How to use storytelling effectively during presentation

Your palms get sweaty, you feel your stomach turning, you can’t seem to stop worrying about making a mistake, and as a result, you keep saying “Um.” No matter how hard you try, you worry that you just aren’t all that interesting to your audience. Like everybody else who speaks publically, your communication apprehension can be overwhelming, especially as you start that speech.

You’re certainly not alone in your anxiety; even the most experienced public speakers feel the pangs of nervousness. Nobody said learning how to give effective presentations is an easy process. But, if you are worried that you are not engaging your audience enough to catch their attention and get them to connect with your message, you can learn an effective skill to overcome this hurdle and with one simple step, learn how to both entertain and impact your audience with your speech’s theme.

 

It’s Your Message, Not Your Anxiety
Many people think their nervousness is the thing making the speech less attention-getting; however, that is simply not the case. The problem is that there isn’t anything engaging in the message’s content. Even highly effective public speakers suffer from stage fright—they just know how to use this trick effectively to deliver an entertaining speech. So, what’s the answer? Learning how to story tell.

Tell Them Why
To make your story a great one, you need to have a good purpose your audience can recognize. So, make sure you recognize the central idea of your story yourself so that you deliver an effective purpose. The entertainment value of the story is really in its purpose, and if you don’t know what that is, you can’t make it clear to your audience. Make sure you have the clarity nailed down, and your audience will be hooked.

Tell Them What
Although the concept might sound simplistic, it’s something some people overlook: make sure your story is a story, not just an abstract comment with no plot. The plot is what makes the story flow, so you’ve got to have a beginning, middle, and end. People naturally come to expect that structure in any story, and keeping to that expectation helps with audience connection and story effectiveness.

Tell Them How
Next, you have to cover how things happened—that means the story must present action and move forward. The action present in the story will make that “how” question relatively clear to your audience. And most people love the action within stories, so this is a crucial part of effective entertainment value.

Tell Them Who
To answer the “who” segment of your story, you need to define your characters and give them some personality. Remember, instead of simply telling your audience things about your characters, actually show them things about your characters’ personalities by describing the actions of your characters. This one key rule—to show, not tell, with characters, makes your characters come alive, and makes the action and entertainment value in your “how” factor come to life with examples of actual (even if fictional) people.

Tell them Where
The setting is important to any story. Your audience is going to want to know the details about where the story is taking place, and it is at this point where you can add sensory detail and imagery, another very good use of language that creates extra entertainment value for your speech.

Now It’s Time to Prepare that Great Story
So, now that you know both how to implement a well-rounded story into your speech, and how to tell an entertaining story, you’ve got the key to adding a lot of spice and zest to your presentation. Everybody loves a good story, after all, so why not use your speech to tell one?

If you need more tips on presentation storytelling, try Visualspiders. They are a team of young presentation design enthusiasts that specialize in both Prezi and Powerpoint services. With over eight years of experience assisting Fortune 500 companies, plus the aspiration to be the trendsetters in all business presentations, their dynamic team passionately works with clients to help deliver high-quality presentations and can help assist you with your needs.

 

ABOUT VISUALSPIDERS

Visualspiders are a team of young design experts who specialize in Powerpoint Presentation Services. We have 8+ years of experience working with Fortune 500 customers. Our aspiration is to be the Trendsetters in business presentations. Our dynamic teams are passionately working to help our client deliver outstanding business presentations.

More more details, write to support@visualspiders.com