what you have to cover next. Your slides should not be overloaded with text and pictures as this confuses your listener and they still end up thinking about the core message of your presentation. Your audience should walk away with at least 2-3 clear messages they found out about your presentation.
  • Don’t be sorry – A speaker should never say sorry to their audience regarding ‘Oh I forgot to mention’ or on missing out some points from your presentation or anything. This will make you look shallow and unprofessional. Even if there is some spelling mistake or incorrect sentence or unrelated picture in your presentation don’t point it out and look like a fool. The better way might be that you make fun of it and poke some joke to lighten up the moment and keep their interest intact.

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