When you engage audience in eye contact they think you are sincere, friendly, credible and honest.  This will help your message being listened to and believed.

• You make the audience feel welcome and important with eye contact.  The audience members know you know they are there ie good eye contact is like saying, “I know you are there, and I am speaking to you and you are important”.

• You can maintain the audience’s attention with eye contact.  This is particularly important in long technical presentations.  You can also use eye contact to wake up an audience member.

• With experience learn to hold eye contact rather than give “glancing” eye contact.

• Learn what is an appropriate length of time to maintain eye contact.  Maintaining eye contact on one person for too long may make the recipient feel uncomfortable and embarrassed.

• When speaking to a large audience give solid eye contact to a handful rather than glancing eye contact to everyone. 

• Your eye contact should include everyone and everyone equally.  There is a tendency to fix eye contact on dominating audience members or an audience member who has asked a question.

• Don’t become predictable with where your eye contact is going and don’t concentrate your eye contact on one small section of the room or one side of the room for too long (particularly when you might be using eye contact to keep people’s attention in a long presentation).

Source: www.youthsspeak.com.au