Elevate your presentation game

You just found out that you must prepare and deliver a presentation about your work or any other topic. If you're like most of us, this is a task that might cause friction. It pushes us out of our comfort zone. We might think our excellent results speak for us, so why should we still say something about it?

Anxiety starts kicking in, and brain fogginess plays an awful trick. It scrambles everything we know and renders us incapable of effectively communicating our great ideas.

We have so much to share with our colleagues, clients, and friends, but we feel that we lack the proper way to say it.

In the business and technology world, being able to effectively communicate our ideas is crucial. Nonetheless, we still see many presentations failing because the message is unclear.

One of my quotes in my public speaking talk is:

"The ability to effectively communicate your ideas is essential to your success."

So, if most presentations fail because of a lack of clarity, which evidently makes us unsuccessful, what can we do right now to overcome this common situation?

Keep reading, and I will give you simple and powerful tips to elevate your presentation game.

The first and the foundation on top of which you'll build your presentation is:

👉 Define your purpose

• Imagine that you are about to go on a trip. Before you leave, you must know your destination. The same occurs when we start preparing our presentations. The first step to guarantee your message's clarity is to define your purpose. Answer these questions: What's the end goal of the presentation? What's the key message I want my audience to remember after they leave the premises?
• Once you've defined your purpose, make sure to let the audience know it at the beginning of your intervention and sprinkle it throughout the whole presentation.
• I personally state at the beginning of the presentation what my audience is going to take home. In this way, they do not need to sift through words, visuals, or my show performance to understand the meaning of the presentation and wonder what they should pay attention to. They already know what to look for.

📣 Practical implementation:

• Take some minutes to write a clear and concise purpose declaration for your presentation. For example, if you are presenting a new product, your purpose declaration might be: "I want my audience to understand How our new product will solve their current problems and why it is the best option in the market."
• Once you have a clear understanding of the purpose, the whole content of your presentation must align with this purpose. Every slide, every word, and every visual must support and reinforce your purpose.

👉 Organize your content logically

• Once you've defined your purpose, the next step is to organize your content logically. A well-structured and flowing presentation will help your audience follow up on your argument and understand your message.
• The most common and simple structure you can adopt is the classic introduction, body, and conclusion structure. This structure is a safe bet.
• Let's take a look at what each of these segments entail

📣 Practical implementation:

Introduction. Here is where you captivate the attention of your audience. Research shows that the moments of most attention during a presentation are the introduction and conclusion. You can start with an anecdote, a rhetorical question, or a shocking statistic to raise and maintain your audience's interest.

Body. The body is the central part of your presentation. In this section, you present the evidence, data, or logical arguments that support your purpose. It is vital to organize a smooth transition between the principal ideas presented in the slides.

Conclusion. This point of the presentation is where you are given the opportunity to reinforce your main message and leave a long-lasting impression. Summarize key points and come back to your purpose declaration. End up with a clear call to action (that's why you are there, isn't it?) and cheer up your audience to take the next step.

👉 Use visuals to support your purpose effectively

• Visual elements are potent tools to clarify your message and keep your audience engaged. It is important that these visuals are relevant to your presentation and well designed.
• There is a golden rule: less is more. One of the most common mistakes in visual utilization on presentations is overloading slides with too much text or complex graphs. If you are in the technical area (as I am), you will feel identified with what I just said. The golden rule is to keep your slides simple. Use bullet points, relevant images, and charts or graphs that are easy to understand.

📣 Practical implementation:

• Use legible fonts. Make sure that font size and type are easy to read from any point of view in the presentation room.
• Choose a nice color palette. Use contrasting colors to help you highlight the critical information or bits you want your audience to notice. Remember that emotions are attached to colors. Be mindful of this fact.
• Use graphs and tables. Graphs and tables can help bring down the complexity of data. Just be sure to make them simple and direct. These two elements must follow the same approach as your presentation. They must convey one clear message, and that's it.
• Go easy on the amount of text. Avoid using long paragraphs in your slides. Instead, use bullet points. You can use them to elaborate on your explanation verbally.

These three tips will elevate your presentation game with little effort. But before I let you go, here are two extra tips to elevate your presentation further.

• Adopt a simple language. Easy to say, hard to do. Avoid jargon unless you are entirely sure everybody in the room will understand you. Think of this: even Steve Jobs, in his presentations, adopted simple language. His presentations were successful.
• Practice makes perfect. Clarity in presentations is not accomplished overnight. It requires practice and dedication.

Remember, each presentation is an opportunity to communicate your message clearly and persuasively.

😉 Apply and practice these tips in your next presentations, and let me know in the comments how they went.

👉 If you found this helpful, ♻️ repost it to share with others, and follow me for more insights. Let's unlock our full potential, one step at a time!

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