Presentations can be very easy or very challenging based on the speaker, audience and the topic. Though there is no math formula to make a presentation to stand out, there are few tips that would surely help you.
- Introduce the topic. Why should audience pay attention to this presentation ?
- Provide the facts, context.
- Whenever possible use the 10-20-30 rule. 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 as the font size (from Guy Kawasaki)
- Contrast the colors – background and foreground.
- Never use fonts that are hard to read.
- Don’t put too much of text (unless its training slides).
- Don’s use more than one picture in a slide.
- If you use pictures or graphs then provide the credits.
- If there are multiple presenters, make sure that there is a natural transition.
- When starting a presentation or ending it, make sure its done gracefully. Don’t do them abruptly.
- Choose examples wisely. Don’t use too many examples that may lead to more questions
- Spell check the content. It seems silly but many presentations has misspelled words.
- Make sure that the sentences are complete. The presentation slide deck itself should be self-sustaining.
- If you use a graph/statistic make sure that you describe what it is. Don’t just put the graph there.
- Acknowledgement and source of the facts, figures and graphs should be mentioned “somewhere” in presentation.
- Finally, provide takeaways, summary.
Good luck for your next presentation! Remember that everyone wants to present like Steve Jobs. But there is/was only one.
I would be glad to hear other view points.