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5 Quick tips for creating a great presentation

5 Quick tips for creating a great presentation

I’ve just finished creating the presentation for tomorrow’s ‘Goal setting workshop’ (feel free to join us) and was inspired to share some tips on creating an engaging presentation.

There have been so many posts written about it that I’m guessing you already have your best practices set, but I’ll share mine anyway. You might find something here that is right for you.

Before I start, I highly recommend reading ‘ The presentation secrets of Steve Jobs’. This is be far the best book I’ve read on the matter.

5 Quick tips to create great presentations

 

Outline your story before you even open your Keynote (or PowerPoint):

The biggest mistake you can make when creating your presentation is starting right off with creating the presentation itself.

Great presentations are all about great storytelling, and like any good story, you first need to understand what is the main point you want get across, outline your story and organizing  it in a way your audience will really get it.

A simple A4 or notepad will do.

Write your story, its milestones, it main points – and only then ‘translate’ it to a presentation.

One point per slide

There’s nothing worst then an over- crowded slide.

Each slide should make only one point. Forget millions of bullet points, forget about cramming 200 words per slide. Simplify it.

Make sure each slide is focuses on delivering only one idea that your audience can easily understand and follow.

The slides accompany you, not the other way around

This is the most common mistakes I see speakers do.

You are the main event, not your slide deck.

You want your audience to focus on you, and what you are saying. If your slides are telling all the story, your audience will just read it quickly and stop paying attention to you.

Your slides should focus on one idea, emphasising what you are saying, not replacing it.

Use high quality images

Images and pictures will always grab more attention than text. But choosing the right image isn’t easy.

Make sure you are using pictures that are relevant to what you are talking about (at least in topic at atmosphere) but most of all – make sure you are using a high quality image and not just a crappy one you got online.

You can use websites such as Pexels on Unsplash to get free high resolution photos.

Watching a presentation with pixelated images, or a louse stock photo is a totally let down. Doesn’t matter how interesting you are or how important the topic is, your presentation just lost major points with your audience.

Frame your talk

At the beginning of your talk, give your audience a summary of what you’ll be talking about. So it’ll be easier for them to keep track of the talk’s progress, what to expect and even create anticipation,

Within your talk, make sure you are opening and closing topics in a way your audience can follow. Create a headline slide when starting a new topic, a summary slide at the end of the topic, and always try and leave room for questions.

If you don’t frame segment of your talk, or give context to what you’re going to talk about, you are making it hard for your audience to follow you.

If your audience looses interest for a second, it will be very hard to get their attention back.

In conclusion:

There are so many component of a good presentation, but I think this 5 will easily make your presentation better than over 90% of the presentations out there.

Are you using Slideshare to post your presentations? Share it in the comments.

2/3 Comfort Zone Challenges – Done!

I’m writing this update only seconds after completing my second ‘Out of my comfort zone challenge’ – Live streaming.

Originally the idea was to live-stream the launch of the Twitter email course, but I was not able to complete it on the due date, so I’ve decided to live-stream something else, and fail only 1 of my goals.

Instead, I turned to my Facebook and Twitter profiles and asked my followers to ask me growth questions they want me to answer on.

I got 12 questions in general. Out of those I picked 3: 

1. How would you promote a new podcast

2. How would you start with a new product

3. How to improve conversions from blog.

My main worries were:

1. Would people actually tune in to watch it?

2. Will I look good talking while in that ‘selfie” position.

3. Would it feel natural once I started.

Results: 

1. In overall, 37 people watched the 20 minutes broadcast 

2. No. Next time I need to find a stand for the iPhone or something like that

3. It actually did. Reminded me of the webinar experience. 

What’s the verdict:

I actually quite enjoyed it – and my team and I are thinking about turning it into a weekly thing.  

Would you ask questions and watch us every week?

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Out Of My Comfort Zone: Progress Report

So last week, I wrote a post about stepping out of my comfort zone.

In a short summary: Nothing good will happen in your comfort zone, and being limited to what you feel comfortable with is the holding back your progress.

In order to start stepping out of my comfort zone, I chose three simple and small tasks, so I won’t have a good excuse not to do them.

My challenges were:

1. Take 3 selfies (i’ve never taken and uploaded a selfie before. Yes I know, every 15 year old kid does it this days).

2. Launch a digital product (an email Twitter course for startups to be precise) and charge for it. 

3. Do a live streaming (Basically stream the launch of the Twitter course). 

I had 14 days to complete all tasks. 

Progress Report  

1. Selfies challenge: Mission accomplished! 

I took 3 selfies: two i’ve already posted online: 

1. Me, writing a blog post with the emotional support of my 1 month old baby girl. 

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2. We’ve recently moved to a new office space, and as we were going to get some coffee to start our day, we discovered that Nimrod, who was the owner of a coffee shop I started my business in (It was my office for 3 years) is now managing this coffee place. We were supper excited about it. Great selfie opportunity. 

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The third one, i’m posting online right now with this Tumblr post. Thank you Alan Weinkrantz (from Rackspace, they are awesome, you should check them out right now!)  for joining me for my final selfie in the challenge. 

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My other two challenges on the other hand are far from being complete. 

2. The Twitter course – I’ve outlined most of the content I need, started doing some of the research and thinking about some promotion tactics when launching. In terms of readiness to launch, I would say i’m 15% there. I will need to really put an effort into it this week if I want to do it on time. 

In terms of pricing: It will cost 4.99$

3.  Live streaming – this actually depends on the course progress.

Because I don’t want to lose 2/3 of the challenge if the course isn’t ready, I already have a backup plan of what I’ll stream instead – It will probably a growth tip, or presenting our next webinar. 

This is the update for now. I’ve finished 1/3. 

BTW, i’m actually doing an Instagram challenge for growing my following using specific tactics. Are you big on Instagram? Please let me know in the comments here. 

I Need To Step Out Of My Comfort Zone More Often  – This Is How I’m Going To Do It

Here’s a short list of things I KNOW I missed because I didn’t step out of my comfort zone in the last 3 years:

1. Growing my company faster

2. Building a stronger company at the present 

3. Giving talks to 3 of the biggest brands in the digital world

4. Over 100K$ (at least) in selling digital products and missing business opportunities 

5. Traveling abroad more

6. Stronger brand awareness 

7. Meeting some of my biggest heroes

This is only a real partial list. 

During the past month as I was on some kind of a ‘Paternity leave’ (more on that in another post) I had some time to think about my life, my business and how i’ve been living them so far.

Yes, I’ve achieved some very cool stuff  at my young age (both on a personal and business levels) but I know it’s only a friction. 

Why? Because I got carried away with worrying about the wrong themes and having self doubts (even Tim Ferriss has them, so it’s OK) and being too self-aware and self criticizing. 

How bad was it? Until last Friday, I never took a ‘selfie’ and posted it online! Thank you Gary Vaynerchuk for giving me the final push to do so. 

I HATE BEING CRIPPLED BY THESE THINGS!

So I’ve decided it’s time to handle it one step at the time. 

Here are some of the things I’ve done:

1. I talked with 3 friends that I feel are doing things I don’t have the guts to do.

2. I chose three programs / frameworks / challenges that to complete them I’ll have to step out of my comfort zone. 

Here are the 3 things I will be doing:

1. I never launched a digital product, or lets say, never really ‘sold’ something that aren’t my services. 

WHAT I’M GOING TO DO: 

I got an email from Gumroad telling me about an email course on ‘how to build a digital product’. 

Now, I’ve built tens (if not hundreds of them) for my clients, so I know how to do it successfully, but I’ve never done it for myself. So I’m going to follow through with Gumroad’s course just to give me structure .

In 14 days, I’m going to launch an email course to help startup marketers start and grow their company’s Twitter account. 

2. I’m not an ugly guy. I’m no Brad Pitt, but I’m definitely not the most ugly guy to take a selfie. So why is it so hard for me? I don’t know. 

Taking selfies with clients, thought leaders or generally in locations and event worth mentioning is a strong branding tool. It’s 2015, not using this, doesn’t make any sense. 

WHAT I’M GOING TO DO:

In the next 7 days I will take a selfie with 3 different people and post it to Twitter / Instagram. Just to get used to it. 

3. Tackle video / live streaming – I gave talks in front of hundreds of people. I don’t have stage fear of any kind, but video has always been hard for me. 

At the beginning I thought about making a short video and posting it online, but then I understood I will have too many excuses for not US it. So I found an alternative. 

WHAT I’M GOING TO DO:

I’m going to leverage the fact that i’ll be releasing the Twitter course, and i’m going to announce it using Meerkat (The live streaming for Twitter app). Why live streaming? Because it’s one take – one chance. No time to over complicate it.

This will happen in the next 12 days (Assuming the course will be ready in 14 days as planned). 

This isn’t ground breaking 

I know, these are simple stuff that people do everyday right? I could’ve been the worst teenager ever, right? 

There are so many things I need to tackle out of my comfort zone, but I wanted to start with 3 rather easy ones, so I could achieve my first small wins, meaning I will be more motivated to tackle bigger challenge later on. 

How To Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone In 3 Steps

Here’s the framework I’m using right now to step out of my comfort zone – so you can use it too if you’d like.

1. Decide on 3 ‘issues’ you can easily do that are right now out of your comfort zone. Start with 3 simple things because getting those quick wins will get you motivated in tackling the bigger things that take more courage or willpower.

2. Define them in the most specific way: I didn’t just say “sell stuff online”, I actually looked for a very specific thing I can do in a very specific time frame. “3 selfies in 7 days”, “email course in 14 days”, “live streaming the product announcement using Meerkat”. The more specific I’ll get, the more I’m likely to actually do it.

3. Tell the world – If I’d only announce it to myself, I can easily back away from it, right? I’ll make up the same excuses I’ve always used and never do it. 

By announcing it I now have people watching me and expecting me to overcome my fears. Backing away right now will force me to “shame” myself or disappoint someone. 

Now, over to you 

When did you last leave your comfort zone? What would you like to do that you don’t have the guts to do now? Let me know in the comments.

You can also tell me on Twitter (@roypovar) lets do it together!