Seven Secrets of Good Presentations
Over the last few months, I’ve given a small pile of presentations related to The Simple Dollar, my upcoming book, and other topics. Along the way, I’ve learned several things about what constitutes a good presentation and what constitutes a failure. Here are the seven key things I’ve learned, which you can take away to make your own presentations better.
1. Lots of words on the screen is bad. If you have a lot of words on the screen, people stop paying attention to what you’re saying and start reading the words on the screen. I suppose this is fine if you don’t want people to pay any attention to you at all, but that’s usually the opposite of the effect you want.
I had this problem with my early presentations, where I loaded down slides with words. As I spoke and looked out over the crowd, I could see a large number of them quite obviously tuning me out and reading the words on the screen. Then, when they were finished and tried to tune back into what I was saying, they had lost the thread and many of them became bored.
Try to stick to at most ten words on the screen per slide.
2. Instead, choose pictures that complement what you want to say. Instead of thinking of the information your slides can present, think of how the slides can complement what you’re saying.
For example, if I mention my children in a presentation, I’ll often include a slide that’s just a large picture of my children at play. No words, no anything. It doesn’t detract at all from what I’m saying, it merely complements and illustrates it and brings my words to life.
When you make an outline of what you want to say, consider what sort of visual image will match each idea. Then, find an image that matches that idea and actually show that image to the crowd, bringing the idea to life in their mind much as it is in your own.
3. Speaking of outlines… never forget you’re telling a story. A presentation is storytelling, pure and simple. If you look at your presentation as simply a way to convey lots of information, you’re missing out on why you’re doing it.
For me, the story is obvious – I just tell my life story. I talk about my many mistakes and how I recovered from them. It’s largely a chronological story – and it’s a visual story ...
