What is the most important part of preparing for your presentation?

How to Create an Effective Presentation

Watch this video or read the instructions below to learn how to develop the content of your presentation, and how to create effective visual aids.

Develop your content.

1. Brainstorm ideas.
2. See where you need to fill in information and research your topic.
3. Gather all your info and then organize it. Prepare an outline of how you want to present the information. In the Structure tab, you can learn what to include and when to include it.
4. Transfer the information to cue cards or a single sheet of paper.  You can use these to support you during your presentation.
   Remember: You can’t read your presentation off of a script, so don’t write an essay. Instead, use bullet points to remind you of the next key point.
5. Be sure to know the expected length of time for the presentation and plan accordingly. Make sure you have enough to say.

Create your visual aids.

• Visual aids can take many forms, which means you can be creative!  Other than Powerpoint you can use: Prezi, posters, charts, hands-on samples or demonstrations. Keep in mind that you should be comfortable using whatever you use to create your visual aid.  
• If you are using slides, make them simple and uncluttered. Too much text or pictures per slide makes it hard for audience to digest all the information. This means you shouldn’t copy your entire speech onto your slides.
• Have 1-2 slides for every 1-2 minutes you are speaking.
• Slides should be large enough to be seen from the back of a room. Use a font size of at least 32.
• Use colour and contrast (but in moderation!). Avoid yellow and orange because they are hard to see from a distance.

Want to make your presentation even better?

Learn more about how to create engaging presentations using tools like PowerPoint and Google Slides in the Presentations module in the Digital Skills hub.

How to Structure Your Presentation

Structuring your content is an important part of an effective presentation. It is important to know what to include in your presentation and when to include it.

Complete the activity to learn how to structure your presentation. You can also use the tip sheet below as a quick reference when you are creating future presentations.

Tip Sheet

How to Prepare for Your Presentation

Watch the video or read the tips to learn some ways to prepare for a presentation so that it will go smoothly.

You can also use the tip sheet below as a reference when you are preparing for future presentations.

Tips to Prepare for a Presentation

• Make sure that you know you know your topic well. It’s much easier to explain something to other people if you have a good understanding of it yourself.
• Practice your presentation out loud! This will help you get a more accurate feel for how much time your presentation will take.
• Review the assignment rubric to determine what is expected so that you know how to budget your time.
• Try timing yourself. You will speak faster during the actual presentation, so expect your presentation to be a bit shorter than your practice run.
• If you are using PowerPoint slides, use the “Rehearsal Timing” feature to know exactly how long you have spent on each slide
  • If you are too long on one slide, consider dividing the information between two cards.
  • If you don’t spend any time on another slide, consider removing it.
• Practice in front of a mirror. This makes you aware of how often you are looking down at your notes or your visuals aids.
• Practice in front of a friend or family member and ask for critiques.
• If you are using cue cards, make sure you have them numbered in case you drop them. You can also attach them together with a metal ring, so that they stay together even if they fall.
• Make sure that you are comfortable using whatever you have chosen to use for your visual aids.
• Don’t use a network connection to access any part of your presentation. Have the material downloaded ahead of time and use it offline.
• Have a backup or a hard copy with you in case of a problem.

Tip Sheet

Presenting your authentic self: how you can best prepare for your talk.

By: Carla Ávila & Copie Harris

We believe that the speech that appears to be extemporaneous is often the speech that you’ve prepared the most. While some people believe that in order to come across as being spontaneous, you shouldn’t prepare, we believe that the opposite is true.   

Why prepare?

You can prepare in advance of your presentation and you can prepare on the day of your talk.  The purpose of preparation is to: 

1. Ensure that you know your audience and the space in which you will be presenting as well as you can
2. Ensure that your materials are tailored to your audience and that they’re clean, clear and succinct
3. Deliver your speech, including your message and the main takeaways, without missing anything important
4. Anticipate all the questions that you may be asked
5. Chanel your nerves by getting excited before you talk
6. Be your best authentic self
7. Attain your goal of giving your audience a presentation that is meaningful and well worth their time 
8. Let your audience relax, knowing that you’re prepared, organized, and in control of your talk

Tip #1: Know your audience

Carla recommends really doing your research.  In advance of your presentation, find out as much as you can about your audience and become familiar with them.  If it’s a small room, you can call the attendees or the organizer to get as much background as possible. This should help you to feel more connected with your audience and to focus on what is important to them.  It should also help you to decide what should be the key takeaways and how to structure your slides. We’ll address guidelines around slide creation in a future episode, but it’s important to remember that “less is more”!

On the day of your talk, arrive early to become familiar with the room and the set up.  Where is the clicker for the slides? How big is the screen? Where is the lectern? You can also do what Carla did before a recent talk: she spoke with people in the breakout rooms, to find out what had been happening in the conference thus far, how people were feeling about the event, and what they wanted to hear from her.  This also gave her audience members with whom to begin using Linkage (remember that this is the skill of looking eye to eye with each person in the room as you complete a thought).

Tip #2: Manage your nerves and get excited!

Everybody gets nervous before an important talk.  There are several ways to manage and chanel your nerves.  One is to adopt the Wonder Woman or Superman pose we addressed in our article on Posture.  These open poses are great to practice several times a day in advance of any nerve-wracking event, according to research by social psychologist Amy Cuddy.  Place your feet apart, put your hands on your hips and pull your shoulders down and back. You will actually release testosterone, the confidence hormone, into your system.

You can also follow Harvard Business School professor Alison Wood Brooks’s recommendation.  Dr. Brooks’s research showed that if you say “I’m excited” out loud in advance of a talk, you will feel more relaxed and you’ll do better, perhaps because you’ll be anticipating what can go right rather than what might go wrong.   

And finally, to manage your nerves and to help remember what you want to say, practice standing up and actually speaking your talk.  Research shows that if you stand to practice your talk out loud, using gestures, as we discussed in a previous article, you actually improve your ability to remember your key points..  And don’t worry, you can have some notes to help you….

Tip #3: Organize your thinking

Prepare a note card with five or so key words that remind you of the points you want to make, two to three takeaways, and closing remarks. This is a tool that some of us like to have handy--especially If the presentation becomes a dialogue--so that you can check before closing your talk to see if you missed any key points you had planned to make.  Remember to write BIG on the note card, so that you can check it easily and quickly. If you type the card, use at least 18 point font size. Look for a future article on using bullets rather than writing out a speech!

When you prepare and practice you will also be more accurate in predicting how much time you’ll have for questions.  

Tip #4: Anticipate all the questions your audience might ask

What will they or could they ask you?  This is also related to knowing your audience and to knowing your topic.  Write down all the questions you can think of and then ask a friend or colleague who knows your topic what s/he thinks your audience might ask. Copie believes this is an often overlooked yet crucial part of preparation.  We’ll address Q & A best practices in a future publication.

Tip #5: Remember Mark Twain!

Wait, how is Mark Twain relevant?  Twain was a renowned public speaker.  A quotation that Copie loves and that has been attributed to him, goes something like this, ‘It takes me five minutes to prepare an all day talk, and it takes me all day to prepare a five minute talk.’  Being concise and clear takes effort.  

Summary: Preparation makes you feel more comfortable and makes you more effective.  You’ll be able to truly respond to your audience in the moment if you are well-prepared, and you’ll be your most authentic self.   You’ll also help your audience to relax as they listen to you, because they’ll know that you’re organized and well-prepared.

What better way to create that Magicticity?

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