If you’re used to watching TED talks, you must be familiar with what great presentations looks like. But then, there are several million presentations going on around the world and chances are that there would be not so great or rather boring talks which create horrible feelings.

Making presentations can be nerve-wracking at times. But no matter how tough you’ve prepared to give a talk, if it lacks the basic ingredients, it will come off as boring. And nobody would want to listen to it.

But somehow, you just have to learn to make presentations that your audience can connect with and learn from. This article will address succinctly the 2 major steps involved in making great presentation. Here we go.

Step One: Preparation

1. Know Your Audience

This is the most important part of delivering a great presentation. Knowing your audience would assist you to identify their areas of interest, and guide you to address them appropriately. For example, if you’re addressing a gathering of business professionals, the case studies and facts you’ll be citing must reflect their interest. This is the most effective way to create a connection with them.

2. Gather Your Content

The fastest way to ruin your presentation is to mount the podium without adequate preparation. Start by gathering relevant materials, study them, then extract the useful information from them. If you do your research and background work on the topic, you’ll definitely wow your audience with a great presentation.

3. Plan Your Delivery

The importance of planning your final delivery cannot be over emphasized. Presenters often shoot themselves on the foot by not looking at their final drafts until few minutes to their presentation. You should plan how to start, select appropriate examples to use, and rehearse your speech to at least two persons. This is the only way to make your speech coherent and full of substance.

Step Two: Delivery

1. Connect with your audience

In delivering your talk, you must ensure that you connect with your audience. Because, in the end, you’ll realize that it wasn’t about you in the first place. Tell a captivating story, maintain eye contact, and ask questions. More importantly, use PowerPoint slides to accentuate your message. There are free PowerPoint templates with unique designs that’ll add a bit of professionalism to your work instead of using the common default designs.

2. Make it actionable

Generally, the effectiveness of your presentation is determined by its ability to drive people to take action. Otherwise, it would be considered just another mumbling of words to absent minds. You must ensure that at the end of your talk, your audience can walk out of the hall feeling challenged to take action. Within your slides, consider using content types like infographics and engaging animated video clips.

3. Keep it simple

A great presentation is not determined by how complex you make it appear. In fact, the simpler, the better. You should communicate the keywords of your message very briefly and focus on the theme of the presentation. To achieve this simplicity, you need to choose the core message, focus on your opening and closing, and select few key points that support your message.

At the end, summarize the high points of your presentation and dish out action nuggets. This will assist your audience to remember all the important facts of your talk.