Top Tips for Successful Presentations

How to, Presentation, Small business1 comment

At a workshop recently I heard someone giving a talk which was really interesting and I took away some valuable points from it.  So it got me thinking about what makes a good presentation.

Now, I’ve designed a lot of PowerPoint presentations in my time but I’ve delivered very few of them.  Like a lot of people, the thought of standing up in front of a group makes me nervous.  However, others can stand up for an hour and speak off the cuff about their subject, and make it interesting and memorable.  How do they do it?  OK, there are a few people who are natural public speakers, but for most of us, it takes a lot of preparation to stand up and speak clearly and concisely about our subject.

So from my experience of both creating and listening to presentations, I’ve put together some top tips for successful presentations.

Do

• Rehearse your speech and ideally get someone to listen to you or record yourself.
• Know the message you are trying to get across and stick to the key points.
• Keep the colour scheme simple and ensure the text is readable against the background.
• Have the same slide design throughout the whole presentation.
• Put your company branding and logo on the presentation if appropriate
• Keep animations and transitions to a minimum so they don’t confuse and distract the audience.
• Make the information more interesting by using pictures, charts, and animations.

Don’t

• Speak without any preparation or notes unless you’ve done it successfully before.
• Start the presentation without checking that everyone can hear you.
• Wander off the subject.  If you do, let the audience know why and quickly come back to the topic.
• Use technical language, acronyms or jargon unless it is relevant for your audience.
• Read from a script as it can sound stilted and prevents you from making eye contact with the audience.
• Put everything you want to say on the PowerPoint slide and then just read it out.
• Overload the slide with too much graphics or animation.  They should be used to make the message clearer not confuse the audience.

Perhaps you have other tips to add to the list?  However, it’s important to remember that a clearly delivered and well-designed presentation will promote you and your business professionally and effectively to existing and potential clients.

 
If you want more tips for successful presentations, then check out our free guide “How to Create Impressive PowerPoint Presentations“. This guide is packed full of useful information on how to create and deliver effective presentations. Click on the link here to download the guide >>> How to Create Impressive PowerPoint Presentations