Nice big grand title I know. To be honest there’s no way I can pull that off in one blog post, there are loads of great sites and books that do that already – Presentation Zen is the best place to begin, after that check out Nancy Duarte (you’ll thank me for it later).
What I want to do is give a few tips which will improve your presentations at work.
Start by creating a Mind Map of your presentation
Start by creating a Mind Map. You can either go old school and use pen and paper, or go for my preferred method an app – I’m currently using Mindly, which is really intuitive. Creating a Mind Map rather than wading straight in with PowerPoint means that you can develop your ideas quickly and with focus. Mind mapping enables you to have lots of ideas and see connections quickly. Create for generating and editing your ideas.
Write out the whole presentation
Write your document. This may seem like the last thing you need to do, you’ll be eager to open PowerPoint and get stuck in I know. Writing your document, based on your Mind Map means that you’ll focus and really drill down to the essence of your subject. Start be getting the headings from the mapping stage in the document, then add all the detail. This process will help you create exactly what you’ll say when you present. Writing it all down helps you to internalise your presentation.
Now you can create your presentation
Now open PowerPoint. Once you have your document finalised you can now open PowerPoint (phew!). Make a set of blank slides and add the important headers from your document (see I said it was a good idea). Once you have those you can begin to look for strong images which make accentuate your headings. Depending on how strong your imagery is, you may even be able to get rid of the headline altogether. If you really have to have words, ensure you have no more than six per slide. Seth Godin has some great advice on this.
Hopefully, these tips will go some way to making your next presentation better.
Here’s one final tip for you – Never – ever – give your document to your audience before you present, they will begin to read it ignoring you as you begin. Always keep it to the end.
Do you have any tips or tricks for presentations?
