Slide decks are a powerful way to back up any type of presentation from team meetings and sales pitches to conference keynotes and workshops. We've all seen presentations with poor design that takes away from talks, and at worse, completely distracts the intended audience. However, most presenters aren't graphic designers. Slide decks can be frustrating to build, and great slide decks help communicate what an audience needs to hear.
At Moz, I've had the pleasure of working with many speakers on their decks, whether for a biweekly webinar or for MozCon. And while you aren't going to turn into a god of slide decks overnight, there are some easy ways to go from terrible to decent. Decent won't get you heaps of praise for a deck, but it also won't leave a sour taste in someone's mind about your slide skills and will allow them to focus on what you actually have to say.
Here are seven simple tips to sharpen up any deck.
Download the checklist version to help you get started.
Outline your way to success
While we all have different creative processes, I can't recommend enough outlining your deck before you start in on the slide-building. This will help you focus. It will also let you organize the narrative of your presentation's story.
I always refer to my outline as the "everything and the kitchen sink" version. It's typically 2-3 times longer than my allotted time. But it helps me fine tune for the specific audience and make sure tactics (or my message, if not a how-to) stand out.
For example, a few months ago, I gave a social media 101 talk at a burlesque conference. My initial draft and brain-dump outline was way too long, and I quickly realized I could make easy cuts by removing advanced tips. I thought they were cool, but my audience was going to lose me. The tips would've taken away from the presentation.
Make better presentations by outlining them.
Get readable fonts and font sizes
Use legible fonts. I know they can be boring, but that's better than most of the audience being frustrated by not being able to read your slides. There are plenty of great free fonts if you hate Times New Roman, Arial, or Calibri, and typographers have put together cheat sheets for matching common font types with each other.
Even at conferences like MozCon where there are two 16-foot (4.8 meters) high screens, font size is still an issue. For legibility, even for the back of the room, we recommend speakers do not use lower than a 36pt font. Or no one will be able to read it.
Ideally, 48-60pt font should be your smallest range, depending on the font. Let's face it, not all of your audience will have perfect vision.
Extra font tip: If you are using any non-standard fonts, please send the fonts to the conference organizer along with your slide decks. Or send a PDF. Fonts are embeddable in most slide deck software, but it's best to make it easy.
For presentations, use a font no smaller than 36pt and, ideally, 48-60pt.
Keep important information away from the sides and bottom
Often times, projectors don't line up perfectly, and there's nothing more distracting than your words slightly sliding off screen. This is also something you can't check beforehand at most events. So add a little padding on either side.
Additionally, unless you're on a very tall stage, put a buffer at the bottom. Even with the raised stage of MozCon, if speakers put text or other important information near the bottom, the heads of the people in closer rows will block it. I recommend putting repetitive branding, such as your company logo or your Twitter handle there.
For assistance, here's an example widescreen template for PowerPoint, Keynote, and PDF that blocks off where images and text should be in your presentation.
Avoid putting important info too close to the sides or bottom of your slide decks.
Add the conference hashtag
Marketers love to tweet. I recommend that you put both your own Twitter handle and the conference hashtag on every slide to help facilitate the love. The bottom of the slide is a great place for it.
Marketers love Twitter! Don't forget to add the conference hashtag to your presentations.
Ditch "about me" and promotional slides
Never spend more than one very condensed, slightly fun slide about yourself, and never spend more than 30 seconds on it.
A good emcee or moderator will introduce you based upon the bio you submitted with some other information from social media stalking. They'll toot your horn. They'll tell the audience why you're qualified to be speaking on this topic.
If you're presenting before clients or a small audience, who may not know you, keep it short and sweet. And if everyone knows you, no need to include it.
An audience wants you to dive right into the good stuff. If you impress the audience with your presentation, they'll be hunting you down. And hopefully, they can do this easily because you've added that information to your slides. Also, a thank-you ending slide with your contact information is always a nice gesture.
Dive right into the good stuff and ditch "about me" slides to earn audience respect.
Kill those bullet points
Rarely are bullet points a good idea for your slides, unless you are making a true list. If you find yourself spending any time explaining points, it's definitely time to break them up.
Audiences will read slides before they listen to speakers. Bullet points typically leave slides copy-heavy and speakers ignored. At least for however long it takes for someone to read the slide. Reviewing your outline is a great way to determine if those bullet points need their own slides before you start practicing your talk.
Okay, how do you break up those bullets? Let's say you have five items on your list. Time to turn them into six slides. Slide #1: put down your list's title, e.g. types of social media metrics to track. (Bonus points if you use a font or style signaling that you're transitioning into a deeper dive.) Slide #2: the first bullet, e.g. conversation engagement. Slide #3: the second bullet, e.g. applause engagement, and so on until your list is exhausted.
Bullet points kill slide decks. Learn more about how and why you should remove them.
Planning anything beyond static slides? Loop in the event organizers
If you are doing anything beyond just slides—video, audio, musical production, live polling, audience participation, etc.—sync up with the conference organizers well in advance. They want to make sure you look good. Additionally, they may need to order extra equipment or do testing beforehand. And if they say no, be respectful.
If you're trying to explain on-stage to an audience that cool thing you had planned but technical issues prevented you, you're spending a lot of their trust in you (not to mention their attention spans) for nothing. Make sure the flashy fun works and make sure it enhances your presentation.
Making your slide deck multimedia? Contact event organizers pre-show.
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Always keep learning more
Brilliant presentations and their accompanying decks are an art form in their own right. This tips will only take you so far. Besides practice, experience, and getting help and feedback, there are a ton of resources out there to help you improve. Here are some of my favorites:
Books:
- HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations by Nancy Duarte
- slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte
- Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences by Nancy Duarte
Articles:
- How to Give a Killer Presentation by Chris Anderson, curator at TED
- How to Become a Confident Public Speaker by Matthew Capala
- The Evolution of My Public Presentations by Rand Fishkin
- The Making of SearchLove by Mack Fogelson
- Too Busy To Succeed: How I let 'busyness' make me choke at MozCon by Adam Audette (make sure to read comments too!)
- 11 Things To NEVER Say In A Presentation by XCamilleWong
- Presentation Horrors: Don’t Do These Things by Ian Lurie
- Being a MozCon Community Speaker: A Look Inside by Zeph Snapp
Videos:
- TED: The secret structure of great talks by Nancy Duarte
- 8 Rules for Exceptional Slide Presentations - Whiteboard Friday by Rand Fishkin
- 30 Tips for Awesome Presentations - Video and Slides by Ian Lurie
Best of luck!
Great post, Erica! I would add: It's PowerPoint, not PowerProse. Cut back on your text! People should be listening to you, not reading.
Totally stealing that "It's PowerPoint, not PowerProse." =D Brilliant.
Agree on slidedecks for presentations - but for later reading, I like to know what I'm reading. This would stink to present but reads well:
https://www.slideshare.net/duaneforrester/2014-seo-...
Erica, great post! Mozzers, I once interviewed Erica and two other experts on speaking and presenting at length here. (Disclosure: My personal blog.) Just wanted to point out somewhere else people can see even more of her great thoughts on this topic! :)
In addition, here's some of the best advice I ever heard myself: Almost all of the specific information in a presentation should come out of the speaker's mouth and not be on the slides. People come to hear a person speak, not to read his or her slides -- they could have done that at home.
Too many speakers cram so much text onto a slide that they end up just reading the slide. And that's boring. Rather, speakers should memorize everything that they are presenting -- which shouldn't be that difficult, if they are truly experts at what they say they are -- and slides should usually be quick focal points that bring all the information together.
A quick example: Say that you're demonstrating how a certain marketing trend has risen and fallen over time. The slide might just be a quick line graph that goes up and down with (perhaps) a few specific dates or events highlighted. And that's it. All of the background, history, results, and more should be coming only out of the speaker's mouth. That way, the audience will merely glance at the slide to get the big idea -- and then focus solely on the speaker.
But it's hard to do that. The reason speakers cram so much text onto slides is as a crutch in case they forget something. But with enough preparation, practice, and memorization, then speakers are sure to remember everything. Yes, it's hard -- but it's worth it in the end for both the speaker and the audience!
:) Indeed, you always want to deliver the best information through your words and reinforce them with the presentation. Practice of presentations is so important for that extra polish layer. Unfortunately, I think that a lot of people keep fussing with their decks until the very last second, and forget to let their decks settle and think about how to move through the speaking part of the talk.
P.S. please don't think this is directed at you personally Samuel! The use of first person is purely intended to make a direct impression on the reader :)
Hey Samuel,
Absolutely agree, although I feel duty bound to mention my biggest frustration with presentations these days.
If you are going to make short, succinct slides that encapsulate the point you are making, please don't do clever and cryptic! A lot outstanding speakers have transitioned this way and the end result can be that they lose out by burning their non-attendee audience with a deck that leaves them cold :(
Slides that make perfect sense to an audience who heard your joke, but are just plain senseless to me when all I get is a slide deck are just too disappointing. Especially when they come from people whose presentations I literally hang out to see!
Thankfully, seeing this too often has made me so frustrated it is now the driver for me to ensure my decks allow the user who never gets to see me speak in person to still get the best from my presentation. The tough part of is explaining to moderators that there are a crazy number of short, sweet, truly explanatory slides, but it will take no time to burn through them all :)
Sha
Sha, I completely agree -- as a fellow speaker at events, I've found it hard to balance those two competing priorities. You want a good deck for the event itself, but you also want a good deck for others' future reference and information. The former needs less text and explanation; the latter needs more.
I'll admit that I don't have a good answer. There are probably not any set rules -- I imagine that it's just a balance that has to be struck differently for each and every presentation!
PS -- As per the other comment, no worries -- it's all good! :)
Great all that information that makes all learn every day, many thanks!
My top tip: please don't use Prezi. It's an amazing tool, but I almost guarantee you don't know how to use it properly and you're giving the audience motion sickness.
Substance over style, please!
Martin, while I respect your feedback, you should not be overconfident in representing the entire world that they cannot understand Prezi. Like any other tool which requires proper understanding & practice beforehand, Prezi is no exception
Coincidentally, I had given a presentation on Prezi last week and my audience loved the entire experience. May be try, quite a few dry runs next time and I am sure your audience will enjoy your Preso
Good Luck
Raja
Disclaimer: I do not work for Prezi or its associate. I am just a loyal customer
My tongue was firmly in my cheek when I posted that, however for the purposes of clarity; although I may sometimes have megalomaniac tendencies, I do not feel that my comments represent "the entire world".
Thanks!
Although it was tongue in cheek you raise a good point, form should always follow function.
What I mean by this is that the presentation should already be resonating with the audience and capturing their attention, it shouldn't need the 'styling' of Prezi.
I used Prezi for a presentation I did once and the amount of time I spent on the set-up would have been far better spent removing redundant content from the presentation and adding in some relevant facts and information that keeps the audience involved.
On a side note, Seth Godin has some fantastic points in regards to presentations.
I think it's much harder to use Prezi effectively. I do think it's worth being empathic to your audience who might have issues with motion sensitivity. (Think about how many people you know who won't go to a 3-D movie!) At Moz's events, we had one MozCon speaker use Prezi, and it wasn't surprising that her background was building products and UX.
I hate Prezi. It makes me motion sick, and I can't be the only one!
Long, arcing transitions : Prezi :: Spinny newspaper transitions : PowerPoint
It's a great tool... but like any tool, there's a right and a wrong way to use it, and the way of novelty is generally the latter.
Hello Erica,
As a relative newcomer to Moz, I have only just begun watching Mozinars from the past couple years and I can tell that you have put each and every one of these steps into effect as time has progressed. I have become more and more impressed with each presentation and now I know why.
I will also say that this is a huge help moving forward personally as I have always been a great public speaker but my slide decks (according to this article) have always left something to be desired (far too much text per slide, shoot me now). I think it will be great to test out some of these things and see how they are received. Thank you for taking the time to help us Mozzers out, and for providing those excellent resources - I have my work cut out for me, it would seem.
This comment made me smile. :) Thank you for your kind feedback about Mozinars and how the quality of decks has been improving. I do have to say that I'm looking forward to being able to give this checklist to the speakers that I work with.
Glad to be helpful for your future speaking engagements. You can do it!
See you around future Mozinars!
Hey Erica,
Thanks so much for this :)
Always great to have a reminder of all those things we should know, but get totally wrong anyway!
I consider myself extremely fortunate to have worked with the best deck coordinator/moderator in the business when I got to walk on the Mozcon stage in 2013. You taught me a lot through that process and I still appreciate it. Actually, I kind of wish Moz had a "Check Your Deck with Erica" option in Pro every time I find myself selected to speak at another event :)
Here I am again, getting down to the business of developing my deck for SMX West and thanking you for the great direction you gave me with that Mozcon presentation. I say a silent thank you (and an apology for most likely driving you nuts for a few weeks) every time I do this. Now seems like the perfect time to say it out loud - "Thank you so much and please forgive me. I hope it didn't take too long to get over the experience" ;)
<3
Sha
Thanks for your kind words, Sha. :) Working with you was a pleasure, so don't worry.
Best of luck with your deck for SMX West. I'm sure you'll be amazing!
<3s
Great Post Erica,
could have used it during my final presentation while in college but it's still useful now for presenting information to clients. Thanx
Jarno
An often overlooked piece to giving professional presentations! Great write-up!
The article is very comprehensive. Nothing to add! It's awesome.
People at conferences tend to be distracted or tired therefore not fully engaged. I once heard a great tip on how to keep the audience attentive and uplifted. It actually came from a teacher and I have used it and it worked. When possible, try to create an Outline that could fit a 1x3 structure. For example:
Topic or section A
slide 1
slide 1.1
slide 1.2
slide 1.3
slide 2
slide 3
Topic or section B
Topic or section C
Somehow make the people aware of the structure through emphasis and other techniques
Another tip, If the presentation is not long and boring (I know that would never happen with our amazing presentations) I like my decks to have a cheeky progress bar at the margin top or bottom. You could also identify each section with a specific color and use the progress bar to identify in which section of the presentation you are.
Yes, audience's attention spans are key to understand. :)
Brilliant points raised Erica, I usually prefer using big headings and minimum description so that your audience can pay you more attention and you can convince them in better way.
That's a great way to go!
Tip #6 Kill the bullet points. I've seen a lot of presentations where people will read each bullet point verbatim and not elaborate more than just the words on the slide...in that case I would rather them just send me the slide deck and skip the presentation.
Also, I have a question about this one for Erica. Many times after a conference, I will get a slide deck from a presenter and there are so few words on the slides that it's hard to remember what the presentation was even about...especially if you didn't get a chance to attend that specific presentation because you were in a different presentation at the time. Any advice for making sure that the post presentation audience understands your presentation? Maybe making two separate slide decks? One for the actual presentation with less words and one for after the presentation to hand out with more words?
Olin, upvoted for having such an original, creative idea that I haven't ever heard before! I'm sure Erica will have her own thoughts, but I just wanted to add a few of my own -- I can see both pros and cons to your idea.
I once gave a Mozinar here on how to integrate PR strategy into SEO. In a few of the slides, I included blocks of text as examples of positioning and messaging statements. Yes, it goes against the best practices, but I still wanted to show concrete examples of what I was discussing. I told people to please ignore the text and just to save the slides for future reference, which was the point. But I'm sure the listeners read the blocks of text out of habit and tuned me out a little.
So, what could I do? Noting your very interesting idea, I could have had two versions of the deck. The first -- without the blocks of text -- would "look" better during the actual presentation. Then, I could have uploaded a second -- with the blocks of text -- to Slideshare for everyone's reference.
It may have been better from a presentation perspective. However, say my Slideshare contains decks that are more text-heavy. Then, people would see those and assume that the original presentation was also text-heavy. And that might reflect badly (though inaccurately, in this hypothetical example) on my presentation ability -- and hinder future speaking pitches.
Again, I don't know. I'm just throwing out some thoughts as a person who speaks at conferences from time to time. Mozzers, I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts!
Olin, again -- great contribution!
I agree that it's tough to follow a deck with just headlines. But also agree with Erica that you don't want a text-heavy deck for your presentation. Olin, perhaps a solution is to have a well-filled-out Speaker's Notes section (at least that's what it is in PowerPoint) with the details on each slide. If the conference doesn't provide links to the decks after the conference (or if those are just PDFs of the slides without the notes), you can post to SlideShare and people can see the Speakers' notes. I wish more did that.
I love when speakers create a second Sharing version of their decks for SlideShare and other post-conference distribution. I know Ian Laurie is someone in our industry who does this often. I've done it a couple times, and it's been pretty effective.
You can also add a further resources slide where you list articles for people to dive further in-depth in and tools that you might've mentioned.
This is what makes a lot of presentations on Slideshare completely unwatchable for me. "DO IT THIS WAY!" Well, WHAT way!? There's no accompanying text! Or a header "Actionable Tactics" with a guy on a trampoline. Well, great. I'll go jump around - maybe it'll come to me.
I like the idea of 2 presentation decks - one noted up so those who weren't actually present can still understand you and one for presenting for all the reasons outlined above.
Love the post, Erica. Definitely sharing with my New York marketing agency [link removed] team. Seems like point 5 struck a chord with many readers and I'd have to say it did with me as well. Consumers don't want to see that, they want to know how things improve THEIR lives; they want to be the hero.
I dont understand the point 6 in the post. Very interesting for me, I know the report..... Thanks!!
What are you confused about? Happy to further explain as needed. :)
Hi Ivan,
The way to think about this is, if a point or an element is worth highlighting as a dot point, it is worth highlighting with a slide all of its own :)
So, instead of one slide with lots of text that looks like this:
I Want To Show You These Four Things:
(lots of text, distracts the audience from what you are saying because they get bogged down in reading the text)
You have 5 easy to understand and easy-to-follow slides that look like this:
Slide 1: I Want To Show You These Four Things
Slide 2: First thing
Slide 3: Second thing
Slide 4: Third thing
Slide 5: Fourth thing
I have used italic text here to represent a different font as mentioned by Erica in the post. Personally I like to use the same font, but different size and color to help the audience easily understand which are the broad headings and which are the points bundled beneath them.
The best thing about turning your dot points into slide groupings like this is that it actually helps the person watching your presentation to better retain the information you are delivering. Each slide in the group becomes like an exclamation point, helping to emphasize your content.
Hope that helps,
Sha
I agree!
Great Information I Like Your Tips Very Useful
Thanks for the post Erica!
This stuff should be part of every training no matters what level you are, not only when presenting at a conference.
Despite not being a huge fan of ppt myself, If you work for an agency and you want to win any new business you need 2 "simple" things:
Experience is certainly key but the more you prepare up front the less you risk a complete failure.
Definitely! An effective presentation to clients, investors, or just stakeholders in your project can be incredibly powerful and a must in many careers.
Good input from an excellent speaker! Thanks Erica.
On point #5, while I agree you should spend almost no time talking about yourself, I do think there can be a place for a properly done About Me slide. For one, it can allow people to get back in touch with you at a later date if they misplaced or didn't get contact info for you. Also, if the deck is posted to SlideShare, a simple About Me slide that gives a short overview of your professional role and maybe some logos of some clients, can serve as another marketing channel for new business. It can be glossed over during the presentation, but it can serve a purpose if the deck gets shared.
It does highly depend on the kind of situation you're in, and you can make it super short. :) It's most important that speakers don't come across as wholly self-promotion. It's good to practice your elevator pitch about yourself too, if it's appropriate to intro yourself. I think people get rambley when they don't know quite what to say. :)
Tip #5 resonated with me the most, having been a victim of a recent presentation involving a lengthy "about me" that led me and all of my peers to sigh and whisper "who cares...". As stated in the article, it is always best for someone else to give your introduction and sing your praises, it almost always comes off as egotistical when you're going on about your OWN "greatness".
I also enjoyed the tip about bullet points because this is commonly what I use to "shorten" my presentations, when really I should just be adding more short slides.
I think we've all seen presentations where the presenter went on too long about themselves or their company. Or you thought you were getting a how-to and were blindsided by something closer to a sales presentation.
Ah, yes, I often find that a list broken down into separate slides can be clicked through at the speed you would go through it as a list, so it doesn't end up saving you anytime. Time is a huge thing in presentations. (I see a future blog post!) Practice and figuring out exactly who is your audience is and what information they want at what level of expertise is really key.
Great post Erica,
10:20:30 rule is also a great rule. I think by combining these points with that rule, people can improve their presentations more.
your content is great and its good information