Using Emotions in Presentations for Better Engagement

To achieve maximum engagement a presentation must have a problem to solve, a relevant story, the solution for the problem, and most importantly, an emotional trigger. It is a proven fact that all the biggest companies in the world have always focused on building a relationship with their customers, rather than focusing on selling their product or service, first. Setting up an emotional connect with the consumer leads to building faith among them and make them come back repeatedly as a permanent.

Presentations being one of the best sources of information and a great method of marketing also need a similar strategy to follow to make the audience stay till the end. An emotional connection with the audience keeps them hooked up throughout the presentation and drive maximum engagement for it. Even when the presentation is shared online, it does work as efficiently as it would do with a speaker. In fact, for online presentations, it is even more important to include the emotional impact so that your presentation gets maximum user engagement. So here we discuss a few effective methods that can help you establish that emotional connection with your audience through your presentation:

Create Audience-centric Content: Every successful business has always given more importance to its consumer rather than its product. If you go look into the ad campaigns of big companies like Apple, you will find how focused these companies were on building the relationship with their consumers. This is why the consumers have got faith in the company, and the iPhone is the best selling smartphone in the whole wide world.

So while panning to design the content for the presentation, target the audience and their needs. You must research well so that you can get to know what your audience might be expecting from your presentation. Try to know the common questions they might have and answer them directly in the presentation. When the audience will find relevant information, they will automatically go through the presentation to the end.

Humour and Compassion: Whether you are presenting the presentation yourself, or sharing it on an online platform, you must go into the minds of the audience, and to keep them engaged, include humour, compassion and empathy to your content. You can’t be serious throughout the presentation with a poker face and expect your audience to listen to you. Making people laugh with good relevant jokes, or touching the emotional chord in their mind, makes them more interested in your content, This also confirms that your audience is into your content and has felt the connection with your content.

Also for an online platform as well, a plain presentation would never be able to keep the audience intact and get the success it seeks. You need to include the content that hit the pain point for the audience and then provide the right solution to them.

Wrap Your Points in Relevant Stories: Storytelling has always been effective. It is one of the best ways to occupy the audience into your content. The story does not have to be from a famous personality, but a relatable story from your personal experience can also do wonders for your presentation. You can use daily life examples or any effective quote to validate your points in the presentation. A story having different emotions make the audience understand the theme of the content better and becomes more interested in it as well.

Use a powerful combination of Visuals and Text: Since visuals are better at explaining, a creative combination of visuals and the text is the most efficient method to establish that emotional connection with your audience. You can use a small video, image including a text, gif and other visuals that represent distinct emotion and is related to the context of the content such that it engages the audience in a better way. You can also go for using relation diagrams having wider context, creative icon emojis or animations to draw a particular emotion on the presentation slide that the audience can relate to.

Using Colours to Trigger Emotions: Every colour has a hidden emotion behind it. The colours are capable of evoking the emotions in a very effective way. Like the grey or maybe the dull brown colour shows sadness, whereas the lemon green or pink colour will represent a brighter emotion. The colours with their warm or cool tone can change the entire meaning of the slide content. The colours are really helpful in setting up the theme for a presentation, so you can easily hint the audience about the emotion the slide content would be representing and mould them accordingly.

Ask Questions and Let the Audience Answer: During a live presentation, the questions can help you make sure that the audience has been listening to you from the start and is interested in what you are saying. Questions give proof of audience engagement. These make the audience feel involved and provides the opportunity to the presenter to interact with them and establish a bond. For an online presentation, too, you can put some relevant questions in it, such that the audience is encouraged to answer those questions. But there is a method to pose a question so that whenever you put up a question, the audience must readily reply instead of going blank. A question must not pop out of the blue. It has to be relevant to the content and out of the information you gave through your presentation.

An emotional bond with your audience is necessary when you want to deliver the right message to the right people. Try to make the presentation incorporated with emotions and see the results.