How to make a presentation interactive.

If you would take a minute. And think of a presentation you’ve recently attended. Is there any presentation that pops up in your mind? You probably recall presentations that involved a creative element. Something that encouraged you and the rest of the audience to engage. Think of activities to do, like; talking with your neighbor, the use of [audience response software](/en/audience-response-system/) or even games to play.

There are many ways to make group presentations moments to remember. But how to be more interactive during your presentation? What is (an interactive presentation) going to change, the moment you involve your audience? Although there isn’t a single best way, **we’d like to share with you the following ideas:**

Best practice examples, software and ideas of interaction with your audience through activities and games

### Interactive games for a presentation
Any playful and competitive element already soon creates an atmosphere of connection. Often needed to come to a consensus, to get support for new plans and to create a good team vibe!

### Activities ideas
Giving the audience a task or assignment ignites a proactive mindset. Helpful to empower attendees and to make an entire group responsible for a challenge.

### Examples of interactive presentations
Copy what you can use and prevent spending time thinking of presentation formats that already proved their success.

### Interactive presentation software
There’s tools out there that can easily help you to create audience interaction. Anonymous or not. [Polls](/en/blog/create-an-online-poll-with-sendsteps/) or [open questions](/en/questions/open-ended/). Word clouds or surveys. See what works best for you!
There’s tools out there that can easily help you to create audience interaction. Anonymous or not. [Polls](/en/blog/create-an-online-poll-with-sendsteps/) or [open questions](/en/questions/open-ended/). [Word clouds](/en/questions/wordcloud/) or surveys. See what works best for you!

When preparing your presentation, inclusive the interactive elements, you obviously like to tune in on your audience profile. Are the attendees higher educated or not, young or older, introvert or extravert, familiar with your subject or not? Getting yourself a clear picture, will help to find the interactive approach that will work best.

### Quiz
Let the entire audience stand up. Ask attendees to be seated upon answering [by raising hands] questions incorrectly. Proceed with the quiz questions, going from easy and simple to creative and difficult, until the last one person is still standing: he or she is the winner! Alternatively use audience response software, whereby attendees can cast [identified] responses. Through your online dashboard or on the presentation screen, you can see who is the winner.

### Pitch-a-neighbour
Instead of asking your attendees to introduce themselves plenary. Or hear their specific thought on something. Ask them to have an interview with their neighbour. Give examples and ideas on what to question in specific. The neighbour then will process the information in such a way that he/or she is able to give a 1 minute pitch about the other towards the rest of the group. This forces you to listen differently and to really get to know the other. One of the more serious games to play.



Interactive games for a presentation

## Interactive activities to do in a presentation

### Send in Scenarios
When giving group presentations, it is always a question what to exactly cover. Every attendee is unique in his/her professional experience and knowledge and therefore it can be a challenge to cater to everyone. Already in an early stage, before preparing your powerpoint, you can ask your attendees a few questions in advance. To measure their knowledge and to hear from them what they expect from your presentation. With online surveys this can be easily executed. This will give you the right input to tailor your story.

### Cross the line
This one of the games that requires a little more venue space. Ideally you have an open space, where attendees can walk around freely, with in the midst a line to cross. This game can be played for fun or with a more substantial approach. As one of the examples, think of a conference about sustainability. Now you can ask attendees questions related to that: “Who has an electric car?”, “Who believes climate change can be still turned around” etc. Either proceed after each question, or interview a few of the attendees.

## Examples of interactive presentations

### Image research
What is (an interactive presentation) doing differently to an audience compared to a 1.0 presentation? With a 2.0 presentation you can easily make things more personal. Often an audience has a few common characteristics e.g. profession, shared professional themes, job level etc.Make use of the [Sendsteps Audience Response](/en/audience-response-system/) System (powerpoint software) and ask 5 multiple choice questions about how the group of professionals see themselves. Once a large conference for accountants took place where a professor presented an image study about the professional group.

### Case consultants
Games can easily be presented in the form of a case study. Each time you explain a next step in your story, you can work with cases. “What would you do next, or in this specific situation?” whereby attendees can then choose from a few answer options. From there you can proceed with explaining why the answer was wrong or discuss the correct answer. Think of explaining the development of a new and innovative product: “what was the first step?”, “What do you think we walked into?”, “How do you believe competition reacted?” etc.

## Interactive presentation software
These days a lot of tools, free or paid, are out there to support you with your interactive presentation. The definition of best tool is hard to give, depending on your list of requirements. Check the web and multimedia to find your prefered solution.

The integration with Powerpoint [no need to use additional screens], the protection of data and the endless branding possibilities, makes Sendsteps Audience Response System great software to work with. A glimpse of the many features:

### Multiple choice and open ended questions
Collect instant responses. Either anonymous or identified on both [multiple choice](/en/questions/multiple-choice/) and [open questions](/en/questions/open-ended/). With the open content you can let attendees upvote comments: the most rewarded comment can be addressed!

### Word clouds
Create [wordclouds](/en/questions/wordcloud/) with your audience. Describe in one word … “How would you describe the team culture”, “What would be a metaphor for the communication style in this group”, “What did you think of today?” etc.

### Surveys
Either on the sport, before or after your event; at any given moment you can tune in with the opinion from your attendees. Use it to collect valuable data, to improve your event and to brief the speakers.

How to be more interactive during your presentation? What is going to change, the moment you involve your audience?

What’s the best way to engage with your team, class or co-workers while you are unable to share the room? Sendsteps is the answer to that!

How to run an engaging meeting from home during the COVID-19 outbreak

## Engage others when working from home 

Sendsteps believes that especially when working from home it is extremely important to keep your team members engaged and make sure that you know what really is going on in their heads. Our software will enable you to do exactly that, no matter what type of online team meeting software your are using. During the COVID-19 crisis we offer your software completely free of charge to make sure you have the best working from home experience possible. If you are curious and want to dive right in:

**Download and install**
Download Sendsteps for free. Within 30 seconds it automatically integrates within PowerPoint.
**Add questions**
Make up your questions and define possible answer options.
**Start responding**
Let your audience respond through mobile phone using SMS, [mobile] internet or Twitter.
**Share results**
Show from your PowerPoint presentation how your audience responded.

How to use Sendsteps with your presentation?

[PowerPoint integration](/en/powerpoint-addin/)
Sendsteps PowerPoint integration enables you to easily share presentations and results with your fellow lecturers. Simply add questions via the ribbon while audience results are automatically published within your PowerPoint slides.

[Play a quiz](/en/questions/quiz/)
Create a competitive element and actively involve participants. Test your participants knowledge and follow results backstage to see who is ahead. Do you have a winner?

**Test their knowledge**
Go through a test during your session. Ask [multiple choice questions](/en/questions/multiple-choice/) and discuss the outcome on the spot. Is everything clear or do certain subjects need extra attention?

**Personal dashboard**
An easy control of your session details. Change settings in order to activate a survey to identify participants or allow them to share vote results via social media. Get an overview of results per lecture.

**Take surveys**
Take the attendance per lecture and allow participants to evaluate the course or semester. Access the survey results via your personal dashboard and find out whether there is room for improvement.

**Downloadable results**
We know you love content. Easily download the results of all your votes, Q&A, quizzes, surveys, attendance lists or individual progress in excel or PDF.

**Ready to start using Sendsteps?**
Still have questions? In that case, please [contact us](/en/contact/) and we will answer you as soon as possible!

The benefits of using Sendsteps

How to run an engaging meeting from home during COVID-19

Teacher in front of a classroom

A teacher is trying to keep her students interested and engaged, while still teaching them the material they need to learn. Today’s kids are growing up with full access to their smartphones, tablets and laptops, they’re used to seeing interesting content with every swipe of their thumb. So, you can see how keeping their interest in a 45 minute class, on a topic they probably didn’t get to choose, could be a challenge.

Problem

Type in the first question with the possible answers and select one/more of the answers correctly

Using the [Sendsteps Quiz](/en/questions/quiz/), the teacher starts teaching her lesson. After the first 5 minutes of her lesson, Sendsteps Quiz will ask her students to answer some basic and simple questions. Based upon the correct answers, and how fast the students answer, each student receives points in the Sendsteps solution. The coolest part is, that at the end of the class, the students can see who has the most points and who’s the winner. Let’s face it, we all love to win, that’s why playing the Sendsteps Quiz is a great way to motivate students to pay attention, engage and stay focused on the lesson, creating a fun, engaging classroom for everyone!

### How to get started using only a browser

Solution

**Sign up for FREE** and download the add-in (download page will pop up automatically)

Click install the add-in and wait until it loads the first presentation automatically

Then press the button in the Sendsteps ribbon in the top-left corner (Add question) and select Quiz (first button on top left corner) on the pop-up and fill in the question and the possible answers

You can fully adjust your presentation; from different fonts, colors, adding your company logo/brand etc.

Click ‘Start session’ (the play button in the Sendsteps ribbon) and then “Start slideshow”

### How to get started using our Sendsteps PowerPoint add-in (PC only)

A teacher is trying to keep her students interested and engaged, while still teaching them the material they need to learn.

Town hall meeting

A CEO, manager or team leader who wants to know what’s really going on in her company, or on her team, can set up a Zoom meeting, or BSD (before social distancing) can take to the board room or breakroom and announce the latest company or team news. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll know what her employees or team members really think about what she’s saying. People act very differently when asked to speak about their opinions in groups than they do when they can speak freely and anonymously, without fear of repercussions.

Using the [Sendsteps Q&A feature](/en/questions/qa/), the manager or team leader, shares her message in a short speech and then asks her employees, or team members, if they have any questions. But first, she makes sure to let them know that their questions are completely anonymous, and that their voices are valued and appreciated.

At Sendsteps we’ve seen that every time, both in groups small and large, it only takes a couple of minutes to get the group going, but once the ball gets rolling, people quickly send in their questions and feedback. **The employees feel comfortable, and empowered, to speak up and share his opinion.**

### How to get started using only a browser

Sign up for FREE and download the add-in (download page will pop up automatically)

Using the Sendsteps Q&A feature to share your message and get instant feedback

Decision making with a group

Go to [web.sendsteps.com](https://web.sendsteps.com/)

As the leader of a team or company, it’s always a balancing act to determine how much of a decision should be made on your own, versus how much to have your team, company or colleagues weigh in. Some of the easiest ways to ask a group its opinion, is to ask for a show of hands, ask them to write it down or ask them to do an email survey. However, with each of those methods, there can be downsides. Raising a hand might ask for a favorable decision that is liked by the CEO, and can be influenced by [group thinking](//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink) and desirable outcomes. Doing a survey or writing it down anonymously can be better, but it takes time to tally the results.

### How to get started using only a browser

How to get started using our Sendsteps PowerPoint add-in (PC only)

Using the Sendsteps voting feature to get a reliable response from your group.

The current COVID-19 situation has an impact on our daily life, and also our working life. For many around the globe, the office is no longer accessible. Instead your home is now your new office. And with that, online meeting tools replace the regular offline meetings, classes and events. With these online meetings, new challenges appear: How to ensure everyone can participate? How to deal with sensitive topics? And how to keep a larger audience engaged? Questions that are already challenging in an offline setting, let alone in an online space. With Sendsteps you can charge your online meeting with several strong engagement ingredients:

Illustration of a woman during an online meeting

Working from home: how to engage others during online meetings?

Formulate a number of multiple choice questions ahead of your online meeting


In the check-in questions relate to their personal (Corona) home-work situation


Let attendees vote anonymously on the answer options of these questions


Reflect on the outcome and leave space to live comments

Without the live presence of your attendees, it is hard to read faces, to hear a tone of voice or to see body language. Therefore, setup a check-in moment before you start with the actual meeting:

How do I know how my online attendees feel?

Brief attendees ahead of the meeting that questions can be send digitally during a presentation


Alternatively let a sidekick process all incoming questions and let him/her forward the questions to the speakers


Let attendees give likes to questions raised and deal with the best rated questions after a presentation


Next to digital questions, also leave space for live questions and comments

### Questions: how to deal with (many) live questions?

Especially with larger online audiences, it can be challenging to let everyone speak up. Easily it can become messy and unclear. Therefore organize your Q&A properly:

Setup a quiz with multiple choice questions about a specific (work) topic


Let attendees participate (with their names known)


Announce the winner and bring out a joyful cheer through the webcam

### Fun: how to foster online team spirit?
With all the heavy Corona news these days, it is also important to keep looking on the brighter side of things. Of course, if the situation allows it. An online quiz can give a lighter tone and can boost team spirit. Have you considered the big Spring Quiz? A light alternative for Friday afternoon drinks!

Formulate a final open question ahead of your meeting


See the wordcloud develop as attendees share their final thoughts


Reflect on it and end the online meeting in a positive tone

### Appreciation: how to round off an online meeting with energy?
Upon the wrap up of your online meeting, you’d like to let your audience leave with a positive mood. Next to giving all attendees the opportunity to share a last thought or comment, you can also use a wordcloud and visualize the group contribution.

Formulate a survey with a few evaluative questions


Let attendees respond anonymously at the end of the meeting


Alternatively, but impacting the response rate, you can send the survey after the meeting


Process the findings and finetune your next online meeting!

### Evaluate: how to improve your next online meeting?
Now that your new-style online meeting has ended, ideally all attendees appreciate the way they have been engaged. But how to measure that in order to improve the next online meeting?

The 5 ingredients for an online meeting will help to improve the sense of engagement among your attendees and with that the quality of your online meetings. Are you ready?


Experiment, innovate and improve your online meeting!

The current COVID-19 situation has an impact on our daily life. And also our working life. For many around the globe, the office is no longer accessible.

How to engage others during online meetings | Sendsteps

Just like you serve specific wine with a type of dish, you also need to carefully select a specific interactive method with your type of meeting. Get clear for yourself: What is the setting in which you like interaction to take place? ‘Games’ don’t contribute to board room sessions, and a fun ‘brainstorm’ isn’t helpful for students who are close to their theory exam.
Define the type of meeting you’re hosting. What are the topics you’d like to cover, what is the profile of the audience and which questions need to be answered?

From here you can choose an interactive method that matches best your presentation.

Interactive presentation ideas

Give your audience a think break of a minute.

Present the answer options that describes best the continuation of the scenario

Let the class discuss the answer options


### Method | User scenario’s

Think of scenarios in relation to your topics. The more real-life, the stronger the audience can relate to them. Either describe the scenario yourself, or find a matching online video. Halfway the scenario, you can stop your story or video. From there involve your audience;

Use an interactive presentation: to teach something

Present a statement on which the audience can vote ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’

Let students cast an identified vote; you now know who replied what.

Switch roles based on the outcome; opponents become advocates and vice versa.

Line up both groups and let each attendee reply once, to make sure that all students on both sides can engage the issue.


### Method | A forced debate
Play with different points of view, get creative with new ideas and let attendees defend the opposite side of the story;

After the debate, you can let the audience vote again and see how opinions have shifted!

No matter how big of a change you will communicate, in a group it always causes dynamics. With a clever interaction method in place, you can steer more than you would have expected.

Use an interactive presentation: to communicate change

Allow anonymous feedback throughout your presentation, but don’t share it yet on the presentation screen.

Go through the replies after your presentation, but still during the session;


Prepare an overall reply to the questions and share it at the end of your session


For all questions that cannot be answered, indicate as concrete as possible how and when you’ll get back to it

### Method | An open floor
Allow employees to send in questions throughout the course of your announcements. Anonymous responses are the best responses; otherwise you’ll end up with socially acceptable replies.

Involve communication professionals in the formulation of your answers. The more complex the matter, the better such an investment is.

Setup and send out a pre-event survey. A survey that your audience can fill out anonymous.


Use the input before the event takes place; finetune your story and brief other speakers.


Give the attendees the feeling of being heard from the very first minute.

### Method | Pre-event questioning
Rather than waiting until ‘the very moment’, it is wise to already get a clue of the sentiment before the actual meeting takes place.



Did you ever think of compiling a wordcloud from the pre-event survey responses, that can be shown upon entering the venue on the day of the event?



For those interactive presentations, where at the end, you really like to have very concrete outcome, the following ideas might help you:

Use an interactive presentation: to discuss an issue

Ask [multiple choice questions](/en/questions/multiple-choice/) about people’s background, professional activities and interests.


Now that the profile is clear to you and the audience, start your actual interactive presentation.


Test people’s views on your topics with multiple choice questions and relate to the profiles defined earlier. E.g. from the 80% people who agreed, 20% have a management position and 60% have an executive position.

### Method | Audience profiling
Who is in my audience? Formulate questions with which you can define a profile of the audience.

The clearer the context, the more sense the audience feedback makes.

Upon the start of your interactive session, ask your attendees to send in themes that they like to discuss later in the program.


Make a shortlist of the outcome and schedule discussion time for the second part of your event program.

### Method | Free schedule
Rather than scheduling your program from A till Z, leaves some space for spontaneous input.



Your audience has now become the architect of their own event. You might even be able to arrange a speaker who can relate to the open space subject. If so, you’ll for sure leave a lasting impression!

Match interaction with your meeting. What are topics you’d like to cover, what is the profile of the audience and which questions need to be answered?

Picture of an event where the audiences answers question via their mobile phone by using Sendsteps

10 tips: Employee events with an inconvenient message

Not because of the venue or the speaker line-up, but because of an inconvenient message that has to be shared: budget cuts, poor performances or even job losses. How can you as an organization prepare a storyline for such a delicate, yet important and strategic, event?


How to deal with an employee event that is less fun? 

### 1. Tell what it does to you
Express your sincere concern. Obvious maybe to yourself, but by putting it out in words, it helps to build rapport with your audience. Also: tell people what they don’t need to be afraid of. This way you take away possible obstacles that prevents your team from further listening.

### 2. Underline the sense of urgency
Explain what will happen if you continue without any intervention. People need to understand the negative scenario of not stepping up.

### 3. Check-in with your audience
Keep a constant connection with your audience. It’s easy to become too rational when you do all the explaining. Ask every now and then: “how are you?” and encourage short interaction moments.



Here are 10 tips for those who have to bring an inconvenient message:

### 4. Get straight to the point
Don’t take too long to make your point. People are tensed and will lose you when your story becomes too extensive. Make your point loud and clear. Support every point with slides that give a compact summary.

 ### 5. Round off personally
As personal and empathetic as you’ve started your presentation, make sure to round it off in a similar way. Use an inspiring poem or text: as long as it works and still is matching your management style.

### 6. Ask for a first reaction 
Use Sendsteps to answer the question “How do you feel now” and let attendees [respond anonymously](/en/blog/anonymous-feedback-helpful-for-these-3-meetings/) by selecting an answer option. The results on the presentation screen might be conclude negative sentiment, but at least it is clear, people feel heard and it’s easier to address than live reaction.

### 7. Space for live comments
Answering live comments might be challenging, but is important to make people feel heard. Allow digital input for those employees who find it difficult to raise questions out loud. When your board compromises more members, then also invite fellow board members on stage to participate in the audience Q&A.

 ### 8. Follow up with unanswered questions
Not all questions can be answered. Tell people in advance. However, also communicate when and how the audience can expect feedback of those questions that can’t be answered now.

### 9. Stay for drinks
For those who like to approach you more informal, it is helpful to stay during the drinks afterwards. Being present [as a leader], is an important sign on itself already. Leave your inner circle of colleagues for what it is and mingle with as many of your team members as possible: from juniors to seniors!

### 10. Practise and prepare
Such an important meeting requires a joint effort. You might be the messenger, but there’s a team to support you: an [event professional](/en/professional-event-services/) to take care of an appropriate setting, a Head of Communications to guard the tone of voice, fellow board members to support and a moderator who takes care of time management, proper introductions and a streamlined Q&A session. Your prep mostly comes down to practise, practise and practise!

How to deal with an employee event that is less fun? How can organizations prepare a storyline for this important and strategic event?

10 Tips: Employee Event with an Inconvenient Message

Spicy discussions. They’re fruitful for every organization. And an event is a great context to facilitate this: by means of a panel discussion or a debate. A good discussion starts with a well formulated statement. Easier said than done. That’s why we’re happy to share 8 tips on formulating powerful statements.

7 Tips for formulating powerful statements.

A statement that is formulated negatively, easily raises confusion. E.g. “Alcohol commercials shouldn’t be prohibited”. Instead formulate “Alcohol commercials should be prohibited”. The last statement is clearer and therefore easier to answer!

## 2. Be controversial.
It’s simple, a statement that everyone agrees with, won’t spark a discussion. Try to be on the edge. How about “In Amsterdam all museums should be freely accessible to everyone”?

1. Formulate positive.

## 3. Stay objective.
Prevent misunderstanding and formulate objectively. Words like “often”, “beautiful” or “difficult” are subjective. “The beautiful city of York should be protected from mass tourism”. What is beautiful for you, might be ugly to somebody else. Therefore and in this case, leave out the word “beautiful”.

## 4. Keep it short and simple [KISS]!
The shorter, more controversial and clearer your statement, the more passionate the discussion with your speakers and audience will be.

## 5. Let somebody check your statements.
Once you’ve formulated your statements, you might want to ask somebody else to read them. The last thing you want during your event is a discussion or misunderstanding amongst your audience about the formulation of your statement.

## 6. Brief panelists in advance.
Now that you’re satisfied with your statements, you can brief your panelists ahead of the actual event: this way they can prepare what to say and how to contribute. However, this might be different per occasion: if you want to keep the panel discussion more spontaneous, then obviously don’t do this.

## 7. Engage your audience.
Panel discussions can easily become static, therefore engage the audience frequently. When introducing a statement among the individual panelists, first let the audience vote ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ through [interactive voting tool Sendsteps](/en/questions/weighted-voting/). Before showing the results, ask a panelist on how he/she thinks the audience will react. Then show the results and either confirm the panel in their reasoning or friendly confront them. For sure you now have an energetic kick-off of your debate or panel discussion!

A good discussion starts with a well formulated statement. Easier said than done. Here are 8 tips on formulating powerful statements.

7 Tips for formulating powerful statements | Sendsteps

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