When asked to deliver a professional presentation many of us can come up with a collection of thoughts we want to share with the audience. However, these often feel like a string of sentences that don’t necessarily produce a cohesive whole. And certainly don’t captivate. So how do you turn your ideas in an effective presentation?

Public speaking is an art and may take years to master at the level of a professional orator. However, all of us can incorporate a few key concepts and make our presentations more effective and captivating. There are four major characteristics of an effective professional presentation: it is informative, engaging, well-timed, and contains two or three captivating, memorable sentences.

1. An effective presentation needs to be informative. It delivers information, data, graphs, techniques, and other components which are of interest to the target audience and have the potential to inform, improve, or even transform professional practices. Make sure the information comes in a variety of formats, such as statistics, applications, examples, and does not overwhelm the audience with excessive volume.
2. Successful presentations are engaging to the audience and maintain their interest. In some situations it may be appropriate to solicit audience questions or participation. If you are looking for an interactive effect it is preferable to ask open ended questions, such as “would someone like to provide an example of this?” rather than yes/ no questions, such as “have you ever encountered this?”. At other times the presenter may role-play or otherwise practice a tool with the audience to reinforce the message and break down any barriers to application such as unstated doubt about effectiveness or difficulty imagining how to actually apply the concept.
3. A skillful presentation should be well-timed. This means two separate things. On one hand, it is important to monitor the length of the presentation to ensure that its duration is not so short that it leaves the audience with a lot of questions or a sense of incomplete coverage of the topic. At the same time, the presentation should not be so long that it bores, becomes diluted or circular, or introduces too many subjects at once. An additional aspect of good timing has to do with the choice of the subject itself. It is crucial for a presenter to have good awareness of the types of experiences, attitudes, levels of knowledge, etc. the audience may share in order to ensure that the topic (good as it may be) does not address an outdated issue or jumps ahead of the current interest of the audience.
4. In the long run, good presentations are remembers as a set of captivating, memorable sentences. The audience will quickly forget the majority of the content of any presentation and will likely not review most of the notes taken. However, when a skillful public speaker populates the presentation with two or three fascinating, humorous, insightful sentences, those stand an excellent chance of being remembered. Cautiously choose which sentences to emphasize – they need to be the most important or most innovative part of your presentation. Make sure the sentences you pick are short, flow well, and don’t use jargon. Incorporate each sentence in two or three parts of the presentation. These should come up as a natural summary of the concept rather than purposeful repetition.

Short presentations are becoming an integral way of communicating information to today’s busy professionals. Even if public speaking never becomes your favorite with a little effort and attention to the four components above, any presentation you deliver can be taken from mediocre to captivating and effective.