Eye contact is a way to deliver communication signal that someone pay attention to somebody else and also play an important role to emphasize on presentation topic.
Assume each audience is our own friend where you want to tell them something important. Then it will be really important to deliver that important news with an eye contact. If not, then your audience won't take your words seriously. Look them in the eye one by one, especially people who look curious and interested in your presentation.
If you are still too nervous to look into the eyes of the audience, try to stare at the forehead of the audience instead (or skin between the eyes) so you won't be too nervous and still give attention to the audience.
Do brief questions such as asking a comment / experience to audience randomly, hence the eye contact can occur naturally.
Equip yourself with a "presentable" presentation slides. Don't make it harder for audience to pay attention on your slides and yourself by having too wordy slides. Make a good image by having good presentation design and you won't lose the moment to do eye contact with the audience. Too often that audience will focus on reading the slides that are too full of written content. Design your presentation with professionals such as DoctorSlide.com and let your audience keep focus on you who brings up each of the points in the presentation slides.
If you see any audience that looks bored and distracted (for example: playing their mobile phone), don't be panic. You can do a short refreshing moment by having all audience to stretch their body or you can throw casual questions that can ice-break the atmosphere (such as throwing questions that fit with the latest breaking-news and still related to the topic of your presentation of course).
Last but not least, continue to make eye contact even though the first results is not as good as you wish. You will get used to doing eye contact for the next presentation session and occurs naturally every time you are delivering presentation. Good luck!
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Disclaimer: this article originated written in Bahasa and being translated using Google Translate hence please understand if there's any mistake of tenses and/or misunderstanding that occurred. Thank you for reading!
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Bahasa Indonesia
