Create A Presentation That Rocks A guideline for public speakers
If you have ever been asked to give a presentation, then you know the task might feel overwhelming. Some of the biggest challenges that can be encountered when creating a presentation include creating engaging content, format issues such as font size and alignment, time constraints, technical difficulties, and properly presenting the data. However, if you don't want to get stressed out, then you will need to invest some time in getting your materials organized. And the first step you will need to take is to gain some insights on who your audience is.
Analyzing your audience first helps you determine what they expect from training, communication and support. Find out what the like, dislike and already know about the topic so it doesn't become a barrier to learning. Tailor your message to these specific needs by telling stories and contrasting what they know with the imminent changes.
Define your learning objectives up front. According to Dan Smith of Keynote Speakers, it is important to align all content back to this main idea and eliminate extraneous details that could confuse your audience. Start with an outline. You can deconstruct this from older materials or materials you plan to leverage or you can start from scratch. The idea is to organize information into three or four points.
Structure your training presentation with a beginning, middle and end that represents a call to action and do something, such as changing their behavior. Include detailed graphs, charts and procedures as separately attached documents. Don't recreate or copy them into your slides. Learn more about using Adobe InDesign for your presentation here.
Create pages that reflect one idea and take no more than five minutes to explain. Have someone else listen to your explanation and get feedback about to convey it. Revise your slide and script accordingly. If you have more information to cover, create another slide. Add animation, video and free visual images that reflect your content to make the slides more readable and attractive. This helps people remember your message.
According to John Rogan of Motivational Speaker, it is important to avoid putting too much on a slide. This distracts people from listening to you. Stay away from humor and unprofessional clip art or videos. They don't add to your message. In general, limit your slides to five bullet points with five words per bullet. If you use a screen capture, display it without distorting it. Use highly contrasting colors, such as white text on a dark color background, to enable learners to read your material clearly.
Creating a winning business presentation starts by having a clear goal in mind and a well-crafted, organized structure. Start by researching the topic you will be discussing to make sure you have the necessary information to present. When constructing your presentation, focus on presenting the most important points first and use visuals such as graphs, charts, and tables to summarize data. "Use storytelling techniques to help people understand and to make a connection with the information" suggests Sean Adams of Motivation Ping. Practicing in front of an audience can help you fine-tune your presentation, and be sure to leave time for questions.
Prepare for your presentation by reading the salient points and organizing your thoughts before you go on stage or before you present in front of groups. You should know each detail about your presentation well enough that you can provide it to someone else without looking at any materials. This also means being prepared for questions not only from the audience but also from the presenter if you are assisting. Have answers ready for all questions, including those that may be difficult to answer or make you feel uncomfortable by raising certain topics.
These are all very valid adaptations on the basic forms of a speech. To make sure your talk reaches its primary talk, lay down the outline or the “skeleton” of the speech with your primary goal in mind. You might even “reverse engineer” your speech by writing the conclusion first. The conclusion might be, “And so ladies and gentlemen, I hope you can see that using mass transit will do a lot to help the ozone layer”. From there you can back up into the body of the speech and lay down, again at the skeleton layer what your three points of the body of your speech is.
With that skeleton done, you can go back and start writing the speech from the beginning and use any or all of the public speaking approaches to layer that on top of the core reason for the talk. You can use humor, inspirational stories, urban myths or facts from history to help your speech be fun, compelling and attention grabbing.
By following this advice, you can create training presentations that are both easy to teach and easy to learn. Additionally, it makes it easier for multiple people to use the same training material to deliver sessions at different locations at different times.
Clear, concise training materials take time to create and revise. The return on investment includes better learner retention and more learner productivity. Performance improves at a faster rate and leaves your company in a better position to achieve your strategic goals.