The average human has a shorter attention span than that of a goldfish. It’s just 8 seconds! Yet an average presentation takes 20 minutes and includes more than 15 slides. Does it really surprise you then that most presentations fail to leave any impact? Or even keep the audience engaged?
You might have an interesting idea and exquisite slides to tell your story. Yet, the presentation might still fall flat. Unfortunately, most presentation tools focus on making your slides prettier. But they do nothing to address the real challenges you face: knowing what works, knowing how well you connected with your audience, and knowing how to present better.
We do a lot of presentations at Zoho, and we understand the challenge presenters – and their audiences – go through every time a talk is delivered. So we wanted to change the presentation landscape and build a solution that will forever change the way we deliver presentations and change the way we interact and engage with our audience.
Introducing, Zoho ShowTime – a web and mobile app focused completely on making better presenters out of speakers. ShowTime brings interactivity into presentations by connecting speakers with their audiences. It helps you keep things interesting, while becoming a better presenter.
Here’s how ShowTime will revolutionize your presentations.
1. Before your talk
Start with your PowerPoint or PDF files: The idea behind ShowTime is unique. But when it comes to creating your presentations, there’s no new learning involved and hence no change in your existing routine. Simply upload your PowerPoint presentation or a PDF file in to ShowTime and get started. Now, what if you don’t have, or haven’t created a presentation? Well then, you can always create a new one from within ShowTime using our powerful online editor, Zoho Show.
Present using your laptop, smartphone or both: Have you ever felt chained to your laptop or the podium while presenting? Well, then it’s time to break free. ShowTime allows you to deliver your presentations from laptops or mobile devices. It’s easy to switch from one mode to the other, without any hassle, whenever you wish.
Turn your audience to active participants: ShowTime sets up a key that you can share with your audience. It doesn’t matter whether they are in front of you or an ocean away. They can listen in and participate wherever they be. All they need is a laptop or smartphone to join your talk. They can simply type in the key and and now become your avid listener.
2. During your talk
Give your audience a voice: Your audience can view your presentations from any device and any location. In front of you, from your office in Geneva, or from their home in Denver. They can go back and see previous slides whenever they wish to, like specific slides – telling you what worked, ask questions anonymously to the presenter instead of feeling shy or staying away from the spotlight, and rate presentations at the end of the show – telling you precisely how each attendee enjoyed your session.
Do more than just talk, interact: How about the presenters? Well, as a presenter, you can walk away from the podium and navigate through the slide deck using a mobile phone, get notifications that keep you informed of viewer-activity, project audience questions to the big screen to drive meaningful discussions and use the Engagement Meter to get a live feel of the pulse of the audience.
3. After your talk
Measure your presentation performance: When you finish your talk, ShowTime leaves you with a detailed analysis of your talk in the analytics dashboard! You can see the slides that worked, the slides where your audience spent the most time, your overall performance rating, and much more. In short, the analytics dashboard gives you a summary of your presentation strengths and weaknesses and helps you set benchmarks for your presentation performance.
Showcase your presentation skills: ShowTime also sets you up with a dedicated speaker profile page that you can edit to showcase your expertise as a presenter. This can be made visible to your audience so they know you better in terms of your skills, credentials and how your recent talks performed. Or perhaps an old colleague may just stroll up after the conversation to have a word!!
Epilogue
We believe anyone can be a great presenter. No doubt, they will need to work on it. But the right tools that bring in the right information will certainly give them the edge. Thanks to ShowTime, it’s finally easy to turn those boring presentations to meaningful conversations now!
If you wish to make an impact with your talk, we would recommend you to try ShowTime. It’s absolutely free to use. It doesn’t matter if you are a professional presenter, a teacher, a student, a soft skills trainer, a project manager or someone who just wants to deliver engaging presentations – ShowTime is for all.
Happy Presenting!