Especially when you are delivering a long presentation or a presentation requiring the audience to offer opinions or solutions—and in situations where the audience is not used to sitting through a presentation—creating a method of interacting with the audience (either initially or throughout your presentation) can be crucial. In fact, every presentation benefits by getting the audience involved to some degree. The more they "invest" in the subject matter, the more important it becomes to them.

Here are eight suggestions for ways to structure your presentation to encourage interaction.

1. Twenty Questions
Begin your presentation with a brief introduction, and then distribute to the audience a true-or-false quiz of about 20 questions on your topic. The quiz serves as an outline of your entire presentation. As you answer each question, you are moving through the sections of your speech.

2. Audience Poll
Introduce a topic to the audience and then take a poll of audience members relating to the subject. Sample questions might be:

"How many of you have experience with this?"
"How many of you have had problems in finding...?"
"Has anyone found a really effective way to...?"

Then ask audience members to tell you about problems, concerns, successes, etc., relating to your question. You are likely to have considered these issues yourself and are ready to give advice on them. Use one or more of the audience's answers as a jumping-off point for your presentation.

3. Top-Ten List
Hand your audience a list of products, services, issues, people, places—whatever may relate to the topic of your presentation-and ask them to rank the items on the list 1 through 10, with 1 being the best (in their opinions) and 10 being the worst. Then have them compare their rankings with those of a person sitting next to them.

Discuss the reasons why their opinions vary so much; and use these reasons to transition to what broader public polling has revealed about your product, service or issue.

4. Question Transitions
As you go through your presentation, ask a question as a way of transitioning from one topic area or one thought to another. Gather answers from your audience and move from their responses into the next, related part of your presentation.

For example, in discussing how to dress for success, you may move from a segment on fabrics to a segment on colors by asking, "Now, can anyone name for me the one color to avoid on television?"

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6. Consumer Reports
Include within your speech some comments from people like those in your audience about issues relating to the subject matter of your presentation. The most effective way to do this is through videotape, but the comments also can be presented in words and pictures on slides, overheads, computer-generated programs like PowerPoint, flip charts or boards.

Use these man-on-the-street-style comments to establish the public's general opinion on a topic and ask individual audience members if they agree. Then, in your speech, give arguments for both sides of an issue. Tell the audience which side you favor and why.

7. Visuals
Use visuals to outline and highlight key points or questions from the audience to guide your presentation. You may, for example, use a flip chart or electronic white board to write down responses from the audience and then refer to those responses as you go through your speech. You may use slides, overheads or electronic information on the screen in a way that organizes your thoughts visually under the appropriate headings.

If you are discussing a primarily visual topic, use a computer, slides, videotape, enlarged photos or other methods to gain audience understanding by showing, not just telling, your topic.

8. Phil the Audience
Deliver the majority of your presentation as you stand within the audience, Phil Donahue-style. If you have a large audience, you will need a wireless clip-on microphone. In a small audience, you will not need a mike.

Talk directly to several people at a time as you move through your presentation. Ask them questions (repeat the questions if they can't be heard by others). Hand out samples or information, hold up products, use visuals to support you—make the whole experience very informal and interactive.

Steve Friedman is Chief Executive Trainer for Franco Public Relations Group. For more information on Franco, contact us at info@franco.com or by phone at 313.567.2300 in Detroit or 702.450.9903 in Las Vegas.

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