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While giving a presentation can be a nerve-racking experience, when done right, performing at your peak is like hitting the winning homerun in the bottom of the ninth, so Kip Bodnar at HubSpot did us all a favor and culled these ten golden nuggets of presentation advice from the experts who presented at INBOUND 2012 in Boston last week.

1) Understand Your Audience’s Sacrifice

Think about it: if you’re speaking to 100 people for an hour, you’re consuming 100 hours of time. This is time your audience could be spending at the office, with their families, catching up with friends, or working on other projects. So before you utter your first word on stage, understand what your audience has given up for you, and make sure you’ve invested an equal amount of time in preparation to make their time worthwhile and well spent.

2) Be Infotaining

Teaching isn’t enough. Yes, your audience wants to learn, but in order to soak up all the knowledge you’re giving them, they need to be interested and paying attention. This is why it’s important to incorporate some humor and a compelling story into your presentation. In other words, you need to inform your audience in an entertaining way: be infotaining. Furthermore, be personable. Tell personal stories, mention your pets, and mention your kids; find a way to make a personal connection with the audience to keep them engaged.

3) Work the Room

Don’t stand in one spot on the stage for the whole presentation. On the other hand, don’t walk around so much that it’s distracting. Instead, before you begin your talk, pick 4-6 people who are spread out randomly throughout the audience. Then do your best to speak to each of these people during your presentation. This will help you naturally walk around the stage and address all portions of the audience, making everyone in the room feel like they’re a part of your presentation.

Full story at HubSpot.

Tips for spectacular speaking.

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