You want to build an effective presentation and wondering how. Stop everything that you do. It all starts with crafting the content. No matter how investible your idea is, if you do not get it right on the screen and in a simple way, you’ll have to deal with seas of blank faces. You do not want to do that. So how to start? We listed the pathway for making a good presentation. Here we go!

Create a simple, straightforward, and logical structure ​

No need re-invent the wheel. Break down your presentation into three simple sections: introduction, body, and conclusion.

1. A captivating introduction: Your introduction must be compelling, simple, and straight to the point. State what your presentation is about and how relevant it is to your audience.
2. A relevant body: that is when you hit them with facts, figures, insights, data, supporting quotes, and any other pieces of evidence that back up your ideas.
3. Key takeaways: time to loop back. Give your audience final ideas that need to be remembered and utilized.

Tip: Keep your slides limited even if your presentation is relatively long, and let your audience digest the on-screen message while you are talking. Nobody wants to stay sited for ages and go through tons of slides.

Less is more

1. Limit the amount of copy in each slide: human beings are naturally tempted to read what they see on the screen. You do not want them to disconnect or lose focus, so avoid distracting them. Seth Godin recommends each slide should not have more than 6 words. You may think that's too little. Rewrite until you've got it right.
2. Make chunk-sized information: knowledge is better retained if it is broken into a chunk-sized story. On the other hand, videos convey complex concepts better and are 95% more compelling than text.

Mind the style and the design
Design can make your presentation either successful or fail.

1. Use colors moderately: colors have a significant impact on your audience. Too bright colors can be dazzling for your audience, and too little can be tedious. Use them wisely and purposefully. Your palette should not have more than 2 more colors on top of black and white.
2. Stay consistent with fonts: keep it consistent. Don't switch between styles, italic and bold, caps and lower cases, 10 to 50 point text size, or Calibri and Comic Sans. Stick with one type throughout the presentation. Any variation should be made on purpose and in line with conveying specific emotions. But keep your on-screen look cohesive.
3. Format with perfection: maybe that is the most annoying task of all, but that one says a lot about how much you care. An off-center line, or low-resolution picture, or mismatched graphic will put off your audience as you will look like you have not tried enough, or you just do not know how to do it. Make it look neat, and let your presentation speak high about how much effort you have put into it.

Polish, polish, and polish again

Review several times, just like polishing an old shoe to make it sparkly and shiny.

1. Starts with a rough draft: Do not worry. It will look messy at the beginning. You can use Milanote, a non-linear writing tool, to outline ideas before moving to your presentation software (PowerPoint, Keynote, or any other, you name it!). Build your ideas, connect the dots, and see connections you could not have seen before.
2. Then, edit ruthlessly: You will start with a bulk of information, and you are wondering how to ever get down the amount of copy on each slide. Edit ruthlessly until bringing your messages down to the essentials.
3. Get a fresh pair of eyes: a second opinion is always helpful in refining your presentation. Get the help of a colleague, mentor, or senior member to review your work. If no one can help, no panic! Technology is here. Use online writing assistants like Grammarly to help you weed out a lot of issues.

These recommendations will help you build better presentations, whether you are a large corporation, SME, or start-up, or a keynote speaker. Click here to send us a message and here to join our community for free.