How to create soundbites in your presentation

Max Atkinson claims there’s no magic to it. There’s no need to go to a quote book. Follow rhetorical principles and you can create your own quotable soundbite.

Twenty-five years ago Max Atkinson was an Oxford academic – his area of research was conversation analysis. Then he coached Anne Brennan, a woman with no speaking experience whatsoever, to win a standing ovation at the Liberal Democratic Party annual conference by using rhetorical techniques. Overnight, Max became an in-demand presentation coach and eventually left academic life to teach rhetorical presenting techniques to business people. In his book, Lend Me Your Ears he shares those techniques.

These techniques were first developed by the great Greek and Roman orators. Politicians have used them extensively throughout history. What Max does brilliantly in his book is to show how the techniques can be adapted for business presentations.

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Here’s a quick way to make over a bullet-point slide

It’s called the Assertion-Evidence Format and it was developed by Professor Michael Alley (I’ve mentioned it previously but somehow never devoted a whole post to it).

BTW, if you’ve downloaded and read my Presentation Planning Guide, you’ll see that this slide format dovetails nicely with the planning system I describe in the Guide.

First let’s look at the Assertion part of the format. [Read more]

5 steps to effective Powerpoint Presentations

Stepcase Lifehack just published a blogpost on tips for more effective PowerPoint presentations. I was surprised to see some outdated and unhelpful advice. Here are my five steps to create an effective PowerPoint presentation. I’ve written about many of these steps before, so I’ve provided links to more detailed posts if you’d like more information.

1. Plan your presentation on paper first.

Keep away from the computer. Garr Reynolds from PresentationZen calls this going analog.

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How to say nothing in your next presentation

Have you sometimes gone along to a presentation -it may be entertaining and enjoyable – but at the end of it, or a few days later, you think to yourself – what did I get out of that presentation? It’s easy to fall into the trap, as a presenter, of saying nothing in a presentation.

What are some of the traps:

1. Stating the obvious

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The Top 10 PowerPoint slides from Slideshare

Slidesharing sites like Slideshare and Slideboom are a great place to get inspiration on PowerPoint slide design. You can see different ideas and adapt them for your own presentations. Slideshare is currently running the World’s Best Presentation Contest (see footnote) which has some great examples of PowerPoint slide design. To save you time I’ve picked two sample slides from the 5 most popular entries. They’ll offer you inspiration for the design of your own slides.

(To see the whole slideshow click on the link I’ve provided for each set of slides).

1. Play with text

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6 Major Distractions to Eliminate in your Presentation #2

Yesterday I talked about 4 environmental distractions which cause people to stop focusing on your presentation.

But it’s also easy to distract your audience by what you say (or don’t say) and by what you show on your PowerPoint slides.

5. What you say (and don’t say)

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