Overcome The Presentation Nerves
How speaker notes can help you overcome anxiety before and during your presentation
I recently realized that there is something that could play an important role in the presentation design process to support the speaker before and during the presentation — speaker notes. Especially now that nobody has to present in front of an audience, speaker notes can you help you deliver your virtual presentation effectively.
What are the speaker notes and why should you use them?
Depending on the presentation tool that you’re using, it’s usually an option that you need to enable. Once enabled, you’ll see two different versions of your presentation on two different screens — presentation and speaker notes.
While preparing for your presentation, speaker notes help you organize your thoughts. Writing them down helps keep your presentation to time (read more about time management here). During your presentation, you could use them to remain on topic and sometimes display content that is outside of your slides without having to interrupt the flow of your presentation.
I find speaker notes to be great for storytelling because they help you keep a natural flow between your slides and connect them together organically. What’s even more interesting is that you could use the notes to prepare answers for some of the questions you might get asked by your audience. Remember that you don’t always have to put everything on your slides. Sometimes it’s useful to use speaking notes instead.
Finally, speaker notes can come in handy after your presentation. You can use these notes to send an offline version of your presentation afterwards. Read more about speaker notes here.
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