How to make an effective presentation

how to create effective presentation slides you need to put yourself in your audiences seat.

Find out about your target audience : before prepared your presentation, you should be  Consider their interests, their ages, their needs, and anything else about them that will help you connect with them

Make appropriate use of pictures. It’s a good idea to break up text with illustrations and it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Ensure that the slides look good. suitable pictures or illustrations are very effective – but it does mean using a consistent format and typeface and readable colours plus giving each slide the logo of the organisation you are representing and a chronological number.

Each slide should normally contain around 25-35 words :  Too many words and your audience will have trouble reading the material; too few words and you’re likely to be flashing through the slides and spending too much time clicking the mouse.

Each slide should have a clear heading.

Be very clear about your key message – and ensure that everything in your presentation is both consistent with, and supportive of, that key message. You should be able to articulate the message in a phrase or a sentence and indeed you might want to use that phrase or sentence in one of your first slides, or one of your last, or even both.

Illustrate your important points with humaninterest stories, preferably something that actually happened. True stories, not necessarily funny, are excellent. When interest is waning, an amusing story usually helps.

Practise at home in front of a mirror. It can be very helpful to Practise at home in front of a mirror  You can also record your presentation and play it back to yourself: don’t judge yourself harshly when you replay this – we always notice our bad points and not the good when hearing or seeing a recording or ourselves! Time how long your talk takes. Run through the talk a few times with a friend.

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