Presentations to convincingly express an idea cannot produce the expected effect when sloppily prepared, and can also create a negative image. What should be considered for an effective presentation?
1. Your presentation should be audience-oriented
During the presentation, try to think like your audience and get out of your own consciousness. The audience you are presenting may be high school students or academics or business people. It is important that you design your presentation according to the interests of the audience you are addressing, and include elements that you think will attract their attention. For example, if you make an academic presentation and fill the whole story with information about the sector, the audience may feel lost.
2. Focus on a main topic in your presentation
If you're giving a presentation to a group, you should have a main case that you want to tell the audience. At this point, you need to convince them to something, introduce them to something new, change their attitude and behavior. To do this, you must have a main message in the presentation and everything else must be the other elements surrounding your main message. When you want to touch on many topics in your presentation, your presentation may move away from the main idea and become parts that cannot be combined by the audience. For example, if you're presenting a new coffee shop to open, the main features that distinguish your new coffee shop from other coffee shops may be your main concern. But talking about where your coffee beans are grown and how they are collected can distract customers from the idea.
3. Do not include any valuable information in your presentation
Include information that is critical to the listener only, which can change their life, perception or behavior because if you add any information that is attractive and interesting to you for a while, your speech may be less attractive for the other party. This situation, which is called the speaker paradox, is a common problem for presenters. Unobtrusive information for the listener also reduces the value of important information and reduces the impact you want to make. Therefore, you should remove all information that is not meaningful to the listener. For example, if you are presenting a new notebook, the type of material that you will use is of great importance for your company. However, during the presentation, the quality and weight of the material may not appeal to your audience. On the contrary, it might drive your audience away from your presentation.
4. Prepare the flow of your presentation well
Your presentation should consist of three separate sections: introduction, body and conclusion, just like the essays we wrote at school. In the introductory part, what the audience will gain from the presentation should be explained and the presentation flow should be given. Current situation analysis of the problem identified in the body section. In the conclusion, striking messages should be given. In addition, announcements should be made in the conclusion section and the contact information that can be reached to the presenter should be shared.
5. Make sure your presentation is clear
Technical terms, expressions in foreign languages, abbreviations, etc. distracts the audience. Therefore, it is necessary to present the presentation in an openness that almost all of the hall will understand, by moving away from unfamiliar terms. For example, if Steve Jobs mentioned the device's memory as 5 GB when promoting the iPod, the majority wouldn't have anything in mind. Instead of saying 5GB, Jobs attracted the attention of the audience by saying a thousand songs.
6. Make the presentation visually strong
The design of the presentation and the visuals you use are as important as the power of words in capturing the audience's attention. To achieve this, instead of using standard PowerPoint presentations, you can use online systems with modern designs that you can modify according to your theme. For example, you can increase the attractiveness of your presentation with alternative tools such as Canva, Pictochart, Prezi.
● Canva: In Canva, a free platform, you can switch to paid use and get more alternatives and advanced add-ons. It is a platform where visual illustrations are created, it is even used by designers. In addition to presentation files, you can do social media content, social media cover photos, poster design, business card design. You can also share your work with your teammates and edit them together. Afterwards, you can download all or certain parts of your presentation in pdf, png, jpg format. In the paid section you can even download the animation format.
● Prezi: Prezi is a platform that allows you to move away from the classic Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and bring your innovative presentation techniques and creativity to the forefront. Thanks to Prezi, you can draw the audience into the presentation and create more visually satisfying works. We should also note that Prezi is only used online. Make sure you have Internet during your presentation.
● Piktochart: Pictochart was created in March 2012, allowing you to create web-based infographic, presentations or advertisements. The free version includes certain limitations, such as the visual upload limit, but is extremely useful for performing professional work. Piktochart has more than 11 million users worldwide, according to 2018 data released.
● Flaticon: Flaticon is basically defined as one of the world's largest icon search sites. With thousands of icons that can be added to presentations, you can increase the visual appeal of your presentation and make your presentation more attractive.
