Write Quotable Slides
Better still is when your presentation takes on a life outside of the room and gets the opportunity to spread to the wider world.
One common reason to even give a presentation in the first place is to pitch new ideas to the audience. Hopefully what you’ll be saying offers a new concept or approach that they were previously unfamiliar with. If all goes well, the audience will take the idea away and adopt it themselves.
Better still is when your presentation takes on a life outside of the room and gets the opportunity to spread to the wider world.
One way to achieve that is if the audience shares points from your presentation over social media. Not only is this great for getting your ideas spread wider, it’s great for the organisers as it creates buzz around the event online.
Typically we all know the key points and ideas in our presentations that would be the best to spread in this way. Sometimes is the linchpin of the entire talk, and sometimes it might just be a lighthearted aside used to poke fun or gently stir some controversy. Either way, as the presenter you certainly get a feel of those key points in a presentation.
When designing your slides, it can help to make sure that each of those key points is highlighted by a single slide with text that can be easily quoted or photographed. That means the headline should be concise, should make your point without the need for extra context, and, if people want to photograph it, the text should be nice and big and clear.
This also has the upside of helping your slide deck stand alone when viewed after the event, maybe on somewhere like Notist. Slides that concisely make the point without needing context can help communicate your message in a lot of ways you might never anticipate.
Of course, it’s not going to be appropriate for every type of presentation, but for those where it fits, writing easily quotable slides can be a great advantage.
Advent speaker tips: this is part of a series of tips for public speakers that we’re posting throughout advent. Check back daily during December for more.