More thoughts on presentations? Well, it’s true, if you google “presentations” you get over 57 million results! Lots of them mention probably things like ‘don’t just read the slides’, ‘keep the word count on each slide to a minimum’, ‘use a sufficiently large font’ – we haven’t counted them all.
But it is tricky to create a great presentation. And clearly there’s no end of people looking for and giving advice. So we’ll join the discussion and share three tips we particularly like.
- Remember, it’s all about the audience! It’s all too easy to fall into the “it’s all about me” trap, especially with company presentations. “We’re 20 years old, we have a turnover of 10 million Euros, 500 employees and 6 offices.”
People can only assimilate so much information at a time, so keep it simple, memorable and relevant. That means a story that addresses what your audience is interested in, not your company statistics.
- Drop the words entirely (on slides that is!). If your audience is reading while you are talking, where’s the communication? After all, you are there with them. If you wanted them to read, why not send a report?
If the subject fits, use mostly pictures, images and graphics. Besides being more engaging, it’s often more memorable.
- Vary the pace. Think films, music, theatre – a great experience isn’t three minutes or three hours of monotony (in the literal sense of the word).
Give your audience variety, surprises, questions to think about, moments to assimilate what’s gone before… You’ll get them more engaged and actively thinking about what you have to say.
