How To Create And Make A Good Presentation

Most founders are imaginative, inspirational people and they know well how to talk in front of an enormous crowd. They know how to hide their fears and anxieties on stage. They are also great storytellers and know how the get attention from audience. But is it enough just being a great storyteller in order to impress audience? No, there is one more important issue they have to take care of to be complete. And that issue is called as presentation.

Of course you have to know what you’re talking about in order to put a great show on the stage but it would be deficient without any visuals or numbers to prove your work. It wouldn’t be convincing without any kind of information about what you did and it would be boring to watch someone talk on stage for hours. The reason behind humans getting bored so easily can be blamed on entertainment industry. You see as time goes on, civilizations adapt to new technologies and all kind of branches are affected by technological improvements. After the invention of television, phone and cinema, people were exposed to very fast and constantly changing visuals. They got used to speed of overflowing visuals from everywhere.

As result people’s focus span got shorter and shorter till it became about eight seconds. It means if they don’t see enough visuals in the room, audience is bound to get bored and not listen. But if you cram all the visuals you found in the Google search page into a tiny bit of slide, audience will get distracted and stop listening you again. You should be able to find a balance between not putting any visuals and flooding the slide with visuals.

In order to create a good presentation, you should consider other things like the environment. Who exactly are you talking to? Who is your target audience? If you are explaining quantum theory to bunch of first grades, you better use the back door of stage and get out. If you have a mixed audience consists of children, adults and elders, change your talking attitude for majority of the audience. Secondly you should consider what will you teach audience at the end of the presentation. To what conclusion will the audience arrive at the end? Is it simple enough for someone who has no information about the topic to understand it?

My second point is about the understanding method of the audience. Every human being has a unique way to learn. Some of them are kinetic learners while some of them are visual learners and some prefer listening. Every human being can learn with those ways but with different percentages on each part. You can’t know if audience is kinetic, visual or prefers listening so you have to combine all kinds of learning methods in order to present well.

To keep your audience attracted to your speech, keep asking and make them think about the subject. If they only listen like sheeps, they will tend to loose focus and not be able to learn anything from your experiences. You might as well share the memories of yours related with the topic, this will provide a short break for you and audience in order to recover what was learned and told.

In order to look like you were born to talk on stage, you should have some tricks. As an example, you can try to take care of your outlook before going on stage, have a big smile on your face and be ready for whatever comes to your way. People tend to judge others by their appearance because it is the first thing they will see and it will affect their first impression on you generally. If you have a bed hair or dirty clothes on you, that audience won’t listen a word you say. If you overdo it, then they will judge you poorly because you overdid it. To talk about smile, it can change your confidence greatly. If you are nervous smile, if you forgot what you would be talking about smile, if you don’t know what’s going on, just smile. Smile will fake a happiness and you will relax slowly. Also the audience will think of you as a confident person and like you even you didn’t speak. They will be more respectful generally to the one who is talking. As for being ready for everything part, it literally means you should pack any kind of last resort equipment before you leave home. You don’t know the stage, the problems that would occur, their poor wifi, their not having microphone, their not having a board or reflector and so on. You should bring your laptop, phone, tablet, charger, speech ready on paper etc. With that way no awkward looks would be thrown between you and audience. You wouldn’t need to reduce time of presentation or cancel it.

As for the rules of presentation slide, don’t put every little word would come out of your mouth to presentation. There would be too many words and audience would read the slide instead of listening. Avoid excess bullet points. That is unnecessary and confusing for both sides. You should also avoid too much slides on presentation. It is boring, unpractical and annoying to constantly hitting remote for every idea you are presenting. It is also uncomfortable to watch someone hit the remote like crazy. If you want to prove the work you have done to people by showing the data you gathered, don’t use too much of it. If you really want to use much, then make it simple and as basic as you can, otherwise no one will ever understand what is saying. It would also look like made up by you to impress the audience.

As visuals, try to find the ones that have good quality and taken by your team member is the best choice. Do not ever use a shutterstock image you found on Google. It is unprofessional and lame. Lastly, don’t use similar bright colours like white and yellow. No one has eyes of a hawk to see. Also try to change the font you use in your presentation other than Times New Roman. Everyone uses it. You are an entrepreneur. You are the creative one. Why especially would you use the font that billions use? It kills uniqueness. If you use different font, people would notice and praise you for your creativity. It would show them you care about your presentation. It’s hard to talk in front of people but not impossible. Good luck.