When you give a presentation, your main goal is for your audience to hear and receive your message. You also want to entertain your audience members, keeping them engaged while you present. But one thing that is often overlooked when planning a presentation after it’s over, is how much will your audience remember. If you present information and no one remembers anything you said, what have you accomplished?

Here are some tips for making the next presentation you give one that your audience will never forget.

1. Have one clear, key point. Repeat that point throughout. What’s the one most important thing that you want your audience to walk away with? Identify one simple and concrete key point that you want your audience to remember and build your presentation around it. Remember how you would perk up in class when the teacher said, “Listen up now because this is going to be on the test”? This strategy also works well in presentations so that your audience will be paying attention when you state your key point. You can do this by saying something like, “Here is the most important thing I want you to get.” Then pause. Then state your key point. If you’re using slides, project your key point on the screen. If you can find a relevant image that conveys your key point visually, project that too along with the words. Throughout your presentation, repeat your key point. When Martin Luther King spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, he repeated the theme of his speech 11 times. Decades later, everyone remembers “I have a dream” – and we weren’t even there. At the very least, state your key point once at the beginning of your presentation and once at the end to take advantage of the serial position effect, which is the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best. It can be tempting to not have key point or to include more than one key point. But if you don’t have a key point, your audience will choose one (perhaps randomly and/or unconsciously) or they won’t come away with any key point at all. If you have more than one key point, you’ll dilute the power of each point.

2. Keep it simple and the “Rule of Three”. Keep your presentation simple. Give your audience a basic sense of what you do and why it matters. Don’t try educate them on the fine details. They simply need to know what the problem is, how you or your message will solve this problem, and why it matters. One of the oldest presentation techniques (dating back to the time of Aristotle) is the “Rule of Three.” The “Rule of Three” is, simply, that people tend to easily remember three things. Pick three ideas that you want to present. You can then break each of these three ideas into three sub-parts, but don’t bother adding a fourth main point – because people aren’t going to remember it. 

3. Use visuals. Will you be using slides during your presentation? If so, take advantage of the visual! Pictures stay in our minds far more commonly than concepts or words. Studies show that retention of information three days after a meeting or other event is six times greater when information is presented both visually and orally (vs. when the information is presented by spoken words alone.) This means that if you include visuals, your audience is six times more likely to remember what you said! Show your audience photographs, (simple) graphs, or (simple) diagrams that visually represent the topics you talk about. 

4. Tell a story. Everyone loves a good story, and stories stick. Our brains are hardwired to enjoy stories, to get drawn into their reality, and to remember them. Use a story to illustrate a point you’re trying to make. Share information with your audience in the form of a story. Because they’re so memorable, make sure that your story is relevant and supports the content of your presentation. 

5. Make your audience work. The more deeply your audience thinks about the points that you make, the more likely they are to remember what you’ve told them. It sounds counterintuitive, but you don’t want to spoon-feed your audience too much. This will reduce the amount of work they have to do to understand what you are telling them, which can actually make the content of your presentation less memorable. Instead, provide opportunities for your audience members to think for themselves. Ask a question and let them vote on the possible answers. Give them a scenario and ask them to come up with hypothetical outcomes. Encourage them to summarize the main points of your talk at the end of your presentation. 

My challenge to you this week is to experiment with these techniques. How does incorporating one or more of these techniques change the way you normally organize your presentations? If you were on the receiving end of a presentation, which technique do you feel would be most effective in remembering the content presented to you?

As always, remember that we are here for you if you need help with any aspects of public speaking.