We’re watching an untold number of online presentations since Covid-19 moved us from the conference room into the living room—learning webinars, all-hands meetings, client pitches and other online events. How many of the presentations you attended in the past six months were inspiring and memorable?
Thought so.
Most people tell me that they find online presentations a total bore. Of course, that’s expected. It’s a challenging medium for creating enthusiasm. Watching things on your 13” screen by yourself just isn’t as fulfilling or energizing as being in a room filled with interesting people and an animated speaker.
But here we are. Everything has moved online, and it’s likely to stay that way for a while … or perhaps forever. So online presentations need a major overhaul.
In this new world of pixilated presentations, many elements have to work together to create excitement, energy and emotion. In this article I focus on one key element that’s part of almost every online presentation – your slides.
What are slides for?
They’re there to help reinforce and augment what you say and to make your presentation more interesting and sticky. They are not to be used as your personal teleprompter. As you craft them, keep that in mind. Here’s how to build a slide deck that dazzles:
Brand it. It’s important to brand your materials to be consistent with other content and communications you share. Consistency creates recognition and memorability. If you’re a CLO, create a learning brand identity that leverages your company’s brand colors, fonts and imagery. The best way to brand it is to add a video bumper with moving imagery and music to the opening and closing of all slide decks. What’s a bumper? You see them all the time when you watch a movie. It's the brief 3-5 second opener, like these.
Lose the words. Well, most of them. Shoot for 15 or fewer words on at least 90% of your slides. And make sure the font size is large—36-point or larger. This helps limit the number of words you can fit and makes it easy for people to read. Remember, your viewers are seeing these slides on their laptop or mobile device. Just because you put a lot of words on a slide doesn’t mean your audience will read the words or remember any more of your content.
Use rich media. Replace words with pictures, including moving pictures. Images and video are just plain more interesting … and they can be powerful for reinforcing your message, giving it a better chance that your message will be received and processed. Images and video also provoke emotion and help with nuance, which is much harder to express with the 26 letters of the alphabet.
Make it sparkle. Use animations and transitions to make your presentation more dynamic. Then make each slide move a bit. The best slides don’t seem like individual slides at all. Through effective transitions and animations, slides move from one to the next without seeming like they’re separate and distinct. And don't let people talk you out of using animations by saying “Some participants experience a delay because of WiFi issues.” First, if you design for the least common denominator, your slides will be consistent—consistently boring to everyone. Second, when presenting, do take into account that some people may experience delays. But instead of using that to nix your creativity, realize that this gives you the opportunity to add pauses into your delivery. Like with most things in life, don’t abuse it. When you overdo animations, they go from interesting to annoying.
Be extra critical. Make every slide matter. Just like in a deck of cards, every card is important to the overall game, so you need to make every slide in your deck have value—or it shouldn’t be there. Once you’ve put your draft content together, go through every single slide and ask these questions:
- Is this slide necessary?
- Is this slide visually interesting?
- Does this slide reinforce or expand my message?
When you give yourself a “no,” refine your work. Keep doing this self-edit until you get all yeses. The result will be a presentation that makes your audience smile, not snooze.
William Arruda is a founder of CareerBlast and co-creator of BrandBoost - a video-based personal branding talent development experience.
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February 02, 2021 at 10:03PM
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How To Craft Compelling Slides For Zoom Presentations - Forbes
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