What is the best way to place visual aids?

Public Speaking:  The Top 6 Tips for Using Visual Aids in Your Presentation

People remember 30% of what they hear. 40% of what they see and 50% of what they see and hear.

Thus, using visual aids when doing a presentation is a fantastic way to boost what people remember of what you say.

The key is to remember that presentations are communication.  The danger is to let the visual aid take over your presentation and communication.  Remember, the most powerful visual aid is you.  No set of power point slides or other graphics can be as engaging as the speaker.

Thus, here are some tips to keep the balance just right between you, the speaker as center of focus, and the wonderful tool of using visual aids.

Tips for Successfully Incorporating Presentation Aids into Your Speech

1. Talk to your audience rather than to the screen. Don’t turn your back to the audience.
2. Concentrate on maintaining eye contact with the audience.
3. Avoid putting the aid directly behind you. Place it to one side so that the entire audience can see it and you can move away from it and still face the audience.
4. Display the aid only when you are ready to discuss it.
5. Incorporate any aid you plan to use into your practice session. Continue to practice with the aids until you are confident that you can handle them without causing undue distractions.
6. Best way to use a pointer is that once you’ve indicated the point you wish to make with the pointer, then put it down.

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You need to learn a lot of tips and techniques if you want to be a powerful public speaker. One of the most common tips for giving a powerful speech you will find is creating a presentation with visual aids. In fact, most speakers will tell you that a presentation without visual aids is pretty risky.

Using visual aids during a presentation does more than entertain the audience. It also helps them remember facts, and it will also prompt your memory if you suddenly go blank. They're also useful for listeners who have some trouble retaining verbal information, and need a visual representation. You and your information will be far more memorable if you take the time to make relevant and interesting visual aids.

But we’ve never discussed exactly how to use visual aids properly with your presentation. Sure, visual aids are a powerful tool for any speaker. But if you don’t utilize them correctly, you may detract rather than add to your presentation. If you think back, I’m sure you can remember a speech like that. More than likely, the presenter’s visual aids were so irrelevant or distracting that the speaker would have been better off without them.

If you have to make presentations, and want to use all your tools to their greatest effects, try the following techniques.

1. Make sure everybody can see it

This seems obvious, but you’ll be surprised how many people make this mistake. When you're doing a presentation with visual aids, you need to ensure that every person in the room can see them easily. When people make this mistake, it's usually because they didn't know enough about the venue to start with.

As you've probably heard before, to give a great public speech, you must always know the layout of the venue. This will allow you to compensate for any problems as early as possible. So, don’t make this amateur mistake. To an audience member, there's nothing more annoying than being unable to see the visual aids properly. And this is especially true when the visual aids contain crucial facts or explanations. If your audience misses this extra information, you will probably lose them entirely.

2. Explain the visual aids as you show them

There’s one key principle you have to remember when giving a presentation with visual aids. And that principle is that your audience can either read text or listen to you, but not both. This means that when you first present a visual aid, you should explain its content and relevance immediately. If there’s too much of a delay between the presentation of the visual aid and your explanation, then the visual aid is not an aid, but a distraction instead.

Related: Own The Stage: Here's Why Your Presentation Needs A Twitter-Friendly Headline

3. Take the visual aid down once you’re done with it

You need to remove the visual aid as soon as you're finished with it, because otherwise some of your audience will probably keeping staring at it, or read it again. And while they're doing that, they aren't listening to you. If you want to keep their attention on you, put the visual part of your presentation away when you're not talking about it.

4. Go minimalist

Most people are guilty of overcrowding their PowerPoint slides when they give a presentation with this type of visual aid. This might actually be the number one sin of public speakers in the corporate world. How many times have you been at some sort of corporate presentation, only to be greeted by slide after slide with what seems like 200 words each? And if you thought about it later, I bet you realized that you didn't read one entire page, let alone all of them.

This is a major problem if you want your speech to have a solid impact on its audience. Here’s a good rule of thumb to follow when it comes to making a good presentation with visual aids. It’s called the 1-6-6 Rule. Here’s how it works: maximum of one idea per slide, six bullet points at the most, and a maximum of six words per bullet point. This is a pretty simple set of rules to follow. However, it's not meant to be restrictive, or an absolute. Instead, use it as a guideline to make good visual aids that will be easy for your audience to read and understand.

5. Prepare for problems

Murphy’s Law states that if something can go wrong, it probably will. While visual aids can be a great benefit to your overall presentation, you should always, and I do mean always, be prepared to present without them. Don't let them become a crutch for your speech. If you can’t get your message across without the use of visual aids, then you need to go back to the drawing board. Again, visual aids are just that, aids. You should be able to communicate the main points of your presentation without them if you have to.

6. Don't make yourself redundant

If you need to be able to make your speech without visual aids, it also means you shouldn't have too many of them. There’s a certain point in a presentation with visual aids where you cross a line, and should just mail your slides to the audience instead. This will save everyone some time, you won't have to go through the hassle of presenting to an audience, and your audience doesn’t have to sit through your presentation. It's almost a win all round. But you want to avoid this, so don’t let your visual aids make you redundant. Instead, use them strategically to enhance the delivery of your message. This will stop them from becoming your message.

The number one thing you can take away from this

In today’s digital age, you would be hard-pressed to find a speaker who didn't use visual aids during their speech. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, as I said, they are a hugely helpful tool. But they have to be used the right way, or they can cause more problems than they solve.

Related: Infographic: How To Give Better Presentations

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According to research, ideas presented graphically are easier to comprehend and remember than those presented as words. But using visual aids in presentations can be tricky. 

Attention spans are limited, and listeners can only focus on so much at one time. Plus there’s an overwhelming amount of visual aids available—PowerPoints, infographics, charts, graphs, images, video . . .

How can you effectively use visual aids in presentations? We’re sharing three tips below. 

1. Start With the Message

The visual should never deliver your primary message. To avoid lazily relying on visuals, begin by writing down that primary message. Then, after your primary message is written, add your visuals. 

As you begin finding and adding visuals, place them strategically. For example, reciting a bunch of statistics may bore your audience, but displaying a chart or graph is a great way to capture their attention.

Make sure your visual aids are “on message.” There are a few exercises you can try to stay on message. One is to try pairing your visuals with a short caption. If you can write a short caption for your visuals, and that caption reinforces your primary message, then the visuals are actually adding value.

You can also try removing your visuals from the presentation. If the message doesn’t change when the visuals are removed, the visual aids are only adding fluff. 

2. Keep Your Audience in Mind

Visual aids in presentations should appeal to your audience. Before inserting visuals, think about the group you’ll be presenting to. 

Use visual aids that your audience can relate to. Think about the average age of your audience while crafting your presentation. Just as a millennial probably wouldn’t recognize a video clip from Perry Mason, an older crowd may not appreciate a clip from The Office. Make sure the visual aids you use will be relatable and enjoyable.

On top of that, keep your audience in mind when it comes to visuals for data. There are a plethora of charts and graphs to choose from, making it difficult to clearly display data. If you’re struggling to get your point across, try using Andrew Abela’s handy tool “Chart Suggestions—A Thought-Starter.” This PDF displays a variety of charts, along with an explanation of what they display. It’s a great resource to help you chose the right chart for your presentation. 

3. Cut the Clutter 

Visual aids should be easy to process and in most cases, less is more. Make sure your visuals are clear and easily understood. You’re trying to get a message across, not impress listeners with your design skills. 

It’s hard to cut the clutter with the overwhelming amount of slide deck templates available. To avoid creating messy slides, sketch your visual on a paper before opening your presentation software program. Remove any unnecessary information on the screen until your visual looks identical to what you’ve sketched. This will keep things simple and remove unnecessary elements.

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A good example of cutting the clutter is PechaKucha. A PechaKucha presentation requires a structure of 20 slides for 20 seconds each. This leaves little time for reading text, so the visuals must simply re-enforce what the presenter is saying.

While you don’t have to follow the PechaKucha structure, you should only use one visual aid for each point or slide. And if you choose to show a video, keep it short. Remember that you’re the one presenting, not the video. 

Visual aids have the power to bring your presentation to life. Remember to first craft your message, then insert visual aids. Ensure that each visual appeals to your audience and serves a distinct purpose. 

By following these tips, you’ll be able to structure and simplify your presentation in order to make the most of your visual aids. 

If you’re interested in more communication content, check out How to Build a Successful Presentation Structure