With so much information to process these days, people are not able to focus very well. As a presenter, it is your job to organize information to keep the audience’s attention. You have to pay attention to small details from their perspective. This article explains how organizing information properly helps people understand and focus on your message.

With so much information to process these days, people are not able to focus very well. As a presenter, its your job to organize information in the presentation to keep the audience's attention. You have to pay attention to small details from the perspective of the audience. This article explains how organizing information properly helps people understand and focus on your message. <h3><strong>Please Read The Slide</strong></h3> Some presenters like to tell their audience to kindly read the slide. This is done because the presenter wants the audience to know those things before they continue with the presentation. Presenters don't usually do this because they want to help the audience. Usually, they just want to make their job easier. If that is you, then consider dividing such a slide into two parts. Once containing concise but important information only, and the other containing the explanation. <h3></h3> <h3><strong>Repetition of Subject Matter</strong></h3> Many presenters do this quite often in their presentations. They want to summarize what they're saying using bullet points, but they have to keep mentioning certain topics over and over again. You may be drawing comparisons by explaining the before and after; similarities, or differences. In that case, you should not use a bullet points list, and instead try organizing the points side by side on a comparison table. This makes it much easier to understand the relation. <h3><strong>Continued..</strong></h3> Many presenters continue a topic in multiple slides. They do this due to the fact they ran out of space on the previous slide. Writing <em>Continued..</em> as the title of the slide is not the best way to do this though. You're basically asking the audience to remember what you showed them in the previous slide. Depending on the audience, some people might not have been able to do that. They are left listening and waiting for the next slide to introduce the next topic. An alternative to doing this would be to make a title for each slide. Try explaining your point by summarizing it on the slide using a graph, a chart, or some other visual representation. You can try dividing the topic into short sub-topic slides. <em>Image Courtesy:</em> <em> In a presentation to students and parents... by <a title="User:Tomwsulcer" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tomwsulcer">Tomwsulcer</a> [<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en" target="_blank">CC BY 3.0</a>] via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Summit_High_School_Presentation.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a></em>  

Please Read The Slide

Some presenters like to tell their audience to kindly read the slide. This is done because the presenter wants them to know important information before they continue with the presentation. Usually, it is because they want to make their job easier. If that is you, then consider dividing such a slide into two parts. Once containing concise but important information, and the other containing the explanation.

Repetition of Subject Matter

Many presenters do this quite often in their presentations. They want to summarize what they’re saying using bullet points, but they have to keep mentioning certain topics over and over again. You may be drawing comparisons like before and after; similarities, or differences. In that case, you should not use a bullet points list, and instead try organizing the points on a comparison table. This makes it much easier to understand the relation.

Continued..

Many presenters continue a topic through multiple slides. They usually do this because they ran out of space on the previous slide. Titling a slide as Continued.. is not the best way. You’re asking the audience to remember what you showed them in the previous slide. Depending on the audience, some people might not remember parts of the previous slide. They are left listening and waiting for the next slide to introduce the next topic.

An alternative to doing this would be to make a title for each slide. Try explaining your point by summarizing it on the slide using a graph, a chart, or some other visual representation. Try dividing the topic into short sub-topic slides.

Image Courtesy:

 In a presentation to students and parents… by Tomwsulcer [CC BY 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons