One of the great things about presentations – both as a communications medium and a marketing format – is the “breathing room” you have to create a genuine experience on behalf of your target audience. In a lot of ways, it’s a very pure mixture of old and new school marketing techniques – it gives you the space to really dive deep into a particular topic or idea, but also lets you “wow” people and communicate visually, too.
Having said that, it’s also important to understand that not all presentations are created equally.
There’s a reason why a lot of people’s eyes tend to glaze over when you tell them they’re about to see a presentation – they’ve probably had to sit through a lot of bad ones in their day. In fact, there are a few core elements in particular that will absolutely spell disaster for your presentation – elements you should work hard to avoid in the future.
You Didn’t Begin With a Plan
By far, the biggest mistake that you can possibly make when using a tool like Visme (which I founded full disclosure) to craft your next presentation is to begin the process without a plan in place for where you’re trying to go and how you’re going to get there.
Presentations, by their very nature, are always going to be one of the longer types of collateral that you’re dealing with. But just because it can be longer doesn’t necessarily mean it should be – everything, including the ultimate length of the experience, will ultimately be dictated by the strength of the premise it’s built on in the first place.
If you try to craft your presentation without a plan, you’re probably going to “wander” away from that central point along the way. Things that you think are relevant probably aren’t, which will almost certainly cause people to check out before they actually get to the end.
For the best results, begin the process with both an origin and a destination – meaning “your thesis statement” and “the key idea, emotion or perspective that you want people to take away from the entire presentation.” Then make sure every slide act as a viable way of connecting those two points together.
You Betray Your Own Style
Equally important is the idea of style – something that will subtlety guide your readers from the beginning of your presentation to the end, allowing them to have a rich and full experience along the way.
It doesn’t actually matter what style you pick – you need to stick with it at all costs. You see this a lot with longer presentations that may take multiple days to create. You settle on a certain style on day one and then, by the time you hit day three, things have changed and you haven’t gone back to the beginning to make edits to guarantee that everything flows together or feels like one cohesive product.
This creates a jarring experience for the audience, and it’s certainly one that is going to pull them out of the moment sooner rather than later. Regardless of what style you land on for this particular presentation, make sure that every last slide in the deck feels like it upholds those rules and maintains that feeling – the quality of the end product will thank you for it.
It’s Absolutely Possible to Have Too Many Words
Finally, one of the biggest mistakes that you can make when crafting a presentation involves relying too heavily on the text.
Yes, presentations can be long – but that doesn’t mean that you should just take that 1,000 word blog post, break it up into 10 slides and call it a day. You’re going to overwhelm and irritate people at a time when you absolutely can’t afford it.
Every slide should have its own idea and each idea should be expressed as clearly as possible, as concisely as possible and as visually as possible. Don’t use ten words when five will do and don’t use any words at all if you can get the same idea across with a picture.
When executed properly, presentations can absolutely be a perfect way to really strike a chord with your target audience. The presentation format in and of itself is not enough to get that particular job done, however, which is why you always need to keep best practices like these in mind while you work.
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Presentation skills are key whether you’re trying to impress a client or pitch to a VC. Completely underrated skill-set. Nice article.