Presentations are essential for businesses, whether making a sales pitch, bringing more clients to your business, or working on product research.
There are just too many applications and purposes for a business presentation.
And if you are also looking forward to creating one and, furthermore, for your businesses in 2021, you’ve come to the right place.
Here we are giving a detailed yet precise and easy-to-understand ultimate guide to creating amazon digital presentations.
You can implement these strategies and tips right away in your presentation to make it highly impactful.
This digital presentation guide focuses more on how to make it effective rather than on every particular step to create it.
Planning Your Presentation
So you’re all set to create a presentation to show it in front of your clients, customers or boss.
Presentation requires properly streamlining the various detailed procedures like planning and design to make it really effective.
Rework is essential on such a presentation to prevent errors or discontinuity in your storytelling.
Not to mention, you have to work on every aspect of the presentation to make it really outstanding.
This step begins right here in the planning stage of your presentation.
Select The Topic For Your Presentation
Topic of a presentation is about selecting the subject of your presentation on which you will base your whole scene.
A presentation for business can be about a wide variety of things.
It could be to point out some potential business opportunities, product development, research, sales and marketing strategy, training, pitching and more.
Focus on specific information or objectives on which you want to put across. What is your messaging or end goal with this presentation?
If you have already had your topic selected for the presentation, then go ahead further in the process.
Research On Your Topic
Research is one of the most critical steps of creating a presentation. It shows how much you really know about what you’re talking about.
Especially if you are proving a point, and it is backed by multi-layered research from different credible orgnizations, it gets weightage.
Don’t hold back your research on the topic.
Instead of thinking about finding some percentages to put in your presentation, just genuinely try to understand the topic of the area you’re picking.
Get as much intense information and knowledge you can gain to get a grip of the topic.
Research doesn’t mean only those parts that are going to the presentation but also what would help you to create a more informed opinion or detailed case.
Make clear notes that are easy to understand. In an ideal scenario, researching is when you start getting a fair idea on how you are going to talk about the topic.
Make sure you only use highly-relevant research points to put it in your presentation even if you got more.
Create A Structure For Your Presentation
Tips For Creating Better Structure In Your Presentation
- Provide the presentation body with facts, quotes, statistics, and other evidences
- Start with a compelling introduction telling them what they can expect
- Try to use not more than 10 slides in total.
- Conclude your presentation with your initial projections and highlight the key takeaways.
When it comes to the structure of your presentation, you can break it down to three different sections :
- Introduction
- Body
- Conclusion
Or you can also structure it more like a 3-act structure :
- 1 Act ( eg. establishing a problem)
- 2 Act ( eg. how to deal with it)
- 3 Act ( eg. winning it over & concluding)
However, in either of the cases, it is similar in one way or another.Only the 3-act structure is more on a storytelling aspect.
You can also utlize a blend of both where you establish a problem with an intro and setting up things.
Image Source: InfoDiagram
Then, you further expand on your product or issue at hand, how to solve it or if it is a product then about its features and benefits.
In the third section, you can conclude with highlights in the presentation, key takeaways, any CTA if there is any further information required.
Develop An Outline For Your Presentation
An outline is basically a roadmap for your presentation where it will consist of all the key points you will cover.
Outline gives you clarity on how sequentially to move through the presentation towards the end covering all the essential points in order.
Image Source: Venom
It keeps you focussed on the presentation, maintains the flow and doesn’t let you deviate from the path.
So create an outline for your presentation before you start. Make sure it consists of all the one-liners or pointers of the presentation content.
It also helps you to make the slides easily. You don’t always have to look back and check what you have missed or what next to create content on.
Outline is the backbone of any creative or information written piece such as blogs, speech or a presentation as well.
Image Source: Venngage
You can also add these outlinesin your presentation slide as well before starting the presentation.
It will tell your audience what they can expect and also the information on what topics you are going to talk about.
Prepare & Limit Your Content
Now when you got your structure and outline in the order, and with the all the research, you know :
- What to talk about?
- How to proceed through the presentation?
- What are the key points to make?
- What are your facts, figures and statistics to use?
- Are all case studies and examples you want to put in?
- How do you want to conclude?
First of all, do not repeat in the slides what you are saying.
Second, the best way to craft as well as limit the content for your slide is write or layout your speech, even prepare it first.
Image Source: Template
Now, use the slides to empower or double down on what you are saying. And since you are already talking about it, you won’t feel tempted to put it in the text.
Rather use all the statics, figures, facts, researches and quotes that adds more value to your spoken words.
Focus on using headers, phrases, and clip arts or graphics to accompany phrases or pointers you make.
Image Source: Slideshare
It is fine to come up with long sentences or more information when you write at first.
You have to do multiple edits- one, two, or as much as required to make it crisp and cut out all the extra information.
Make sure you proofread everything and re-read every once in a while to maintain the flow of the content.
You cannot afford any spelling or Grammatical mistakes, that would look very bad on your part.
Start Detailing On Your Design
There is no need to tell how designing is important in the presentation, after all, it is a visual medium.
Image Source: Venngage
Once you get done with your content, and jumping on the design part of creating your presentation, you may even have to further trim or adjust the content.
Here are few tips on put detailing on your design :
- Make sure your design presentation follows the brand guidelines if you present them.
- First, select a pallet or collection of 2 or 3 colors for your design.
- Do not overcrowd your slides with too many graphics, images or text
- Take more of a minimalistic and simpe approach towards the design.
- Use consistent design practises such as transitions, animation, color combination through the slides.
- Focus on using high-quality graphics and images only
Tips For Creating Amazing Presentation
Spend As Much Time As Required In Content Development
There are two integral aspects of a great presentation, one what you present and second how you present.
What you are presenting, is the content aspect of the presentation which you should be highly insightful, engaging and impactful for your objective.
It should be communicating your cause using a fair amount of statistics, quotes and data to back your content and make it credible.
Image Source: SlideServe
There is just too much work to do in content development that requires an ample amount of time to invest.
Make sure you are spending as much as time the presentation needs in order to stand tall on its compelling and effective content.
The amount of time you invest in a presentation vary frome one another as there are many types of presentation.
For example, if you are creating one on product research or market study, it is definitely going to take way more time than a sales pitch for your business.
Just because of the sheer amount of time you would need to just work and gather the right research work for the presentation before even beginning.
Decide The Setting Of Your Presentation
You need to decide the setting of the presentation upfront, better before even getting to plan for your presentation.
This is because in which setting your presentation will play to the audience impacts the way you create your presentation.
Is it in-person or in virtual? Are you presenting this or it will be just shown to the audience?
Is this a part of keynote speech or meeting room discussion? Will this be shown in a large hall or small room?
And so on! Also, consider the environment whether it is casual or formal, who it is aimed at?
You are making it as a sales pitch or is it to communicate an objective. All these factors are going to play a crucial part in your planning and development.
Prefer Following The 3-Act Structure
It is true that not every presentation can fit in the 3-act structure but really makes your presentation stand out in terms of communicating and storytelling.
Structuring your presentation is the step that should come before the outlining. And here you can implicate 3-act structure to your presentation.
Think of three different acts of presentation, how it plays out, what you will specifically show in each act.
Image Source: Reedsy Blog
More so, what is your objective for every particular act?
Act 1
You can start from the introduction and objective of the presentation. This is the setup.
This is the time when you grab your audience’s attention. Give them what they can expect from it. Throw a hook that you will reveal eventually.
Establish a problem, put a statistics and open up on your objective, it can vary for different kinds of presentations.
Use powerful words and information to get hold of their attention and pull them right in.
Act 2
This is the middle of your presentation where you have to sustain their interest in the presentation or your project.
Here you are going to go detailed and expand on things. If it is a product, give them features, highlights etc.
If it is research, give them more data collected and reported. It depends upon the kind of presentation.
Overall, it is about expanding and making a better case on your agenda for this presentation backed with all data points, references, examples, case studies, statistics you require.
Act 3
The final act where either you resolve the problem or conclude about the topic.
It can also be about reminding them the highlights, key benefits and extremely important parts of the presentation very quickly.
You can share additional information or anything more that would make more sense to mention here,rather than your act 2.
It is also where you drop your Call-to-action if required. It should be the shortest act among others and very conclusive in nature.
It is also where you can open for accepting questions from the meeting attendees or audience watching the presentation.
For Exmaple
Image Source: Slidebean
If you are selling a product to an investor :
- Act 1 : Introduce, Setup and Tell your audience what to expect. Your first act will be establishing the problem and the failure of existing solutions for it.
- Act 2 : Present your product and how it resolves the existing problem. More about how it is better than others. All the product details and highlights
- Act 3 : Where are you going with this product, its future, your plans, your sales, market research etc, why should they invest in your product?
Integrate Your Presentation With Captivating Visuals
Presentation is a visual medium, it is not documentation or dissertation where you are premodinanlty using words to communicate.
You need to limit your use of words, so make excellent choices and impactful sentences.
But to support it, you need captivating visuals. Or even better, A right image can actually be more powerful and communicative than written words.
Image Source: Canva
Also, you are already speaking the words. The idea is to give a visual representatin of your thoughts, ideas and points you’re making.
If you have heard about the “picture superiority effect”, you would know that people can retain 55% to 65% or even more from a picture in comparison to a text.
Here are some tips to use effective visual :
- Don’t use those cheesy and generic images like clip arts or basic stock images.
- Be creative, impactful and communicate with you every particular image or visual element.
- Do not hesitate to use multiple forms of visual elements such as GIFs, video clips, audio clips, infographics etc.
- Use graphs and pie when you talk about statistics. Make sure it is easy to understand.
- Don’t use copyrighted or watermarked images you got online.
- Get your visual graphics guy on the job, especially this presentation can be life-changing for you or even otherwise.
- You can also use testimonial videos, screenshots, newspaper cuttings, research papers and whatnot.
- Choose visual elements that convey your message that are relevant to what you’re talking about, if not helping already.
Use Only The High-Quality Graphics
Image Source : GraphicMama
Make sure you don’t have any photos, visual elements, video or anything in low resolution or low-quality.
Also it shouldn’t be grainy or blurry or any other kind of issue on how it looks.
Find the best graphics you can find for your presentation, high-quality, sharp, vibrant images that are highly relevant to your content.
Do not settle with low quality even if there you just need small-size graphics.
Less Is More
You probably have heard this a lot! But it is true especially when it comes to presenting or communicating to an audience.
Time is the essence! And you need to grab their attention entirely to communicate effectively and make an impact.
That won’t happen if your audience gets bored, or it becomes too overwhelming.
Image Source: Slidesmash
Even the whole point of presentation is to visually communicate your objective or provide information that one can easily grasp.
Otherwise you could have just sent a pdf file to your audience, if not that is the case!
So here’s how you optimize your presentation for “less is more” concept :
- Make you sure you have structure and outline of your presentation
- It is advisable to make a detailed but on-point script.
- Put less information one at a time on the screen for easy consumption.
- Don’t try to be ‘sale-sy’ or over-analyzing as it will increase your presentation time.
- Focus on your objective of the presentation and what exactly you want to communicate.
- Spend time on the development of content. Re-write a few times to make it short.
Choose A Restricted Color Scheme
You don’t need to go rainbow in your presentation to make it visuall stunning and attention-grabbing.
That’s not how it works! It is similar to website design or brand colors where you need to choose a color scheme.
However, in this case it is better to even make it more restricted with like two or three colors only, especially dominating the canvas.
Image Source: IRC WEB Services
Don’t try to fit in every color you like in your presentation as it will create confusion, distracts from the content and more hazard then benefit.
It is also recommended to choose the color scheme that your brand uses. It can also relate to the type of content or topic you are going with.
For Example, if the presentation is about making office space more eco-friendly, then probably using green predominantly is a good idea.
You can also consider going for a monochromatic color scheme of a single hue which is also popularly selected very often for brand colors as well.
Inject Some Humor
Humor is one of the greatest weapons in speech where you can instantly connect with the audience, and also a great tool in storytelling.
You are not doing a stand-up comedy! You don’t have to be funny per day to add some humor element to your presentation.
Make the humor clean and safe where it should be organically thrown to lighten up the conversation and refocus them on you.
It also builds a strong speaker and listener relationship. Humor also helps in keeping your audience alert, entertained and engaged with you.
It also increases the likability of the presenter to the audience as well. So make sure you give a little laugh to your audience every once in a while.
Try To Have Only One Point/Idea For Each Slide
One of the common mistakes of making a presentation is over-crowding your slide and trying to say too much in one slide.
It makes you stretch the presentation unnecessarily and make it less impactful as well.
Be concise, coherent and specific on the points you want to make and go hammering on one by one using each slide.
Image Source: SlideShare
You can certainly expand or add more to it but the goal should be to provide everything only to prove to you that one point you want to make in that slide.
Also, never overstay your welcome. Once you made your point, move on to the next point. Use brevity always in this case.
Edit Out Any Information That Doesn’t Align With Your Core Message or Objectives
The best way to make your presentations to-the-point and crisp, and all laid out perfectly on facts and only relevant points, is keep editing.
You can take some time to flesh out all the information and thoughts you like to put in the presentation.
And even if you have a lot of information, it is fine until you are going to edit it a couple of times or as much as required.
Image Source: Venngage
And how you edit your content for your presentation is eliminating all the information that doesn’t align to your objective or doesn’t serve your core message.
Remove the information that is remotely redundant, obvious or just there for no reason.
When you keep editing your slides to be precise, you will reach the point where it will be just as it should be.
Here are some tips to edit or rewrite your presentation content :
- Scan for all the information that is clearly not necessary at all when you re-read everything, and remove it
- Eliminate any over-explanation of a common fact or knowledge that your audience already knows.
- Always add more relevant and selective illustrative examples and case studies.
- Get rid of any trivial pointers or information you put across as it is going to burden the flow of your presentation.
- Edit out all the redundant information in your presentation.
- Use impactful and relevant quotes from industry leaders and other personalities in your niche.
- Make your case stronger with persuasive facts and figures.
Use Only Two or Three Fonts At Maximum
Using too many font styles only is going to clutter your slideshows and presentation.
It catches the eye off-guard and is unpleasant visually to consistently see different fonts.
Image Source: Visme
Not to mention, how disconnecting and unprofessional it looks as well from the auidence point of view.
So the best idea is to use two or three fonts only and that too for two types of section you use.
For example, use a bold font for headings and another paragraph font for writing content throughout the presentations.
You can definitely use Italics and Underline type of fonts as well for specific purposes such as showing quotes.
Make Sure It Still Sounds Conversational
Nothis is more boring and annoying than the presentation being a recitation of facts or like a teleprompter reading.
Even it is more irritating when the audience hear it as a pompous or pontifcating style of presenting information.
So, the first crucial rule is not to talk down to your audience. On the other hand, you also don’t want to make it like a kid trying to speak publicly for the first time.
There is a balance you need to strike where the preference is given to make it sound like a conversation.
It should be a conversation that you’re making with the audience.
The ideal presentation is when an audience feels like you are talking to him and him only, not at him but to him.
The tonality and style of the presentation should be conversational even though the setting is formal and so your words can be too.
Make Sure It Is Atleast Less Than Six Lines Of Text
As we mentioned earlier too, you don’t want your presentation to be too much for you to read there.
Image Source: SlideShare
It should be scannnable and easily consumed by merely giving a fair attention to it. No one is going to read the presentation while you communicate with them.
So mention as less text as possible but definitely it shouldn’t exceed more than six lines.
The pointers are going to a topic about one particular point you are trying to make with that slide.
Use more visual elements and less of the text to make it quick and more comprehensive to understand.
Tell Stories & Cite Examples
The presenter has to be an excellent storyteller as well because that’s how you connect with your audience on a root level.
It is the best way to engage your audience for long-lasting impressions and more meaningful context to your points.
The stories can be very short, from real life or yours as well. It can be to prove a point, establish a problem or theme or make a case.
Citing examples is also as important as stories as it gives more contextual fabric to your content making it even more credible than earlier.
Just information, data and numbers won’t make a presentation communicating and impressive.
Reinforce Or Complement What You’re Saying Through The Text, Not Repeat
This is one of the most common mistakes that beginners and even professionals make with their presentation.
People think the presentation, especially that you are using in the speeches, should be just a textual format or what you’re going to say or talk about.
It is not a summary of what you’re saying, rather a layering to give impact to your speech or presentation.
Audiences are anyway not going to read your slides for a long time as they have to pay you the attention for listening, and that should be the ideal case too.
So, your slides should be in a way that they would be able to comprehend it in 6 seconds or less.
Since people are not reading your slide, so put as few words you can put there. Even avoid making it sentences, rather than phrases or pointers.
Also, it is annoying to see the same text coming in the presentation that you’re talking about.
Foundationally, it should communicate the same thing but more like adding it to it or re-inforcing what you’re saying, rather than just repeating it.
Avoid using the words like a, an, the, and etc just quick phrases ,facts and figures blend with graphics.
Using graphics can really help you reduce the temptation of over-explanation.
Utlizing Audio And Video Elements
Since the presentation is a visual medium, don’t forget to ulize the audio and video elements whenever you can.
If there is a piece of content you can make or already exist for fair use that supports your objective and is highly relevant, it is only going to make your presentation better.
Don’t hesitate on using audio or video elements just because it hasn’t been a common part of traditional old presentation methods.
Using some tools, you can actually embed videos to your slides and add audio clips as well.
Video or audio is also great for breaking the monotony of you talking continuously for the presentation.
So using different tools to communicate only what you want to say in different ways makes the presentation easy, engaging and fun to grasp.
Neither Over prepare Nor Under-Prepare
It is pretty much clear that you should never go under-prepare for a presentation. You must be thorough with the content you are presenting.
Your preparedness comes from the fact that you don’t need the slides to perfectly communicate your pitch.
Just like under-prepare, over-prepare is a bad thing also!
You do remember how we mentioned about you being conversing with the audience and not reciting a speech.
Well, the disadvantage of the over-prepareness is this only where your presentation will become more of a bottled down political speech.
It will lose its natural touch and organic flow, and also lack the emotion to connect with your audience when required.
Use Strong Contrast In Your Presentation
The setting of the presentation often is a large meeting room or hall where people are sitting towards the end of the room corners.
You need to make your presentation visually striking and highlighted to drag the attention towards the screen.
The best way to do that is creating contrast in your presentation, and to do that, you can use a dark background with light text, and vice versa as well.
Image Source: Venngage
The idea is to choose the text color that stands out from its background.
There are some great color combinations to choose such as black and white, yellow and black and more.
On the other side, you also have to make sure that text color and background are at least not so alike, so it doesn’t blend to make the text difficult to read.
Prefer Using Large Text
One of the best ways to make your presentation stand out and easy to grasp for the audience, is to use the large text.
It amplifies the point you are trying to make. Also, larger texts are easily visible, on other hand, smaller texts are not recommended at all.
Image Source: PresentationGo
It will make it easy and quick to read and follow you through the presentation. Larger text even makes the reader retain the information longer.
If you are using the font size any lower than 24pt, it is going to be difficult to read the slides depending upon the setting you are in.
Also, larger text will encourage you to put less use of text in one side, making your point precise and to-the-point.
Make Your Presentation Interactive
Audios and videos are the great tools you can use to make the video interactive. However, there are more elements that help you in this case.
You can add links to your presentation, add the source of the research, mention the quick facts or highlight some previous slides, add statistics in charts, bars and diagrams.
Image Source: ViewSonic
All these are great practices to make your presentation interactive. It increases the engagement rate of your presentation and gives the best context to your speech.
You can also add an interactive quiz towards the end of the presentation.
Or questions are a great way to keep your presentation engaged with the audience every once in a while in your presetnation.
Do Not Read It While Giving Presentation
It has been seen many times the speaker gets caught up in reading the slides as trying to grasp what further to say while giving the presentation.
This can be quite frustrating and breaks the flow of your impact and storytelling you’re trying to create.
The last thing your presentation should be is a distraction, hurdle or a crutch you need in order to lead your speech.
In fact, it is there to silently be at the bay visually hinting at your audience and aiding on what you are saying, not otherwise.
So, never get glued to your presentation in order to move further. And for that, you have to first NOT write anything much to read.
This happens mostly with the presentation without bullet points because then you don’t have to turn around to read the slides.
So when you do it just to read the slides, it seems annoying. Make sure you are strongly versed and vocalized in your content material.
Use notes on the slides but more like cues and not as a narrative to move along.
Look Closely To Visual Hierarchy
Visual hierarchy is a common but effective visual design strategy utlized to organize elements in order of their importance.
Image Source: Visme
When you are making a presentation with different font sizes, icon sizes, contrast and different visual elements.
This tells your viewers to know how to look at your slides in the presentation.
You are basiclaly guiding your audience to look at your content in a heirarchial order for better understanding.
Also, visual hierarchy makes the visual presentation easy and fast to consume, not to mention giving more context as well.
Prepare For Technolgy Integrations
You cannot be struggling with technology when you have a presentation to make in front of the audience.
Image Source: Steve Blank
Very often a perfect presentatio you made after so much hard work will be derailed due to these technological integration glitches.
So it is better to come prepared and know things beforehand.
Here are some tips you need to follow to save yourself from being a victim of this :
- Best thing you can do is come early and go for a trial yourself, to see how A/V connects, do microphone testing and other things as well.
- Make sure you bring your own laptop to connect for the presentation
- Get your basic information about connecting a laptop to A/V right, research it before you have to do it at the presentation.
- Bring as many adapter and cable you might need for A/V
- Avoid any oer use of audio, video or animations to reduce your dependencies.
- Download whatever you need, don’t rely on the internet to access things at the moment.
- Get a good quality remote with extra batteries
- Always have a spare power extension, cable handy
Make Sure You Are Using Only One Image Per Slide
So far what we have advocated with the use of elements in your presentation, now you must have gotten a hang of it.
What we recommend is not going crazy with the use of visual elements in your presentation.
Image Source: SlideTeam
There must be a simplicity and a sense of minimalism in the presentation evoking clarity, comprehension and focus on the audience.
And, it is the same with the use of images in the slide. It is always better to use just one image per slide.
There are different ways you can use the images on the slide, such as the background, a fixed frame photo or an overlay as well.
Try Not To Use Bullet Points
You may think why not bullet points! After all it is only going to make your slides more formatted and easy to read and scan.
However, you also have to accept that fact, the kind of abuse bullet points face in presentations.
Image Source: SlideTeam
Presentations crafted well with bullet points do a very good job to pull people’a attention to the slides to read them.
But you also have to see the huge negative aspect. People are there to listen to you, presentation especially as keynote speaker or other forms.
Too much to read for the audience will create a distraction from what you are saying.
Slides are there to support your words and just give a visual reference to everything you’re saying or even a route map for you to move the presentation forward.
It can be helpful as notes but surely try to avoid it as possible or more importantly do not use it.
Make Sure Animations & Transitions Are Consisitent
This is one of the most common mistakes seen in the presetnation, especially if you are trying to be more creative with it.
Image Source: SlideCompass
You might end up adding different transitions for slides even skipping one or two in the middle.
Or you are just trying to make it look cool or good, you’re more likely to be messy with the use of animation and transitions in a presentation.
This inconsistent use of transitions between the slides and use of animatio in the slides can break the presentation from its flow.
Also, the use of these animations, transitions and other dynamic movements are crucial to keep the audience engaged and away from getting boring.
FAQs
What are the best tools for creating digital presentations?
There are many presentation tools available, such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Prezi. Choose a tool that meets your specific needs and preferences.
How many slides should I include in my digital presentation?
The number of slides will depend on the content and purpose of your presentation. However, it’s important to keep in mind that less is often more when it comes to digital presentations.
How can I make my digital presentation more engaging?
Use a variety of visual aids, incorporate interactive elements, and engage your audience with humor and storytelling.
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“Business, marketing, and Branding – these three words describe me the best. I am the founder of Burban Branding and Media, and a self-taught marketer with 10 years of experience. My passion lies in helping startups enhance their business through marketing, Branding, leadership, and finance. I am on a mission to assist businesses in achieving their goals.”