Applause and clapping in presentations

Applause is a good way to get feedback from your audience and in fact there are some audience monitoring systems that use this way to monitor the final impression of the audience after a conference or presentation. This, plus other facial recognition technology in PowerPoint presentations can bring some interesting information about how well or bad you have performed a PowerPoint presentations.

But now the question is, how to get applause from the audience? Definitely performing an effective presentation is a good tip but there are many other.

Measure the energy crowd

Energy from the crowd can be measured. If you have performed a good presentation and keep your audience active and stand up, then they will respond with a good applause that you will never forgive. On the other side, if the presentation or conference was too boring, the applause level would be lower and this can be a good signal of feedback that we need to get in order to improve our presentation for the next time. Hearing back at the sounds made from the guests can say a lot about the presentation. Were they laughing or clapping? Of course, you as a presenter will be happy to encourage applause from the audience. But, how can read the applause?

Psychology and applause

We can see applause and clapping as a psychological feedback. It can be measured as a crowd psychology that helps the audience show appreciation about your presentation, validate their understanding and share a common bond with others. Whether you’re giving a PowerPoint presentation or leading an orchestra, applause will usually boost your confidence and lead your crowd to become more in sync with you and what you’re talking about during a public speaking or conference.

If the audience get something beyond their expectations then they will be tempted to clap. Clapping is a way of communication that lets the people in the crowd to return you what they got during the presentation. In other words, the signal of clapping can be equaled with the quality of your presentation. More clapping means your presentation was ok, less clapping means the presentation quality should be improved.

Of course there are other factors that we need to add to the equation. For example the mood, how tired the audience is after spending lot of hours in a conference or meeting, etc. But in a rough sense we can see applause as a feedback for our presentation.

Next time, we will cover other interesting topics for example who to get applause from the crowd during a PowerPoint presentation.