Public Speaking Tech: eMail to Conference Calls, Social Media to PowerPoint

Public Speaking Tip 76: Public Speakers, Avoid Common PowerPoint Mistakes

by Jezra on September 15, 2015

In Bill Cunningham New York, a documentary about the great street fashion photographer, someone notes that Bill never took a mean photo in his life. So with Bill in mind, I’m posting this example of bad PowerPoint, not to ridicule mistake-makers (I’ve made some beauts myself!), but because it can be helpful to know “what Read More

Public Speaking Tip 71: To Get POWER from Your PowerPoint…Transition, Click, and Pause

by Jezra on June 24, 2015

This tip is so simple (and so much fun) that you might find yourself smiling when you use it. Why Are So Many People’s Slide Decks Lackluster? One Reason: No TRANSITIONS! Most people use PowerPoint in a truly feeble way — and I’m not talking about the overcrowded slides, incomprehensible charts, irrelevant data, and disorganized images that we see so often Read More

Public Speaking Tip 70: Use Pictures In Your Slides (Even Simple, Silly Ones are Worth Way More than 1000 Words!)

by Jezra on June 18, 2015

I love my Mac, and when I need help with it, I call IvanExpert — a New York tech firm that specializes in home and small business users, and makes house calls! So I was thrilled when IvanExpert co-owners Ivan Drucker and Caroline Green asked me to help them with a presentation they were making at Read More

Public Speaking Tip 63: Keep Your PowerPoint Short, Sweet, and Simple

by Jezra on January 20, 2015

Yeah, yeah, PowerPoint sucks. This has become a kind of business meme in the last few years, but come on, folks: Why hate on PowerPoint just because people use it badly. (And by “PowerPoint,” I mean Keynote and Prezi, too.) PowerPoint is just a tool. I mean, would you hate on a hammer because you saw somebody drive a Read More

Public Speaking on Skype: Tips to Show Up Well on Video Call Platforms

by Jezra on January 18, 2014

NOTE: This post is “from the archives”—or rather, from the early days when video calls were a new technology and Skype was the gold standard. **** My first experience of speaking to an audience via Skype was a 2011 conversation on BNET about Anne Loehr’s and my then-new book, Managing the Unmanageable: How to Motivate Even Read More

Where To Start On PowerPoint Mistakes!

Rule of 3

Don't fill a slide with words. Seth Godin made this point almost a decade ago. It hasn't changed.

Don't write down what you're going to say. The name for a document that conveys its point by being read is "report." If your audience can read your thoughts, what do they need you for?

Don't "digress," as the title of this slide announces it's going to do. Yes, a witty aside or quirky spontaneous observation is always welcome. But don't plan to add extraneous ideas to your presentation. You want the logic of your ideas to pull your audience along, from beginning to end.

Trust Your Audience — and Edit Your First Try at PowerPoint

One is that they don't trust the audience to understand what they're saying. You could also say they don't trust themselves to get the point across.

The second reason for overloaded slides is that people use PowerPoint to create a first draft of their speech. This would be fine (you can draft your remarks wherever you want!), but they don't realize they need to take another step. That next step is to take all those words off your slides and put them in your speaking notes. Your words don't need to be onscreen if you're going to say them!

Once you've created speaking notes, go back and make slides that will capture your audience's interest. Pictures, headlines, colors, graphic facts, even very sparse charts can all work well. Just keep your slides simple so that your audience's attention won't be pulled away from you!

The Big Pay-Off: Great Public Speaking

You will have the freedom to just talk to your audience.

Your audience will be able to listen to you talk, instead of listening to you read something they could have read on their own time.

And no one will feel like they're crawling through a desert of words or charts, thirsting for just one sip of fresh thinking.

In 25 years of speaker coaching, I've helped my individual speaker coaching clients develop their strengths and skills to become authentic and effective communicators. Along the way, I've developed tips for everything from small talk to speaking up in meetings, from managing fear to making an impact. And now, I've shared it all in 100 Top Public Speaking Tips: The Book. This beautifully designed PDF booklet is searchable, clickable, and categorized, so that you can find what you need, instantly.