I was a national speaker for about 2 years while I actively marketed my own business, speaking on on social media, blogging and websites. Before any major presentation I would watch one of Steve Jobs’ talks for inspiration. I learned that stories work better than lengthy explinations, and visuals worked better than words on my PowerPoints to get a idea across.
As we get ready for our annual Peak Performance conference, I’m readying myself for a quick ‘how-to’ presentation on Twitter. We’ll be using Twitter to stay connected and network throughout the three days. Thus it was great timing to see SlideShare, a presentation sharing website (think YouTube for PowerPoint), share it’s statistics on what presentations were most popular and why. Here’s some of the findings that you can think of while preparing for your next presentation:
Top 5 Presentations of the Year: Social Media for Business by Presentation Advisors, Steal This Presentation! by JESSEDEE, What the f**k is social media now by Marta Kagan, Rethinking the mobile web by Yiibu, PSFK presents Future of Retail report by PSFK.
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Use more slides: The most popular presentations had an average of 63 slides per presentation. (Note, on average, Americans used about 19 slides per presentation)
Use fewer words: Per slide, the most popular presentations used only 24 words on average per slide. (Note: the audience hates it when we ‘read’ off the slide. Don’t write your speach on the slide, but rather use it as a visual que for the audience – not yourself.)