Give your audience a reason to stay awake. Use interaction.

You’re not a teacher from the year 2000, right?
Back then, droning on for 50 minutes was fine. Remember that teacher who rushed through the syllabus like he got paid per word? You checked the clock, sighed, and waited it out.

From passive listeners to active players
Want your audience to focus, engage, and actually remember something? Let them play. Literally. Let them choose. Guess. React.
Ask rhetorical questions to shift the rhythm. Got a fact or figure?
Turn it into a quiz: What do you think – A, B, or C? 
Just ask: “Want to hear something new?”

Comedian Arnout Van den Bossche nails this.
He asks:
“Raise your hand if you’ve ever sat through a meeting and thought: this could’ve been an email.”
Half the room laughs. The other half raises a hand. His reply? “See? That’s why we get nothing done.”
Boom. Everyone’s in. No one’s passive. People like being involved – it wakes up the brain.
Anything’s better than one-way traffic. Everyone feels addressed. No one’s passive.
People like being involved – it wakes up their brain. As long as it’s not a one-way street, you’re doing it right.
Answer of Arnout: “See? That’s exactly why we get nothing done.”

Why it works
Studies show: when people actively participate, they remember more. Why? Because the brain is lazy. It only stores what it had to work for.
Harvard research (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006) found that participants who had to answer questions remembered 50% more than those who simply reread or listened passively.
And that effect lasted for a full week.

So: ask, prompt, invite.
Even small moments of effort help your message stick.

Want to truly connect with your audience?
Let them do something. Make your story a little bit theirs too.