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Dear ,
13 great tips for your next presentation, speech, function, etc. from Rand Fishkin (Twitter @RandFish)
Especially if it's using slides.
Enjoy!
#1: Don't include tips or tactics that more than 20% of your audience already knows. It's fine to present stuff early adopters have seen, but if you're regurgitating advice that can be found on the popular blogs & newsletters, you won't win the top spot.
#2: Disable the audience's ability to read ahead Never show a slide w/ many elements (especially text) unless each one animates in. Otherwise folks will read ahead, ignore you, and then get frustrated by your slow conveyance of info they think they've already processed.
#3: Create tension/apprehension, then resolve it Great art and great stories create drama. To do that in a talk, take the points you’re planning to present and craft a story that starts w/ conflict, then resolve it step by step,
#4: Ask your audience to engage in unusual ways Never ask folks to raise their hand if they've _______. Instead: - Ask folks to Google/click something on their phone - Ask for a shout out to a simple question (ala improv) - It's even OK to say "close your eyes and think of X"
#5: Center your talk on a controversial opinion, then back it up w/ data e.g. "Content marketing will grow 10X in the next 4yrs, despite all the predictions of content overload." "A/B testing on your landing pages is a waste of time. I can prove it. And show you a better way."
#6: Kill every bullet point in your deck My God…. It’s so ugly, my eyes feel like someone rubbed stock photo jalapeno seeds in them. Instead, make a new slide for each bullet point, with a relevant visual. Same info. 10X better delivery.
#7: Steal the best ideas from around the web I do this all the time. Most of my presentations are conglomerations of posts, tweets, LinkedIn shares, ideas passed around on email, or submissions I’ve found on Twitter:
or
or
#8: Format the arc of your talk using one of these four Cheat-tacular methods There's others, but there are easy structural templates to follow.
#9: Include exclusively actionable advice 90%+ of talks offer ideas instead of tactics—meaning that, as a practitioner, I can not walk away from the talk and directly do something differently to improve my results. That sucks. Do the opposite.
#10: More slides faster > fewer slides slower Benefits: A) No memorizing—the slides provide your cues B) Fast moving visuals (10-30secs) hold attention far better than 60+ secs on the same visual C) Re-usable content for all your other platforms D) Folks will ask for the deck
#11: Visuals are tough. Use screenshots instead. It'll save you loads of prep time, and even though they look less "polished," screenshots with a bit of personalized markup or callouts are usually way more engaging than those beautifully curated, expensive, custom visuals
#12: Intentionally vary three things A) Speed of slide transitions (I like 4-5 fast slides, then a slow, lingering one) B) Volume of your voice (my fav is going silent, leaning to the audience, and whispering) C) Emotion in delivery (get angry, get choked up, be real)
#13: Target your presentation's examples to 2-3 folks you know will be attending You're going to create examples anyway, might as well check the conference hashtag on Twitter & LinkedIn a couple weeks before and use those people's companies/sites/accounts. It really works.
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Great stuff! Hope you use some, or all of these, in your next talk.
