Eye contact is one of the most significant factors during your presentation. In fact, Eye contact is the most powerful tool to build a connection with your audience.
Many presenters fail to maintain eye contact with their audience. Even many speakers lose their wonderful opportunity by looking back at a screen, up toward the ceiling, or down at the floor.
This may lead to a bad impression during your presentation. No matter how good is your content, if you fail to maintain good eye contact with your audience, your audience will lose their interest in listening to your presentation.
To ease your process of the presentation here are some of the pro tips that will make you a master of eye contact.
Eye Connection
Instead of making just eye contact, make "eye connection" with your audience. If you Spend time with each person, that person feels like you’re just talking to them.
Your audience members will feel that you have genuinely connected with them and that you care about their reaction.
Moreover, having a genuine eye connection will highly engage the audience.
It all lies at seeing your audience. Look at their facial expressions, judge quickly, and render your presentation interactively.
Prepare well for better Eye Contact
Many presenters look up, down, or to the side when struggling to “find the right words” to express a certain thought.
If you have prepared well for your presentation you can go with the flow and obviously you will have definite eye contact with your audience.
Prepare until you are confident with what your presenting. Practice in front of a mirror and you risk disconnecting from your audience.
Better preparation leads to more talking and less time in thinking during your presentation.
Get closer to your Audience for better Eye Contact
A recent study concluded that having minimal distance between the presenter and audience can improve the engagement level.
To reduce the physical distance between you and your audience members, get somewhat closer to them. Try to have a one-on-one kind of conversation between you and every member of your audience.
Stepping forward in the “speaking area", will definitely improve the eye contact between you and your audience.
Say no to Eye Crutches
A good presentation starts with a minimal amount of slides and minimum content in slides.
Don't put lots of text on your slides or write out your entire speech on notes, your eyes will get distracted no matter how hard you resist.
Take these crutches away. Some notes are fine but having your entire speech in notes is not encouraged.
Avoiding these crutches will leads you to maintain proper eye contact with your audience.
Have Bright Lights
During a presentation make sure you have lights all around the room. Having dim lights may lead to drowsiness among your audience.
If your audience members are feeling sleepy, no matter how good your presentation is, they can't have proper eye connection with you.
Of course, your slide visuals demand to turn the lights low, so it’s a tradeoff. But make sure that you don't have dim drowsy lights in the room where are you are presenting.
Make Eye Contact with Every Individual
Spread the adoration by attempting to converse with each person in your crowd.
With extremely enormous crowds, you should concentrate on the individual in the segment you need to lock-in.
By concentrating on that individual, everybody in a sensible range will really feel that you conversing with them.
At first, it may feel difficult to maintain eye connection with each and every individual member of the room. But you once you get the flow you can easily relinquish it.
No matter whether you are in a business presentation, or school or college presentation, maintaining eye contact is seriously an important factor to be followed.
Hope the above tips help you with maintaining eye contact during your presentation. Remember practice is what makes the man perfect. So start practicing and eventually you can render a successful presentation.
