4 hacks to create great presentations

Recently, Rand Fishkin tweeted that the only good presentation resulting from a Google search “creating great presentations” was this deck on slideshare.net. The rest of the search results were “obvious, bland, me-too advice…too basic w/ mostly poor examples.” Ouch.

If you’re not familiar with Rand Fishkin, now’s the time. He runs Moz, the popular service focused on helping companies and agencies improve their SEO, and co-founded Inbound.org. And to me, his tweets sounded like a challenge. They sparked me to take action, and I’ve since gone through all the best online content and courses I could find (over numerous pots of coffee) about creating great presentations. What I found? Anyone can create high-quality presentations, they just need to follow a simple four-step formula.

How to Create Great Presentations

1. Plan: Determine who your audience is and craft a story to connect with them. Catering your content to your audience will go a long way.
2. Design: Create slides that will reinforce your speech, not distract from it. You don’t need to put your entire speech word for word on your slides. Instead, focus on sharing key phrases and words.
3. Practice: Work on your tone, speed, inflection, and body language with friends, in front of a mirror, or record yourself. When you’re giving a presentation, you want it to sound natural.
4. Give: Include a handout of key points, extra details, references/links, or contact details. People love freebies, and they love the people who give them freebies.

If you’re interested in learning more, I went further into depth in this SlideShare. Please, dig in.