5 Tips to Improve Your Presentations in 2015

Would you like to improve your presentations and speeches this coming year 2015? Below are five tips:

(1) Turn off the computer.
All ideas come from the head and from there, they must be taken out and put in writing, better yet, put them on the wall and spread them out on the table so you can easily see them all and thresh them out.

(2) Put the audience first.
When your stories are done well, they really become the stories of your audience. Whatever message you want to convey, your audience should be able to resonate with them.

(3) Have a solid structure.
The structure you make won’t be visible to your audience but it will make all the difference when you build the narrative of your story.

(4) Have a clear theme.
Make your message very clear. What do you want your audience to remember? Make sure that they do.

(5) Remove the nonessential.
Be ruthless when cutting out the non-important details of your presentation.

These are just 5 of the things you can do to improve your content marketing. There are more if you head to this link: 10 tips for improving your presentations & speeches

Presentation: 3 Kinds

There are 3 kinds of presentations that you might not still be aware of. They are:

1. Stage show – This presentation is a live, stand up presentation where the speaker introduces a new concept or idea to the audience.
2. Cold call – Typically, this refers to an email attachment or link to a website that will help grab the attention of an uninterested recipient.
3. Decision document – This one contains a budget, a plan, a strategy, etc. which needs to be agreed upon among its members or a number of people.

Once you know what kind of presentation you’re doing, then you can tailor fit the appropriate type of slides you can use for it.

For more details about this, please head to: THERE ARE 3 TYPES OF PRESENTATIONS

 

Current Trends in Presentation Design

Trending designs for presentation use come and go. How do we know which ones will stick and stay? But before that, what are the presentation designs trending today?

1. Infographics – one that clarifies and explains; easy to understand and concise. If you do infographics, make sure you do them well. Otherwise, make do without and just make your presentation simple.
2. Flat Design – this design is new and considered modern. Because it’s “flat”, it is easier to make. You can combine making these with realistic designs in order to have a more interesting presentation.
3. Photographs – when photos are used, text is usually minimal or even non-existent. This makes the audience turn their attention to what the speaker is saying and the photo helps them visualize the presenter’s ideas.
4. Visual Metaphors – these are used to help audience understand difficult concepts.

With these things in mind, which presentation design do you think will last?

Find out more about this by heading to this link: Presentation design trends

3 Tips on How to Be a Strong Speaker

Like anything in life, it takes practice to be great at something and this includes being a strong speaker.

So how does one become a strong speaker? Below are three tips you can apply to help you become more confident and strong when presenting or speaking in public:

1. Avoid using phrases that convey to the audience that the information you are telling them is coming from you. You do this when you use “just” phrases, for example, “I just thought”, “I just want to say”, etc.

2. Avoid looking surprised. A strong speaker knows his speech inside-out. There should be no surprises. So avoid saying words like “actually…”

3. Avoid diminishing the value of what you are saying. Don’t use phrases like “It just occurred to me…”, “I’m not sure but…” and the likes.

To get more insights on how to become a strong speaker, please head to this link: 3 Ways To Become A Strong Speaker

 

How to Customize Colors in PowerPoint

In order to come up with better presentations, it is important to make sure that the colors you choose for your layout are not messy and you work on this on the slide master of your PowerPoint.

It is actually very easy to fix the colors and it can save you more time when you do the rest of your presentation. However, typically, default colors are used on the slide masters which are more often than not, not the colors the presentation is actually using so what you do is you change the colors manually and that takes up so much time.

So here is what you do:

In PowerPoint 2007 and 2010, click the Design tab and choose Colors. In PowerPoint 2013, click the View tab, then click Slide Master and then choose Colors.

At the bottom of the list, choose Customize Colors. If you aren’t particular about your colors — you don’t have exact specifications, you can choose one of the options on the list that is similar to what you want and then choose Customize Colors.

For the complete instructions on this, please head to:   Customize the colors in your slide master

How Can Introverts Speak Up in Meetings

I’m an introvert myself and at times it really ius hard to speak up in meetings especially when I know I don’t have anything critical or important too say. However, we introverts should know, that in meetings (or any social gathering for that matter), people who speak up, even if they have nothing important to say, tend to be valued more and regarded more than those who don’t. So we better speak up! If we haven’t yet, now is the time to learn.

Below are some phrases we can use to help us ease into the conversation or at least contribute something to the discussion:

I think Jen makes a great point.

Billy, were you going to say something?

Everybody seems to agree that… [repeat what everyone seems to agree on]

Am I the only one here who’d like more time to think this over?

To build on what Jessie just said… [add support or a new detail]

Don’t they sound simple enough?

To get more insights about why and how to do this, please head to: Public Speaking Tip 61: How to Speak Up More in Meetings, Even If You Say Inconsequential Things