Effective presentation skills for academics: 12 tips for delivering an AMAZING talk

Giving effective and engaging talks is a SKILL not a TALENT! This post contains short videos, graphics and a 27-minute recording. 12 easy-to-implement tips for giving an awesome academic presentation.

When I was a PhD student I was extremely nervous (and also extremely bad) at giving talks. But, over time, I learned some KEY SKILLS which anyone can implement to get better and better at presentations. I’ve distilled this information for you in this blog post: 12 tips for creating better presentations! I hope this information will be useful: Giving effective and engaging talks is a SKILL not a TALENT (= You can learn to get better and better and better!).

Your message: Why listen to this talk?

If you have five seconds to spare today then just ask yourself a quick question: How often have you sat through a lecture or public presentation and not known WHY you were there? WHY you were listening? WHAT was the point? Importantly: Did the speaker tell you at the start of the presentation WHY you should listen to their talk?

I bet you that most of the presentations you’ve watched recently will have started with a series of slides that show a title and an outline for the talk but that the speaker did not tell actually tell you WHY you should give up your time to listen. This is a basic mistake that it very, very, very often made when people give presentations of all kinds: Please remember that if you start your talks by telling people WHY they should listen, what they can expect to gain, then you will very quickly capture their attention and energize them. Your audience will be much more attentive and will want to be there: They will understand immediately that they are going to gain some useful information, perhaps to advance their careers or develop their education. And that’s the point. People will be interested and ready to listen to you if they realize that your presentation contains important information.

Who are the audience? Who is going to be listening to your talk?

This is always the first question to ask before starting to prepare a talk. Because the kind of presentation you’ll put together will be different depending on the audience, their experience, and level of interest in your research.

Timing: How long are you going to have to talk for?

We’ve all been in conference talks when the presenter has not prepared properly …. They have to skip through slides to get to the end in time while the session moderator looms over there. Rule of Thumb: One slide per minute and leave time for questions!

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