Self-Presentation: How Should You Tell Listeners About Yourself?
communication
Normally speakers use the “Thank you for your attention!” slide for two reasons:
These tasks are certainly important, but the point is the way they are fulfilled, and this is where the problem arises: a slide with such a cliché contains no crucial sense and, sadly, irritates the audience.
And if to translate this cliché from rhetorical to human language, it means: “I didn't have enough time to button up with something fancy, so just get by with this senseless formality”.
Firstly, it's not necessary to prepare a separate slide just to say “thank you”; instead, a few sincere thanking words would be more than enough.
Secondly, at the preparation stage, it's important to anticipate the reaction of the audience after your speech is done. For example, eventually, you expect people to subscribe to your social media, or to click the relevant link, or just to save some useful checklist. Any of such goals would greatly and naturally fit the idea of your last slide, as well as accomplish your speech.
Every speech has its key messages — the thoughts a speaker wants to convey to their audience. The challenge here is that too much of content or too many follow-up questions often blur the focus and make it difficult to identify the main points of the speech.
To bring the audience back to the main message at the end of the “show”, just sum it all up briefly and transparently.
“The main appeal of my presentation is: start courageously, proceed with discipline, and finish vigorously. This is your key to success!”
“Remember, at the beginning of my presentation, I told you about the student who wasn't doing well in her speeches? Within a couple of months, she passed an argumentation bot, took part in various debates, and completed a communications course. She also recently made a speech at TED talks! Let's check out the video and afterwards I'll answer all of your questions.”
A tip: if you decide to use storytelling, we advise you to do the final slide in darker colors — it will help focus people on the narrative. Otherwise, there is a risk that the light background, various pictures, and text will distract the audience from the speaker's speech ending.
At the beginning, speakers often make a summary, telling you point by point what their following speech will be about. The same technique can be used at the end of the performance in order to highlight the answers to questions that were revealed along the performance.
A tip: place a camera icon on the last slide and invite the audience to take a pic or a screenshot. In this way, your speech outline, condensed to the main points, will be saved and thus — more helpful.
What shall we talk about today?
1) How to begin a performance?
2) How to continue?
3) How to finish?
4) What's next?
What was today’s speech about?
1) To begin — make audience familiar with the context.
2) To continue, state the main point along with some arguments.
3) To conclude — sum it all up.
4) To give a hint of “what comes next,” just explain what the goal and the benefits are.
The closure of the speech is the perfect place for a CTA.
Metaphor is a great guide. By using it, one can easily incorporate stories and images into a speech, so that it sounds perfectly clear and natural. At the same time, metaphors also is used to put an impressive end to a speech.
The main thing is not to overdo with it, just as not to introduce any new topics when finalizing your narrative. This can dilute the focus, distract or even confuse.
It is also helpful to use a verbal or visual metaphor that has already been mentioned in the presentation, so that the last slide will summarize the speech and give you an opportunity to "quit" through a revealing image. Let's say the main part of your presentation was dedicated to the virtual assistant called Keanu, then it would be nice to insert a picture of him with a motivational phrase at the end.
Here we suggest two ways.
"If you want always to stay in a good shape and not feel thirsty, just drink healthy stuff!"
"Before the speech, I thought to myself: if you had an opportunity to memorize just one thing today, what should it be? So, I decided that, in such case, what I definitely would like you to keep in mind is this diagram. If you really understand it and learn how to implement it, then all the rest will start working just automatically. So, may your implementations be successful!"
Wise Piece of Advice
We have suggested five helpful ways of substituting "Thank you for your attention" slide. But that's not the limit! There certainly exist plenty of other ways to do it. The main thing is to keep in mind the goal of the speech and the utility of the final slide.
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