How to Make a Presentation like A Pro

Posted by Peter on August 27th, 2018

Presentations are not ordinary, most of the times, they are used for sealing an important deal. Whether delivered in PowerPoint, on a PC, or Keynote, on an iPad; bad slides will never be forgotten while good slides will leave an impact. It is also obvious that poorly created slides will be carried forward badly and will make your audience cringe, to say the least, or the minimum damage would be when they will regret losing their time. We all have suffered through terrible slide shows with long lists of errors such as incomprehensible bullets, pixelated images, videos refusing to get played, delivered by the presenter, who is never too confident of his work, as it looks even worse on the big screen than on any laptop screen; constantly moving away from the audience so they can read from the screen, and at times, typos are also prominent to worsen the situation.

1. Create Your Slides After Your Speech.

Always remember that your presentation is to support you, not to replace you and it serves as a backing, not something fundamental. I mean if you see TED talks or any captivating talk, you might not find presentations, every single time, it depends on the requirement and sometimes to make the overall experience more meaningful and memorable. This is the reason, you should write your speech, put your track and vision first, jot it down and then start making a presentation to enhance your speech. It will give you a better perspective on how to deliver your speech and how you will take it and relate it with stories to share if there is any.

2. Keep Speaking Margin For Yourself.

Even though your presentation being perfect and flawless can cover each and everything; you would be the one presenting it and furthering the discussion through it. Don’t let the content written at your back overshadow you; who is leading the ship. The point is, do not make your presentation that it replaces you. Once you start the presentation, the audiences’ focus will be on it not on you, so, the more time you give to it, the less impact you will make as an individual or speaker, depending on which capacity you are giving your presentation. Or, the audience, could be the person you are dealing with for extending business, might think or blunt enough to say it to your face that “why don’t you just email me the presentation from next time?” Or, “you could have just emailed me this rather than calling me here for a meeting?” Not to discourage anyone, but you should make the presentation in a way, that it is dependent on you, and the case is not otherwise.

3. Use A Consistent Theme.

Avoid using flashy themes; follow the ‘less is more’ funda in which you do not overshadow your whole point - by choosing something over the top. Select a theme that makes your content looks more readable and easy to comprehend. Color should also be subtle. Last but very crucial, be consistent in your theme, do not make it look like a circus or fancy dress show where it looks like you spent more time deciding the colors for each slide than the content itself. Also, the minor mistake you took easily or missed out because you were too busy to proofread the content can make you look silly big time – because it will appear bigger on the big screen and people remember how many times you sin not your good deeds. Try to give less room for your audience to criticize you for being more vigilant.

4. One Story per Slide.

Keep it simple by limiting your stories to one slide at a time. Do not write all the aspects of your story on one slide by overdoing or bombarding it with content; to say the least, it will surely confuse your audience. By restricting your story to one slide each, it will leave a stronger impact and will look more precise and lucrative when you will conclude it.

5. Keep More Visual Approach

Our minds absorb pictures messages hundreds of times better than any simple text message – no matter how precise or well written it is. Visually rich content is easy to remember and digest than reading each letter one by word. The pictures messages communicate with our minds with us having to pay special attention to them – that is the kind of power they have. And once we read them, they appear friendlier to the eyes and eventually to the mind, which is why, and our brain can process images some 60,000 times faster than text. And if you use a large image, you can get your point across quicker than anything else, that’s why billboards, big picture ads with a lesser amount of texts on seo services are circulating all over without being a distraction. Moreover, a short list of brief bullets advantages your audience to follow and understand your argument in a better and convenient manner.

6. Reveal One Bullet At A Time.

Go with the slide. I know you have read, written, proofread and practiced delivering your presentation to make sure you go well with the audience, but you are not supposed to quote something from the tenth slide just because you run out of the explanation. It will spill the beans and your presentation will look out of context at the end.

7. Do Not Overdo It

Again, if you are using visual content in your presentation such as videos, GIFs, sounds, YouTube clips that support your subject- make sure the content is not too fancy and diverting the audiences’ attention from the topic than to add value to it. Choose simple transitions, clean and elegant fonts and large; so they can be read effortlessly, attractive and easy-on-eyes graphics trumps PowerPoint tricks, every time.

8. Remember the 2/4/8 Rule.

Time to make your work easier by introducing you to standard proportion for diving your content, if you still are not aware of it. Follow the 2/4/8 rule in which you do not use more than 1 slide for more than minutes talk; the bullet pointers should not exceed 4; the words in the bullet sentences should not be more than 8 words.

Conclusion:

There could be a book to elaborate on how to make and give your presentation like a pro, however, in this article, I have tried to sum up all the fundamental ingredients to give a good presentation. Also, the most common mistakes, we can learn from that too. I am basically a parliamentary debater and have worked as a news anchor too – I know my article now makes more sense because I have not just shared my experiences but also how I got trained and trained other people for public speaking. I had been on break for three years and I want to join in again which is why I wanted to study the latest trends and what are the common practices now so I can work on them before diving into the field once again. Also, I felt a bit rusted and wanted to polish myself so I can be confident about myself. That is in fact, a pro presentation tip too, if you have prepared well, you will appear more confident than when you have not rehearsed your talk.

In addition to everything explained above, I would also like to bring into your attention some more pointers such as fading to black as soon as you start speaking, in order to bring back the attention to you and what you are saying. If you forget anything by mistake or cannot explain anything well, or whenever you are in doubt, just dump it. Carefully compose your slides and strategize how you are going to showcase them. Again, try to pick an easy to read font face and leave room for highlights, such as images or take home messages. Be as consistent as possible; consistently use font face and sizes on all slides and in your storytelling as well. Match colors and use contrasts to make it look more presentable.

Think about your target audience while writing and designing the content; the message intended to give should reach them in an appropriate way. And before you deliver, practice well. It will reduce the chances of blunders and even the slightest mistakes. I had been using Cox Wichita ever since I moved to KS, about four years ago and I had been watching TED talks, News and everything that could inspire and help me grow my speech more confidently, I was hooked and now I was taking some pointers just to make sure that I am not missing out on anything while relying solely on my observation.

This is when I realized that we are not well trained about giving presentations and those who are pro at it are typically worked on themselves rather than depending on anyone’s guidance all alone. So, here I am with my research to help as many people as I can; either for school presentation or client dealing or you have to give your victory speech; you can always refer to this write-up.