Interactions moments with your audience | 5 key moments

A powerful presentation is fueled by audience interaction moments. Many of us will agree. Yet most of us struggle with the actual implementation of these interaction moments. An event professional will ask: “When during my event do I engage with my crowd?”. A speaker will ask: “When during my presentation do I ask a question to the attendees?”. Prevent over asking, but cover all your information needs. We identified 5 key interaction moments that will result in a balanced scheme of speaking ánd interacting!

1. Opening | An entertaining multiple question

Ask a simple and light opening question upon the opening of your session. This will get everyone in the mood for interaction and on the moment suprême you can be sure of high response rates. People will remember how they can participate. As an example let attendees respond to a multiple question and with it let them rate their neighbour for “their degree of innovativity”.

2. Presentation intro | A clarifying multiple choice question

When starting a presentation you can choose an icebreaker in the form of a multiple choice question. This sets the context for the rest of your story line. You’ll know if you’ll need to convince your crowd or whether you’re surounded by like minded souls. “Sustainability needs more attention on individual level, rather then on a corporate level” A) Agree B) Disagree – is a great introduction to a presentation on corporate social responsibility!

3. Presentation body | An in between energizer

Regardless of how interesting your story is – the attention span will start to decrease after 15-20 minutes. Built in a multiple choice question, just to shake up your audience and put them into a pro-active mindset. Check how a theme is alive

(or not)
within ones organization e.g. “I’m proud of the small ecological footprint that my company leaves” A) Agree B) Disagree.

4. Presentation closing | Inspiring Q&A interaction moments

Allow your audience to send in questions throughout your presentation. Either pause and schedule interaction moments after every 5-10 minutes or save all the input to deal with after your presentation. Show all questions or only publish a selection on the screen. Let the chairman ask the questions or have a professional sidekick take on this role as “voice of the audience”.

5. The End | An evaluating wordcloud

Time to check in for one more last time. Ask the audience how they evaluate today’s event. Either with a live wordcloud or otherwhise with a short online survey. Why wait till tomorrow? Built an evaluation moment into your program and get a high response rate. And better scoring evaluations. You can choose to share outcomes or simply keep them to yourself and use it internally within your team. It’s up to you!

Inspired? Time to turn your inspiration into exciting questions and add them to your PowerPoint presentation with help of the Sendsteps solution!

Robert Daverschot

Moderator – Presenter – Speaker Coach

Robert is a professional moderator, presenter and speaker coach. Robert has years of experience at home and abroad and works for a broad range of industries. He has interviewed ministers, captains of industry and even His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In his dealings with the audience, he always uses Sendsteps. With it, an audience is able to voice their opinions, whereby attendees can cast votes or send in comments to speakers and panels on stage. As such, events turn into lively dialogues with everyone being able to speak up!