A successful PowerPoint presentation is always a mixture of professionalprepared information and good entertainment. If you use humor as a stylistic device for your presentation, you can attract attention, draw your audience to your side and somit gain many plus points. But beware: bad calibers can also quickly ruinall your work.
There may maybe individual exceptions,but almost all people like to laugh. Who makes them laugh, they usually like. So it would be a missed opportunity if you do not use humor as a stylistic device for your next presentation.
Humor makes your presentation easier to digest
Regardless of how dry your topic may beyour audience wants to see an interesting, entertaining presentation. If your audience takes time for you and your presentation topic, then a minimum of entertainment is also expected. This combination of expertise and entertainment is also called infotainment. Shouldyou succeed, apinchof humorto weave into your lecture and thereby bring your audience to smile or even laugh, you collect plus pointswith your audience. But how do you now build humor elements into a perhaps serious presentation topica?
Humor to introduce your presentation topic
You can start your event with a joke and then move right on to the topic. This loosens up the situation and creates a good mood. If this is not possible, select parts of your presentation where you can refer to some funny experiences. When you include humor in your presentation, you give the audiencea chance to get to know you better. Uand they willvery likelywant to hear more from you once they have established a connection with you. Interesting facts mixed with a pinch of humor and surprise can provide for a higher attention.
In presentations it comes on the topic of humor on the right dosage
For most speeches and presentations, a maximum of three jokes is quite enough. After all, you want to present a topic and not be remembered as a comedian. There are topics that tolerate a little more humor, and if you spontaneously come up with a really funny anecdote on your topic, then you can also to the bestgive, even if you have already brought three gags.
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Where do you find good sources of humor?
When talking about a specialized topic, such as the production of ice cream, consider whatamusing experiences you yourself may have had in this context. Humorful real-life cases, are a good source. You can also use existing jokes. The classic joke teller is very good at remembering jokes and only needs one cue to get going. If you are not a proven natural in this regard, you can write down jokes and memorize them. When doing this, try not to use trite jokes that have been around for many years. Try to find jokes that are still relatively unspent. For example, because they pick up a current event of the day. You can also modify well-known jokes by changing names, people, objects or places according to your needs.
Do not use political, racist, sexist or otherwise strongly discriminatory jokes. Even if you should be an opponent of political correctness, you must keep in mind that your audience may be very sensitive to crude humor. Again, you need to weigh who your target audience is. For example, if you were to present to members of a particular party, a joking dig at a rival party is likely to be received positively.
For specialist topics with specialist audiences, the insiderjoke
There are certain jokes that is only understandable to a specific milieu, professional group or community. Non-specialists do not understand the context and thus can not do anything with the point. Such jokes are suitable, for example, if you want to show in a humorous way that you yourself are also “from the subject” and know your way around.
Are there presentation topics that do not tolerate humor?
Of course, there are some topics where jokes are completely inappropriate. If you for example refer about plant closures, job cuts or salary cuts, jokes are out of the question. If youreaudienceisin any way personally negatively affected bythat, what you talk about in your presentation, wtheyprobably won’t be in the moodfor funny interludes.
Test your jokes before you get in front of an audience
The presenter does not always have the ability to accurately place the appropriate joke at a desired point in the presentation. Therefore, test your punchlines in front of a test audience. Ask colleagues or friends if they can give you feedback. Of course, you can also work out the perfect use of humor together with your presentation agency for the next presentation. There you have the security that the experts know exactly where and how a joke fits particularly well for your presentation goals.
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